awakening
English
To wake is the oldest metaphor for a change in what appears. It is a metaphor. It is also, sometimes, a life.
- a-wæcnan
- to arise from sleep (Old English)
- bodhi
- waking, understanding (Sanskrit/Pali): a parallel, not a root
Morphology
English awakening is sleep-language. So is Buddha. The image is shared across cultures because sleep is shared: a state in which a world is complete, and another world waits.
History of the word
Christian revival, Buddhist bodhi, Sufi yaqza, political “woke”: the word is constantly borrowed and bruised. In this house it means, unless a story says otherwise, a change in seeing that the seer takes to be more than information.
Associated traditions
Parallels, not equivalents. Different attempts to notice something about knowing.
Pali
bodhi
Waking / understanding; see the story of the fig.
Greek
anablepsis
A looking-up, a recovery of sight: Plato’s prisoner.
How the word shifts
Awakening can name sudden rupture or long ripening. Traditions fight over this. The fight is part of the word’s history.
A story where the word matters
- Beneath the FigUruvelā, later Bodh Gayā · c. 5th century BCE
- The Fire and the WallAthens · c. 375 BCE
- Who Is Asking?Madurai, then Arunachala · 1896
- When Knowledge Would Not Sit StillBaghdad, then Damascus and Tus · 1095
- The Pale Blue DiscCislunar space, and later low Earth orbit · 1968, named 1987
- Mountains WalkingEihei-ji, Echizen · 1240
Nearby words
Neighbors, not translations of one concept.
One question remains
What does this word let us notice that English “consciousness” does not?