How to Determine Whether Someone Has Attained Enlightenment in Buddhist Practice

In worldly affairs, to be a judge, one must have thorough knowledge and understanding of the subject matter being judged; that is, one must be an expert. For example, to evaluate the teaching level of a university professor, one's own academic knowledge must be higher than or at least equal to that of the professor. To assess the quality of an undergraduate student's thesis, one must be a university lecturer. In the cultivation and realization of the Dharma, to determine whether someone has attained enlightenment or seen their true nature, one must first be a person who has realized their mind and seen their true nature. Only by having walked that path and become familiar with it can one know whether others are on the right path and understand where they stand. When it comes to judging the Dharma, the minimum requirement is to possess a discriminating eye for the Dharma. It is best to have few doubts about the essential teachings of the Dharma, and even better to have attained the Dharma oneself before making relatively accurate judgments. Those who have cultivated to such a level are rare. To judge whether others have attained the fruit, one must first attain the fruit oneself. Only by attaining the first fruit can one eliminate doubts—doubts about whether one has attained the fruit, doubts about whether one's teacher has attained the fruit, and doubts about whether the Dharma can enable sentient beings to cut off the view of self and self-attachment. Otherwise, it is impossible to judge others. When one has no measuring scale oneself, it is impossible to measure anything else.