How to Judge Whether a Person Has Attained Enlightenment in the Practice and Realization of the Buddha's Teachings

To serve as a judge in worldly affairs, one must thoroughly understand the matter being judged—that is, one must know the field. For example, to evaluate the teaching quality of a university professor, one's own level of learning must be higher than, or at least equal to, that professor's; to assess the quality of a university student's thesis, one must be a university teacher. In the cultivation and realization of the Buddha-dharma, to judge whether someone has awakened and has seen their nature, one must first be a person who has seen the mind and seen the nature. Only by having walked that path and become familiar with it can one know whether the path others are walking is correct, and also know what stage they have reached. For making judgments about the Buddha-dharma, the minimum requirement is to have the eye of Dharma-selection (dharma-pravicaya); it is better still to have few remaining doubts about the main teachings of the Buddha-dharma; best of all is to have realized that dharma oneself—only then can one make a relatively accurate judgment. Those who have cultivated to this level are very few. To judge whether others have realized the fruits, one must first have realized the fruits oneself. Only by realizing the first fruit can one eliminate doubts—no longer doubting whether one has realized the fruit oneself, no longer doubting whether one's teacher has realized the fruit, and no longer doubting whether the dharma can enable sentient beings to eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) and self-grasping. Otherwise, one cannot judge others. When one does not yet have one's own scale markings, it is impossible to measure other things.