If the Buddha’s Enlightenment really contained so much in it that he himself could not sufficiently demonstrate or illustrate it with his “long thin tongue” (_prabhūtatanujihva_) through his long peaceful life given to meditation and discoursing, how could those less than he ever hope to grasp it and attain spiritual emancipation? This is the position taken up by Zen: To comprehend the truth of Enlightenment, therefore, we must exercise some other mental power than intellection, if we are at all in possession of such. Discoursing fails to reach the goal and yet we have an unsatiated aspiration after the unattainable. Are we then meant to live and die thus tormented for ever? If so, this is the most lamentable situation in which we find ourselves on earth. Buddhists have applied themselves most earnestly to the solution of the problem and have finally come to see that we have after all within ourselves what we need. This is the power of intuition possessed by spirit and able to comprehend spiritual truth which will show us all the secrets of life making up the content of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. It is not an ordinary intellectual process of reasoning, but a power that will grasp something most fundamental in an instant and in the directest way. Prajñā is the name given to this power by the Buddhists, as I said, and what Zen Buddhism aims at in its relation to the doctrine of Enlightenment is to awaken Prajñā by the exercise of meditation. We read in the _Saddharma-puṇḍarīka_: “O Śāriputra, the true Law understood by the Tathagata cannot be reasoned, is beyond the pale of reasoning. Why? For the Tathagata appears in the world to carry out one great object, which is to make all beings accept, see, enter into, and comprehend the knowledge and insight gained by the Tathagata, and also to make them enter upon the path of knowledge and insight attained by the Tathagata.... Those who learn it from the Tathagata also reach his Supreme Perfect Enlightenment.”[f35] If such was the one great object of the Buddha’s appearance on earth, how do we get into the path of insight and realise Supreme Perfect Enlightenment? And if this Dharma of Enlightenment is beyond the limits of the understanding, no amount of philosophising will ever bring us nearer the goal. How do we then learn it from the Tathagata? Decidedly not from his mouth, nor from the records of his sermons, nor from the ascetic practise, but from our own inner consciousness through the exercise of dhyana. And this is the doctrine of Zen. _Enlightenment and Spiritual Freedom_