"At this time you think this is enlightenment, but you should doubt even more; who hears this sound? If you go on investigating without producing a single thought, the realm where it seems like nothing exists, like empty space, also dies out, there is no more taste at all; where it is dark as night, if you exert all your power to fully doubt what it is that hears this sound, then when the doubt shatters and you are like someone who has completely died coming back to life, this then is enlightenment, satori." - Bassui
Or, as the ninth-century Chinese Zen teacher Huang Po put it, “The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.”
“Never mind what I have been taught. Forget about theories and prejudices and stereotypes. I want to understand the true nature of life. I want to know what this experience of being alive really is. I want to apprehend the true and deepest qualities of life, and I don’t want to just accept somebody else’s explanation. I want to see it for myself.”
While others might proclaim the wonders of such a world-shaking experience, the Buddha denies that he obtained or found anything at all.