to be understood each for himself by the wise (_paccattaṁ veditabbo viññuhi_). This meant that the Dharma was to be intuited and not to be analytically reached by concepts. The reason why the Buddha so frequently refused to answer metaphysical problems was partly due to his conviction that the ultimate truth was to be realised in oneself through one’s own efforts;[f26] for all that could be gained through discursive understanding was the surface of things and not things themselves, conceptual knowledge never gave full satisfaction to one’s religious yearning. The attainment of the Bodhi could not be the accumulation of dialectical subtleties. And this is the position taken up by Zen Buddhism as regards what it considers a final reality. Zen in this respect faithfully follows the injunction of the Master. That the Buddha had an insight of higher order into the nature of things than that which could be obtained through ordinary logical reasoning is evidenced everywhere even in the so-called Hinayana literature. To cite just one instance from the _Brahmajāla Sutta_ in which the Buddha deals with all the heretical schools that were in existence in his days, he invariably makes reference after refuting them to the Tathagata’s deeper understanding which goes beyond their speculations “wriggling like an eel.” What they discuss just for the sake of discussion and to show the keenness of their analytical faculty about the soul, future life, eternity, and other important spiritual subjects, is not productive of any actual benefits for our inner welfare. The Buddha knew well where these reasonings would finally lead to and how trivial and unwholesome they were after all. So we read in the _Brahmajāla Sutta_: “Of these, Brethren, the Tathagata knows that these speculations thus arrived at, thus insisted on, will have such and such a result, such and such an effect on the future condition of those who trust in them. That does he know, and he knows also other things far beyond (far better than those speculations): and having that knowledge he is not puffed up, and thus untarnished he has in his own heart realised the way of escape from them, has understood, as they really are, the rising up and passing away of sensations, their sweet taste, their danger, how they cannot be relied on; and not grasping after any [of those things men are eager for], he, the Tathagata, is quite set free.”[f27]