“Satori”, translated as “enlightenment” or “nirvana” coming originally from Buddhism, means that accepting and understanding the truth of the world by releasing yourself from the world that makes you obsessive towards world desires and evil desires, and makes you suffer from anxieties.
Actually, Satori, which is known as “enlightenment in English, has way deeper meaning than the above and is not such a easy concept that can be expressed as one sentence.
However, people mostly understand this concept as overlooking the situation where they stand and accepting everything objectively regardless of good things or bad things.
For that reason, people sometimes confuse it with the concept of giving up because people understand that accepting the fact that nothing is going well, which they deserve to give up, makes them understand how the things should be and releases themselves from obsession and anxieties.
There are so many people who have explained the relation between the concept of giving up and the concept of “Satori” so far. Of course, there are also different ways of thinking depending on the position. In this article, I want to reveal the truth of “Satori” by digging into what “giving up is.”
Satori and giving up are the same concept or are the different concept
Let’s have a look the position that Satori and giving up are the same concept and the position that Satori and giving up are the different concept.
Firstly, we have a look the position that Satori and giving up is the different concept. In this position, giving up is pretty much the same as “giving up” we use every day, which means we abandon it halfway or reject what we really want in other words.
So, giving up tends to have negative nuance that reminds us of the words like cutting off the hope, despair. On the other hands, Satori tends to have positive nuance like salvation and hope because this position takes the stance “Satori” should be found hope and salvation from understanding and accepting how things should be, what the world should be through various experiences in your life, including failure, success and giving up halfway.
Secondly, let’s see the position that Satori and giving up are the same concept. People who take this position bring implication of “tolerate”, “surrender” and “accept” to the concept of “giving up” because ego somehow trying to solve the facing problems to avoid giving up will prevent us from enlightening and doing “Satori” in the first place. So, giving up “Satori” itself is really needed for us to reach the stage of “Satori” in the real sense.
In addition, “giving up” in Japanese originates from the word, “ revealing”. That is to say, giving up in Japanese originally means making something clear and accept the thing you’re facing. Japanese kanji, “諦” meaning giving up is a translated word of Sanskrit word, “Satoya” indicating truth and reason, which is the origin of “Satori”.
In a ward, the reason your desire doesn’t come true become clear by knowing reasonably what is what and you end up accepting the current situation and abandoning what you really have pursued so far. You necessarily go through such a process to reach the stage of “Satori”.
Understanding the logic of how things consists of, how things work and how things are controlled by the world will make your feel no regret about something you gave up halfway. In this way, negative implication to “giving up” can be eliminated and “giving up” is way more closed to “Satori”.