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You must have seen it happening again and again: if the nightmare is too horrible, the dream is broken. You can go on dreaming sweet dreams the whole night; there is no problem. The dream is so sweet that it is like a lullaby: it keeps you drunk, intoxicated. But if the dream is horrible? -- you are being chased by a tiger, and the tiger is coming closer and closer and closer; and the fear... and your heart is beating fast, and your breath is no more rhythmic, and you are perspiring; and you are running and running, and there seems to be no escape, and then suddenly you see that the path has ended in an abyss, there is no way to go; and the tiger is coming closer and closer, you can almost feel his breath on your back; and then his paw... and a fountain of blood rushes out of your back -- can you go on remaining asleep? The nightmare is too much; it is bound to destroy your sleep. Abruptly, suddenly, you are awake. It is like a sudden jump from one state of consciousness to another. A moment before you were asleep, now you are awake. There is no tiger, just your wife -- and her hand on your back, and her breath... All has disappeared.
The great doubt is the point where one feels the greatest nightmare, where one's whole life turns into a nightmare with open eyes. When you see that the whole of life has lost meaning... Because life has meaning only if you have goals. When you are enchanted by goals, life has meaning; when there are no goals, meaning disappears. Suddenly you see that you don't have any ground underneath your feet; you are hanging in emptiness. You are falling like a dead leaf into some unknown, bottomless pit, and it is all dark, and there is not even a ray of light.
This is the work of a Zen Master: to push you into this great doubt. Once this happens, SATORI IS bound to happen unless you fall back again and start dreaming sweet dreams.
To be with a real Master is to be in a fire. To be with a real Master is to face your death, is to face your annihilation. That's why Zen is known as the sudden enlightenment, the doctrine abrupt.
Hubert Benoit also says that SATORI has two meanings. One is the SATORI-state in which everybody
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