For us to have direct source knowledge or direct knowledge of the absolute, it demands that we become absorbed in the absolute, completely, so that there is nothing left of us. Even our perception or consciousness (vijñāna) must go because it belongs to us.
As strange as it sounds this is the way the absolute remains absolute. As a thought experiment if, for example, the wave phenomenon wishes to know what pure water is then it must be absolutely waveless, in which case, no waviness can be detected in the water itself. (The mere looking causes waviness.)
I think this helps to explain why enlightenment cannot really be transmitted, not in the way the average person imagines the process. Let us imagine that A is absolute where B is the transmitter. How is it to be transmitted to C? The very act of transmission, itself, is non-absolute (anātman= wavy).
The total and sudden transcendence of presuppositions about the absolute is extremely difficult to accomplish. Without exception, people who take up Buddhism and with it Zen depend upon perception or consciousness. This is their tool by which they hope to unearth enlightenment. But they must also give up the tool.
By the way, this is what koans (Hua Tou 話頭) are all about. They are intended, in a way, to drive the student to their wits’ end. To know the secret of the koan means that one has given up perception (vijñāna). For a brief moment they became the absolute.
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