The spiritual quest begins
With simple questions:
Who…?
What…?
How…?
Why…?
The quest leads always
To one simple answer:
While answers can be known,
They cannot be put into words.
Without words:
No one else can give you the answers;
Only you can know when you have them;
You cannot give them to anyone else.
Thus is the nature of enlightenment,
The path to it,
The plight of the teacher.
Ask the master, “What is the answer?”
She will answer, “There is no answer.
There is only you.”
And there you are, again
At the beginning of your quest.
This answer that is no answer came to me as an expansion of another quote:
It struck me that any search for meaning begins with such simple questions as “Who am I?” “What is existence?” “How did I come to be?” “Why am I here?” From these, all the other words that are not an answer, but which frame the only answer that can be given, just flowed.