Being inspired by the "enlightenment" of others?

The world is full of different and conflicting religious or spiritual testimonies. You have people who claim to have had experiences of God as Muslims understand him and we have the apostles who claimed to see Jesus appearing to them risen from the dead to name a couple of examples. But one thing for sure these experiences were not knowledge. Each religion reports religious or spiritual experience that contradicts the others.

The title Buddha means enlightened one. The Buddha who formed Buddhism stated that enlightenment was an experience that ended the power to suffer. He didn't say any more than that. He said we must become Buddhas ourselves and then we will learn exactly what enlightenment is.

Your thoughts can hurt you. They cause desires that hurt you. If you are enlightened, you realise that you are not your thoughts. You can still exist if you have no thoughts. Discovering this by experience puts your awareness beyond the power of thought to inflict suffering. 

Your mind pretends that it works to help you overcome suffering. It does not. It fights it and this fighting is itself painful.

All thoughts hurt in some way.

Buddhism asks you not to stop thinking but to have a sense that your thoughts will not control you and hurt you.

The Buddha is only the best known Buddha and there are possibly countless Buddhas. They all claimed knowledge that liberated them from suffering, evil and fear and changed their minds and delivered them from all forms of psychological danger. If you want to believe in something, it is best to believe those who claim to know than those who merely believe. And especially when the knowers tell you that you can verify the knowledge for yourself by having the same experience. Even if the apostles saw Jesus we must remember that they only believed they saw him. They never claimed to know it.

The Buddhas have enlightened themselves by direct experience. They enlighten us indirectly for they give us faith and assurance that there is no bad that cannot be overcome. None. They had an experience they would not lie about for they were unworldly people with intense compassion for others. They did not glorify themselves by teaching that they had an experience. They taught that the experience happens and nobody can take credit for making it happen.

Buddhism is vastly superior to any other system of self-help or religion.