ore, and which cannot be demonstrated and cannot be
proven: these are your teachings of overcoming the world, of salvation.
But with this small gap, with this small breach, the entire eternal and
uniform law of the world is breaking apart again and becomes void.
Please forgive me for expressing this objection."

Quietly, Gotama had listened to him, unmoved. Now he spoke, the
perfected one, with his kind, with his polite and clear voice: "You've
heard the teachings, oh son of a Brahman, and good for you that you've
thought about it thus deeply. You've found a gap in it, an error. You
should think about this further. But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge,
of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words. There is nothing
to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone
can support them or discard them. But the teachings, you've heard from
me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those
who seek knowledge. They have a different goal; their goal is salvation
from suffering. This is what Gotama teaches, nothing else."

"I wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me," said the
young man. "I have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to
argue about words. You are truly right, there is little to opinions.
But let me say this one more thing: I have not doubted in you for a
single moment. I have not doubted for a single moment that you are
Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which
so many thousands of Brahmans and sons of Brahmans are on their way.
You have found salvation from death. It has come to you in the course
of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through
meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment. It has not
come to you by means of teachings! And--thus is my thought, oh exalted
one,--nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! You will not
be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and
through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment!
The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to
live righteously, to avoid evil. But there is one thing which these so
clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain
the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he
alone among hundreds of thousands. This is what I have thought and
realized, when I have heard the teaching