ening, or enlightenment, as experienced by Buddha after intensive meditative self-discipline under the Bodhi-tree:
More than any other school, Zen stresses the prime importance of the enlightenment experience and the uselessness of ritual religious practices and intellectual analysis of doctrine for the attainment of liberation (enlightenment).
Esoterically, though, Zen is not a religion but rather an indefinable, incommunicable root, free from all names, descriptions, and concepts, and it can be experienced only by each individual for him or herself:
In this sense Zen is not bound to any religion, including Buddhism. It is the primordial perfection of everything existing, designated by the most various names, experienced by all great sages, saints, and founders of religions of all cultures and times. . . From this point of view zazen is not a "method" that brings people living in ignorance to the "goal" of liberation; rather it is the immediate expression and actualization of the perfection present in every person at every moment.
...