The Lexicon
Transformation and the path
Awakening
Awakening is the moment the sleeper stirs and recognizes that what was taken for the whole of life was only a dream of separation. It is not the gaining of something new but the falling away of forgetfulness, so that awareness, which was always present, suddenly knows itself. The teachers call it sudden because no amount of effort produces it, and yet they prepare the ground for it endlessly, because the readiness to be undeceived is itself the work.
Carried by 60 teachers · across 6 traditions · 14 quotes
In the nondual stream awakening means the direct seeing that you are not the body or the mind but the awareness in which both appear. Ramana asks only "Who am I?" and lets the question burn away every false answer until the questioner is gone. Zen calls the flash satori; the Buddha called the one who completed it simply the Awakened One. Whatever the name, awakening is the threshold of the whole path, the first remembering of what you have never actually left.
In their words
You are not the body, you are not the mind — you are the awareness in which both appear.Nisargadatta Maharaj
Find out who you are by asking 'Who am I?' and abide as that.Ramana Maharshi
Satori is the sudden flashing into consciousness of a new truth hitherto undreamed of.D.T. Suzuki
Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.Swami Vivekananda
You are the universe experiencing itself.Alan Watts