By the 1300s, approximate eighteen hundred years after the passing of The Buddha, there was estimated to be eighty thousand scriptures written about the teaching of The Buddha. This many scriptures, how many lectures, how many aspirants, but, yet, how many people found enlightenment?
 
Of course, the actual answer to that question is unknowable. For most who do encountered nirvana are silent in their realization. Yet, with all of those teachings being taught, the number has obviously remained very small.
 
In the West, when the true dawning of Eastern understandings came to be knowingly embraced, most notably in the eighteenth century, many a postulant came to join the growing ranks of those who sought the realization that The Buddha had encountered, giving birth to a world-wide pursuit of divine realization. From this, and because of this, how many more treatises on The Buddha’s teaching have been composed? How many lectures have been given? Yet, how many people have found their way to enlightenment? One would think that with more and more individuals pursuing this advanced understanding, more would have reached that goal. But, have they?
 
Here lies the ultimate illusion of following the path to enlightenment. If you are seeking, you will forever be a seeker. You will never be a finder. No matter how many scriptures you read, no matter how many lectures you go to, no matter how many times you are initiated, as long as you are Doing you are Not Doing which is the ultimate guideway to enlightenment.
 
There are times in human history where true inner knowledge and a quest for enlightenment are decidedly on the minds of humanity. There are also times when it is not. This being said, throughout all time, even long before the birth of The Buddha, people have sought to know the unknowable. But, as long as you seek what cannot be known, by the average methods of the thinking with an analytical mind, no emancipative knowledge can ever be encountered.
 
You cannot know enlightenment. You cannot study to become enlightened. If you could, via all those texts and all those lectures and all those initiations, a lot of people would have found this ultimate state of existence.  But, they have not.
 
Unknowing is the only way to know enlightenment. The more you think you know, the less you know. If you truly wish to find the knowledge possess by The Buddha let go of the traditional path of study. Let go and know with knowing. That is enlightenment.