Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c7.s1.37

c7.s1.37

But the place available for the exercise of discursive reasoning is also limited by a further consideration. The Buddha in the Suttas reasons indeed, and instructs by analogy and parable and simple inductive argument, but it is not claimed that he attained his saving insight by this means, and still less that the insight itself consists of any such reasoning. The Buddha attains enlightenment in a complete intuition, the fruit of a long process in which he has overcome all form of empiric knowledge, and the way of intuition lies open for the disciple, and indeed must¹ be followed if the end is to be attained. Hence it is essential and proper to develop the capacity for winning such visions, and this is and must be a matter for individual experience, and in it the autonomy of the individual successfully emerges from the constraint of authority in an experience which is essentially ineffable, however real it may be to him who experiences it.