One explanation for this pragmatic suspension of judgment or epistemic Epoché is that such questions distract from activity that is practical to realizing awakeness and bring about the danger of substituting the experience of liberation by conceptual understanding of the doctrine or by religious faith. According to the Buddha, the Dharma is not an ultimate end in itself or an explanation of all metaphysical reality, but a pragmatic set of teachings. The Buddha used two parables to clarify this point, the 'Parable of the raft' and the Parable of the Poisoned Arrow. The Dharma is like a raft in the sense that it is only a pragmatic tool for attaining nirvana ("for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto", MN 22); once one has done this, one can discard the raft. It is also like medicine, in that the particulars of how one was injured by a poisoned arrow (i.e. metaphysics, etc.) do not matter in the act of removing and curing the arrow wound itself (removing suffering). In this sense, the Buddha was often called 'the great physician' because his goal was to cure the human condition of suffering first and foremost, not to speculate about metaphysics.