Two Buddhist

I was having a conversation with two of my Buddhist friends last week, the topic was seeking and how does one discover anything if one does not seek? One friend was a Tibetan Buddhist who insisted that a person needed to follow a regime consisting of a study of the various sutras, coupled with a consistency in ones meditation practice. Another friend who was of the Zen persuasion said that Zazen was his mainstay and that he had had many enlightening experiences in his meditation practice. They both agreed that a person needed to seek, at least initially, if there was to be any progress toward illumination.
I asked them both; what is the state of a mind that is seeking anything? Can a mind that is in illusion ever discover that which is beyond self? Surely whatever the mind has realized is only a projection of its own discordance. As long as the mind is thinking in terms of an accomplishment or goal laid down by a system or practice there is the illusion of knowing. What is known is a product of ones conditioning. The mind that is conditioned by religious or idealistic precepts can never escape the tenants of its own self induced limitations. As long as you follow another, whether system or individual, you are trapped by the inevitable contradiction and confusion of the conceptual.
My Tibetan friend replied, "I know what you are saying and have read your blog with great interest, but I can't get past the feeling that I must start someplace with my study. I have to have some goal otherwise I feel I will not find." I said to him, I know what you are feeling. It is very difficult to let go, the mind wants something to cling to. The mind is very subtle, even when you decide that you must free yourself, the mind can trick you and cling to the idea of freedom. I think that if you can meditate freely, that is, without the notion of meditation as a goal, then perhaps that will allow a moment of awareness that sees into the essence of mind. Then their may be a dissipation of that which seeks and realization of a freedom that is not seeking a result.
The other friend added, " that he knew what I was saying, but that a person must start with even a superficial understanding if one is to progress." "You have to know something, otherwise where do you start from?" He added, "I don't agree, that to be free you disregard all that you have been taught, what you learn and follow can set you free." I replied, you are either totally free or not free at all. Total freedom means that you have the capacity to understand that transcends the known. What you know is always simply the projection of the self absorbed. To realize is to go beyond the self that knows. It is to stay in the moment and not escape into ones idealized canonical thinking. Freedom is the starting point, one has to be free, otherwise their is always the tendency to revert to the past. Freedom is never a product of the known or knowing. Knowing things does not set you free, it only hinders the truth of the absolute moment. A Buddhist knows, a Buddha knows nothing.