“I have never doubted you for a moment, I have never doubted for a moment that you are the Buddha, that you have attained the goal, the highest, which so many thousands of Brahmins and sons of Brahmins are journeying to reach. You have found the deliverance from death. It came to you from your own seeking, on your own path, through thinking, through meditation, through knowledge, through illumination. It did not come through a teaching! And—this is my thought, O Sublime One—no one is granted deliverance through a teaching! You cannot, O Venerable One, impart to anyone, tell anyone in words and through teachings what happened to you in the hour of your illumination. The Teaching of the illuminated Buddha contains a great deal, it teaches many how to live righteously, avoid evil. But there is one thing that the so clear, so venerable Teaching does not contain: it does not contain the secret of what the Sublime One himself has experienced, he alone among the hundreds of thousands. That is what I thought and realized when I heard the Teaching. That is why I am resuming my wandering—not to seek a different, better teaching, for I know that there is none; but to leave all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal alone or die.”

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 32)