What does satori mean? When the Japanese coined the term, they rolled up into that one word three distinct ideas in Chinese Buddhism about enlightenment.
The first was delusion and enlightenment; that is, through practice, we gain insight into our habitual being pulled this way and that by our desires, our habits, our karma, and when we realise this, we can stop.
The second is awakening. We realise that what we take to be real, our whole conceptual apparatus of self and world, is created by us. It’s like a dream. But we don’t wake up into another reality; we wake up within the dream.
The third and most important is practice realisation. That is, we accept the Buddha’s teachings. We then sincerely practice, and through practice we realise that those teachings are true.
And in this context, what we realise is true, is our ceaseless tendency to fabricate the self, to fabricate a world, to fabricate our lives.
In seeing that, even for just moments we can stop that karmic activity. The problem with satori is we think it’s something else that we can acquire. But the whole point is that it’s not about getting. It’s about not-getting, losing, stopping, desisting.