by Tang Huyen

The mind of the awakened cannot be read, because it doesn't stop anywhere and stand anywhere.

In general, Buddhism teaches awakening, not enlightenment,
and in Buddhism people are awakened — they awake — but
are not enlightened.

That said, by awakening, they pass beyond norms and
standards, and cannot be fitted into norms and standards.

Even then there are some rough means of knowing whether
they are awakened or not, keeping in mind that it is vastly
easier to tell when people are not awakened than when they
are awakened.

There is one way which is not guessing: if you can read mind,
any mind at all, and yet be unable to read somebody's mind,
that somebody has some chance of being awakened. The mind
of the awakened cannot be read, because it doesn't stop
anywhere and stand anywhere — and that is a definition of
awakening.

If you can't read mind, there are some criteria by which you
can guess. They are loose and not tight, and the accuracy in
applying them depends on you.

The awakened are happy, relaxed, generous, magnanimous,
forgiving. They have no self left — that is a definition of
awakening — therefore don't defend themselves, especially
with regard to criticisms. They are not edgy, jumpy, angry,
bitter, defensive, vindictive, ego-involved, but know how to
take thing-events in balance and perspective, irony and
humour; they know how to remain above it all.

The balance and perspective thingie is very important, because
insight (vipassanā) and wisdom (paññā) both rely on balance
and perspective, and are merely refined, exalted forms of them.
If one cultivates balance and perspective and keeps cultivating
them to the end, one gets insight and wisdom. Contrariwise, if
somebody has little balance and perspective, he or she has no
insight and wisdom, regardless of externalities. In meditation,
the awakeneds do not carry anything in mind and therefore have
nothing to balance and to keep in perspective, and when they
come out of it and live normal life, they know how to keep
balance and perspective effortlessly.

People who are awakened are not perfect and can fail once in
a while, but if they fail, they know it instantly and recover in no
time — perhaps before anybody else realises that they have
failed. They don't block themselves from themselves or defend
themselves from themselves but are open and honest to
themselves, mindful and aware of themselves in general, and
know their own faults and errors in particular, without any need
for anybody else to point them out to them. So if they perchance
fail, they become aware of it instantly and take steps to redress
it without benefit of external counsel. Advice and criticism from
others are welcomed and not resisted, not defended against,
as they have no self left to defend and protect.

One corollary of the balance and perspective thingie is that the
awakened are flexible and fluid, not rigid and stuck, especially
with regard to views — and I mean intellective views. During
meditation they abandon all views, baskets and cages, and
quiesce their mentational apparatus to the full, but need to
reactivate part of it when they engage in normal behaviour, but
then their mentational apparatus is flexible and not rigid, fluid
and not stuck, transparent and not opaque, light and not heavy.
They know to take their views, baskets and cages in balance
and perspective, with irony and humour, and definitely don't
stick to them like glue, don't chase others around and around
on account of their own fixation on some views, baskets and
cages. They don't try to fit the whole world into some rigid and
dogmatic views, baskets and cages, like the scientistic-physicalist
straightjacket of matter-as-everything. They allow room for what
happens to happen in all its incommensurable richness. They
don't induce from the logical-ideal to the real, as this induction
is part of the self, and awakening is the surrendering of the self
to what happens.

Awakening is the opening up of oneself to what happens, rather
than the closing up of oneself and the slapping of some rigid
and unilateral category like matter on what happens. Why would
an awakened person want to enclose what happens and others
in such a mental prison? Remember: awakening is the dropping
of baskets and cages and not the picking up of them, even less
the unforgiving tightening of them.

It is often said nowadays outside of Buddhism that reality is
multi-faceted and has to be approached from various directions,
like in a multi-disciplinary approach, and Buddhism in antiquity
goes further in saying that reality is too rich and fluid for
mentational views, baskets and cages, singly and together,
to contain. Why then brutally clamp down on reality with a
single and unilateral category — and remember, it's a mental
category — like matter?

In the twentieth century, some of the famous Buddhist masters
who are widely taken to be awakened are Xu-Yun "Empty
Cloud", Buddhadasa, Achan Chah, Sheng-Yen, etc. But that
will take another thread.

Tang Huyen

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on June 6, 2005, in reply to Ben ([email protected]), who asked "How do we know if someone is enlightened? Who are some of the modern day enlightened beings?" Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen opens with the terminological correction — Buddhism teaches awakening (bodhi), not enlightenment — and then builds the most comprehensive positive account of the awakened in the archived corpus. The unreadable mind criterion is not mystical: it derives from the formal definition of awakening as the mind that "doesn't stop anywhere and stand anywhere" (a-sito, in Pāli; the formulation appears in the Sutta Nipāta and related texts). The behavioral criteria that follow are explicitly described as guesses — loose rather than tight. Balance and perspective are presented as the root of vipassanā and paññā, not as their product; this is Tang Huyen's consistent position: cultivation of balance is cultivation of insight. The recovery criterion — the awakened know they have failed before others notice — echoes the "invisible mind" posts. The closing catalogue (Xu-Yun, Buddhadasa, Achan Chah, Sheng-Yen) is the only place in the archived corpus where Tang Huyen names specific candidates.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

🌲