As I said, in the pre-samadhi stage the mind is not moving. However, it still exists. This means that the practitioner has not yet reached a genuinely enlightened state. The nun was saying that even if you get to a stage where the mind is not moving, you still have to move on to a stage where the mind itself does not exist. And so the monks, whose minds were still moving as they listened to the nun, realized that they were at least two stages away from genuine enlightenment.

To repeat, when the mind is not moving, that is samadhi and a good state, but not genuine enlightenment. A genuine enlightenment corresponds to the state of "no mind, " and that is the same thing as "no self." The mind moving corresponds to a very narrow sense of self, or "small self." The mind not moving corresponds to a very expanded sense of self, or"large self." From the point of view of Ch'an, only the stage of "no mind" is the beginning of genuine enlightenment.

How is this "no mind" different from the stages of samadhi? There's a great difference because throughout the nine stages sensations still exist; even in the highest stage there is a sensation of nothingness ─ no time, no space, no thoughts. People who reach this stage may very well feel that they have attained ultimate liberation, but this very feeling shows that their mind still exists. A person who practices well but without good guidance may reach the ninth level of samadhi and mistake this for final liberation. In the state of true enlightenment, however there is no feeling of being liberated, nor is there a feeling of being unliberated.