Silently the Buddha nodded assent.
Siddhartha said: "There is one thing in your teaching, most venerable sir, that I admire above everything else. Everything in your teaching is perfectly clear and irrefutable. You show the world as a never-broken, perfect chain, an eternal chain consisting of causes and their effects. Never has this been so clearly perceived and so incontrovertibly presented. Truly every brahmin's heart must beat faster in his breast when, through your teaching, he glimpses the world as a perfectly linked whole, without a break, clear as a crystal, not dependent on anything random, not dependent on the gods. Let us leave aside whether it is good or bad, whether life in it is suffering or joy - this may not be an essential question - but the unity of the world, the interdependence of everything that occurs, the inclusion of everything big and small within the same flow, the same law of causation, of becoming and passing away - this shines clearly forth from your exalted doctrine, O Perfect One. But now, according to your own doctrine, this unity and consistency is nevertheless broken at one point; through one small gap there flows into this world of unity something alien, new, something that did not exist before, that cannot be demonstrated and proven. This is your own teaching of the overcoming of the world, of liberation. But by this small gap, this small break, the unified and eternal cosmic lawfulness, is again quashed and invalidated. Please pardon me for bringing up this objection."
Gotama had listened to him quietly, unmoved. Now in his kindly, polite, and clear voice, the Perfect One spoke: "You have heard the teaching, brahmin's son. Good for you for having pondered it so deeply. You have found a gap in it, a flaw. May you continue to ponder that. But beware, you who are greedy for knowledge, of the jungle of opinions and the battle of words. Opinions are worth little. They can be beautiful or ugly, anyone can espouse or reject them. But the teaching you heard from me is not my opinion, and its aim is not to explain the world to those who are greedy for knowledge. It has a different aim - liberation from suffering. This is what Gotama teaches, nothing else."
"Please do not be angry with me, Exalted One," the youth said. "It was not to contend with you, not to fight with you over words, that I spoke the way I did. You are indeed right; opinions are worth little. But allow me to say one thing more: Not for a moment have I doubted you. I have not doubted for a moment that you are a buddha, that you have attained the goal, the supreme goal, toward which so many thousands of brahmins and brahmin's sons strive. You have found liberation from death. This came to you as a result of your own seeking on your own path, through thought, through meditation, through realization, through enlightenment. It did not come to you through a teaching! And that is my idea, O Exalted One - nobody attains enlightenment through a teaching. O Venerable One, you will not be able to express to anyone through words and doctrine what happened to you in the moment of your enlightenment! Much is contained in the doctrine of the enlightened Buddha, much is taught in it - to live in an honest and upright way, to avoid evil. But there is one thing that this so clear and so venerable teaching does not contain; it does not contain the mystery of what the Exalted One himself experienced, he alone among hundreds of thousands. This is what I understood and realized when I listened to the teaching. This is the reason I am going to continue my wandering - not to find another or a better teaching, for I know that one does not exist, but in order to leave behind all teachings and all teachers and to attain my goal on my own or die. But many a time will I recall this day, O Exalted One, and this moment when my eyes have beheld a holy man."
