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LECTURE SERIES

A 21st-Century Arhat

15 lectures to read in sequence.

LECTURE15

2024.08.12

What fundamentally separates Jainism, which posits jīva, karma, rebirth, and transcendence, from Buddhism, which questions the very claim that such things exist?

21st-Century Arahant, Episode 16 — Buddhism Has Nothing to Learn from Jainism: Professor Kang Seong-yong, You Need to Study Buddhism More

This chapter challenges Professor Kang Seong-yong’s comparison of Buddhism with Jainism and the claim that non-self was a later addition. Beginning with bhava in the Aṭṭhakavagga, it connects dependent origination, impermanence, non-self, and emptiness, arguing that unlike Jainism—which treats jīva, ajīva, and karma as real—Buddhism frees us from both worldly desire and imagined entities such as soul, rebirth, and transcendence.

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LECTURE14

2024.08.08

How should we critically read scriptural statements through dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self instead of believing them to be the Buddha's own words?

21st-Century Arhat, Episode 15 — Do Not Believe the Scriptures: Professor Lee Jung-pyo, the Buddha Did Not Teach Deathlessness

Beginning with Professor Lee Jung-pyo's interpretation that the Buddha spoke of deathlessness, this essay criticizes deifying Vinaya narratives, the later systematization of the Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, and twelve links, the multiple versions of the first-sermon text, and translation problems involving Avalokiteśvara, the Heart Sutra, and the Diamond Sutra. Its central claim is that scriptures must be questioned and tested through dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self rather than believed as the Buddha's own words.

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LECTURE13

2024.07.29

How can we leave behind belief in karmic rebirth, heaven, and hell, which projects human-made morality and precepts onto a cosmic system of judgment?

The Lie of Karmic Rebirth: Leave the Anthropocentric Worldview Behind

Buddhist karmic rebirth and Christian heaven and hell are human imaginings that project social morality and precepts onto a cosmic system of judgment. Through the decline of the Dharma, cyclical cosmology, the Five Precepts and Ten Commandments, modern astronomy, and evolution, this essay criticizes anthropocentrism and presents a Buddhist path grounded in observable reality and shared verification.

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LECTURE12

2024.07.18

Can the claim to have seen or remembered a past life survive an examination of how seeing and memory actually work and of dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self?

21st-Century Arahant, Episode 13 — The Delusion of Seeing a Past Life: Dr. Jeon Hyeon-su, Please Wake Up from the Dream

What could it mean to “see” a past life? This chapter critiques Dr. Jeon Hyeon-su, an EBS documentary, and the Samaññaphala Sutta’s claims about supernatural memory, then uses the bodily basis of memory and learning to expose contradictions in reincarnation and past-life recall.

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LECTURE11

2024.07.05

What does no-self mean in Buddhism, and why does pursuing it as a special mental state contradict dependent arising and impermanence?

The 21st-Century Arahant, Episode 12 — A Correct Understanding of No-Self (Anattā)

No-self is not a flawless mental state in which the ego disappears. It describes the dependently arisen reality that neither people nor things contain an independent, unchanging entity. The path of a Buddha is to leave behind the delusion of absolute immovability and a transcendent other shore, and to keep examining and breaking one’s own concepts and attachments through dependent-arising thought.

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LECTURE10

2024.06.23

Why is ommae-ilyeo—the pursuit of a mind that remains the same even in dreams and deep sleep—a futile goal that contradicts dependent arising and impermanence?

21st-Century Arahant, Episode 11: Ommae-Ilyeo Is a Delusion—The Buddha Does Not Seek Perfection

The ideas of being one and the same in dreams, deep sleep, and every moment, which the monk Seongcheol presented as standards of awakening, assume that the mind can remain constant and untouched by the body and the world. Because everything changes through dependent arising, pursuing impossible perfection and transcendence is as foolish as trying to turn a stone into gold. A Buddha is not a perfect being but a person who sees reality as it is and lives wisely.

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LECTURE09

2024.06.19

Why are never lying down and bodily asceticism unrelated to Buddhist awakening, and what practice did the Buddha actually teach?

21st-Century Arahant, Episode 10 — The Folly of Never Lying Down: The Buddha Did Not Seek Transcendence

This chapter criticizes the view that Seongcheol’s refusal to lie down and the Buddha’s emaciated ascetic image symbolize awakening. The Buddha was not a god beyond humanity and birth and death; Buddhist practice centers on wisdom gained by observing oneself and the world through dependent arising in daily life, not on concentration or bodily torment.

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LECTURE08

2024.06.15

Why are instant answers and riddles in Seon dialogue a breakdown of communication rather than a transmission of awakening, and how should a Buddha speak in order to break another person's delusion?

21st-Century Arahant, Episode 9 — Abandon Seon Riddles: The Buddha Does Not Pose Quizzes

The ability to answer a Seon riddle instantly is not evidence of awakening. Because the same words hold different concepts and experiences for different people, a Buddha would first ask about the questioner's meaning and situation, then tune their frequencies through plain language and observable reality. Beginning with the “hundred-foot pole” dialogue, this essay examines the limits of language, the boundaries of life and non-killing, the fiction of the Flower Sermon, and the culture of disconnection that sustained Patriarch Jinje and the Jogye Order, arguing that twenty-first-century Korean Buddhism must return to communication grounded in dependent arising.

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LECTURE07

2024.06.09

How should a Buddhist understand and practice the precepts in a way that values life without turning non-killing and the five precepts into substantial, absolute sins and cosmic commands?

21st-Century Arhat, Episode 8: May I Kill a Mosquito?

Beginning with whether one may kill a mosquito, this essay examines the five precepts as standards made within human society and attribution rather than cosmic commands. It criticizes the substantialization of sin, punishment, karma, karmic retribution, and afterlife, distinguishes Jain vows from Buddhist precepts, and explains a dependently arisen judgment that values life without clinging to the concept of a precept.

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LECTURE06

2024.06.04

If the Buddha and his awakening arose dependently through countless conditions and human networks, what could be intrinsically sacred?

Nothing Is Sacred — 21st-Century Arahant, Episode 7

Even the Buddha’s awakening was not a sacred power arising from an isolated individual. It was a flower of human civilization, made possible by language, accumulated questions, earlier knowledge, contemporary philosophies and practices, teachers, and experience. Through a thought experiment about Gotama raised by wolves, the networked accumulation of knowledge, human conditioning, and Buddhist relics, this talk argues that one who sees dependent arising cannot turn oneself or any object into something intrinsically sacred.

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LECTURE05

2024.06.01

Why does practice stagnate when we think we already know the answers, and how do personal questions and observation lead to actual awakening?

The Essence of Awakening — 21st-Century Arahant, Episode 6

Awakening is not memorizing scriptural answers or instantly responding to every koan. It begins by admitting that one may not know and may be deluded, then questioning changes in one’s own emotions and actions until the underlying pattern becomes visible. Personal experiences of discovering the source of suffering and the desire for recognition, together with the stories of Archimedes, a practicing monk, Wonhyo’s skull water, Gyeongheo, and assigned koans, show how observation and an urgent personal question transform knowledge into lived insight.

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LECTURE04

2024.05.29

How is the quiet of meditative absorption different from awakening as release from delusion, and what is the structure of awakening?

The Structure of Awakening — 21st-Century Arahant, Episode 5

Awakening is not the forced quieting of the mind but release from delusions about oneself and the world. Through nama-rupa and the desire, form, and formless realms, this talk examines how humans assign meaning to matter, desire those meanings, and generate suffering. Deep absorption in the form realm quiets judgment but is not itself awakening. After absorption, one must question perception and the world, see dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self, and release not only worldly desire but also the desire for perfect transcendence. Then the fires of greed, anger, ignorance, and conceit go out.

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LECTURE03

2024.05.25

If there is no eternal self, what could carry karma and receive reward or punishment in another life, and once that contradiction is released, what kind of person is an arahant?

21st-Century Arahant, Episode 4 — What Is Rebirth Without a Self? The Effort to Turn Fairy Tales into Reality

Using the Jataka monkey and crocodile, Cinca’s gate to hell, and the Sangiti Sutta’s heaven-and-hell rewards, this essay argues that scriptural rebirth actually presupposes the same self receiving reward and punishment. It criticizes the twelve links, the Milindapanha, pudgala, jiva, and storehouse consciousness for failing to resolve the contradiction between non-self and rebirth, then redefines an arahant not as a superhuman but as someone who recognizes their own conditioned humanity.

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LECTURE02

2024.05.20

If there is no rebirth or postmortem retribution, for what purpose should we keep the precepts and practice?

21st-Century Arhat, Episode 2 — If There Is No Rebirth, Why Keep the Precepts and Practice?

If there is no rebirth, do precepts and practice become meaningless? This essay exposes the assumptions of an enduring self and postmortem retribution hidden in that question and shows why the many-to-many causation of dependent arising negates one-to-one retribution. Precepts are changeable agreements for living together, while practice is not accumulating rewards for the next life but turning back to examine one’s own delusions.

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LECTURE01

2024.05.18

If Buddhist scriptures are not historical records preserving the Buddha’s exact words, by what standard should we discern the Buddha’s meaning within them?

Arhat of the 21st Century, Episode 1 — Buddhist Scriptures Are Not Historical Facts

This essay asks whether the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta and the Nikayas can be treated as inerrant historical documents preserving the Buddha’s exact words. By comparing ‘Thus have I heard,’ the Diamond Sutra, the Atthakavagga, the Dhammapada, and the formation of the twelve links of dependent origination, it argues that scriptures were written, expanded, and revised by people in different periods and must therefore be read critically through dependent origination, impermanence, and non-self.

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