satori
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: biochemistry
biology
chemistry
microbiology
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
Etymology: Borrowed from Japanese 悟り (satori, “understanding; (Buddhism) enlightenment, satori”), from 悟る (satoru, “to perceive; to comprehend, understand; to come to enlightenment”), from Middle Chinese 悟 (nguH, “to become aware, apprehend, realize; to awaken”) (modern Mandarin 悟 (wù)), used to translate Pali bodhi (“supreme knowledge”) or its etymon Sanskrit बोधि (bodhi, “perfect knowledge or wisdom by which a person becomes a buddha or jina; enlightened or illuminated intellect of a Buddha or jina”).
Etymology 1 sense 3 (“mutant gene of Drosophila that causes homosexual behaviour in males”) was coined by the Japanese scientist Daisuke Yamamoto in a 1991 paper, based on the Japanese term.
Inflected forms:
form: satoris
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: Satori
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: A sudden inexpressible feeling of spiritual awakening or enlightenment, the result of meditation and study.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: [B]y his ſublime underſtanding and reputed great knovvledge in divine myſteries he obtain'd, and ſtill keeps, the name and repute of a Godo, that is, a perſon bleſs'd vvith a divine and moſt accute underſtanding, vvhom they ſuppoſe to be able to find out by his Satori, or Enthuſiaſtic Speculations, ſuch miſterious truths, as are far beyond the reach of common knovvledge.
He [Darma or Bodhidharma] lived only upon vegetables, and thought this to be the higheſt degree of Holineſs, to paſs days and nights in an uninterrupted Satori, that is, a contemplation of the Divine Being.
"Slim your hips the Zen way," Juliana said. "Lose pounds through painless satori. I'm sorry, Miss Davis. I'm woolgathering."
It was as if [Neal] Cassady […] was in a state of satori, as totally into this very moment, Now, as a being can get.
Zen teaches that we are all already enlightened, some of us simply don't choose to realize it. If we choose to embrace Satori, then we are enlightened.
Satori and Zen seem to have such an intimate relationship in Japan that when somebody says "satori," everybody immediately associates it with Zen, and vice versa. […] For Shakyamuni, satori wasn't something peculiar only to himself. His was the satori of life inclusive of himself and all things. That is something that truly goes beyond the discrimination of our minds.
gloss: Enlightenment, epiphany.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
uncountable
usually
examples: What happened to the Merry Band on its trip during the summer of 1964 ranged from the cosmically sublime to the ridiculous, from peak ecstasy to full-tilt satori. To say that they were merely high would do a disservice to how stoned they really were, […]
gloss: A mutant gene of Drosophila, a genus of fruit flies, that causes homosexual behaviour in males (specifically, courtship directed to other males).
pos: noun
tags: countable
usually
examples: We have isolated a new Drosophila mutant, satori (sat), the males of which do not court or copulate with female flies. […] We have screened about 2000 fly lines with single P-element insertions for altered sexual behavior, yielding a mutant named satori (sat; nirvana in Japanese), the males of which do not court or copulate with females. Instead, sat males exhibit homosexual courtship.
[T]he primary site of action of the fru gene should be in the neural cells. satori,^([sic]) one of the P-insertion alleles of fru which we isolated, carried the lacZ gene of E. coli as a reporter, and β-galactosidase expression was found in a subset of brain cells including those in the antennal lobe in the satori mutant.
In Drosophila the satori (sat) mutants of males do not court or copulate with females but have sexual interest in males.
Related words: koan
Derived words: satoric
Translations: