No one can gain awakening for anyone else. The best any Buddha can do is to point the way, in hopes that we’ll be willing to listen to his advice and act on it.

"The main message here is that suffering, which is something you directly experience from within, is caused by other factors that you experience from within — as long as you approach them unskillfully — but it can also be cured from within if you learn how to approach them with skill. In fact, suffering can only be cured from within. My lack of skill is something that only I can overcome through practice. This is why each of us has to find awakening for ourselves and experience it for ourselves — the Buddha’s term for this is paccattam. This is also why no one, even with the most compassionate intentions, can gain awakening for anyone else. The best any Buddha can do is to point the way, in hopes that we’ll be willing to listen to his advice and act on it.

Now, this is not to say that the Buddha didn’t recognize our connections with one another, simply that he described them in another context: his teaching on kamma."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "We Are Not One"

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