Question and answer 26

Disciple: What marks the ajñānī, and what marks the jñānī?

Guru: Attachment marks the ajñānī, dispassion the jñānī. The ajñānī may sometimes feel dispassion, but because he has not let go of the sense that objects are real, his dispassion is of the kind that changes, and it is weak. The jñānī's dispassion springs from seeing objects as false; it never changes, and so it is firm.

Disciple: For the ajñānī and the jñānī, what is the mark?

Guru: For the ajñānī attachment, for the jñānī dispassion, are the marks. Though at times dispassion arises for the ajñānī, his dispassion, in whom the sense of reality in objects has not gone, being of the changing kind, is weak dispassion. But the dispassion of the jñānī, arisen from the sense of falsity in objects, since it never changes, is firm dispassion.