Questions Change Me

57 lectures to read in sequence.

LECTURE57

2025.11.19

Among the images, myths, practices, and prayers absorbed into Buddhist history and culture, what is wisdom and what is unverified superstition, and by what standard should the authority of a monk be judged?

Superstitions Practiced in the Name of Buddhism and the Fake Monks Who Spread Them

From Buddha statues, the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks, qi, the dantian, and chakras to Pure Lands, rebirth, prayer, relics, prophecy, and divination, this essay separates historical imagination and unverified belief from wisdom and criticizes the contradictions of monks who sell superstition.

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LECTURE56

2025.10.31

In a world without an absolute standard or guaranteed future, what attitude toward life allows us to lessen attachment and live like Buddha?

Do Not Try to Become Buddha; Live Like Buddha — Questions Change Me

A discussion of how recognizing the absence of absolute standards and a guaranteed future loosens attachment to what we must and want to do. Moving through human finitude, self-observation, and the fantasy of a perfect Buddha, it argues that Buddha is not a state to attain but an attitude of observing, questioning, and thinking in terms of dependent arising.

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LECTURE55

2025.10.29

How can we distinguish concern that prepares for the future from attachment to the future that ruins life in the present?

Does an Arahan Often Worry Too? — Questions Change Me

I too have practical concerns and make necessary plans. But when someone who does not know whether they will be alive tomorrow takes the distant future as collateral and clings to ‘I absolutely must’ or ‘I absolutely want to,’ they lose the life before them now. By recognizing the uncertainty of the future and the many conditions that shape results, we can make an effort without becoming absorbed in worry and attachment.

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LECTURE54

2025.10.22

What practice should we consistently maintain in everyday life in order to live with Buddhist wisdom?

What Should We Practice Consistently in Everyday Life? — Questions Change Me

The Buddhist practice to sustain in everyday life is to keep questions and doubts alive. By examining the mistake of equating meditative quiet with awakening, the urge to reduce social problems and the future of AI to one answer, and the difficulty of noticing our own tinted lenses and worldview, this essay presents wisdom and humility as beginning with the recognition that we do not know.

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LECTURE53

2025.09.25

Can the idea of an originally pure and unchanging Buddha-nature be reconciled with dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self?

You Say Buddha-Nature Exists? Really? — Questions Change Me

If an originally pure Buddha-nature truly exists—undefiled, unaffected, and unchanging—then it cannot be reconciled with dependent arising, according to which things emerge and change through conditions. Rather than blending together ideas bearing different names such as Buddha-nature, the true self, and Atman, we must recognize contradictions within Buddhism and ask what genuinely offers wisdom for reducing suffering in life.

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LECTURE52

2025.09.23

Does non-self mean that my body or thoughts do not exist, or that there is no independent and unchanging substance?

I Understand Dependent Origination and Impermanence, but Not Non-Self — Questions Change Me

Non-self does not mean that the body or thoughts do not exist. It means that in a dependently originated and changing world, there is no independent, unchanging substance unaffected by causes and conditions. This chapter explains the relation among dependent origination, impermanence, and non-self through ideas of God, Atman, and an immortal soul.

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LECTURE51

2025.09.16

Why does Buddhism speak of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, and how does this relate to its attitude toward faith and metaphysics?

Why Does Buddhism Speak of the Eye, Ear, Nose, Tongue, Body, and Mind? — Questions Change Me

The six faculties are more than a list of sense organs. By comparing Jain jīva and ajīva, the four marks in the Diamond Sutra, metaphysics, Gnosticism, faith, and superstition, this essay explains why Buddhism begins with universally observable phenomena and reflection.

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LECTURE50

2025.09.15

Do a Buddha and an arahant also suffer before abortion and loss, and if so, what does the wisdom of releasing attachment actually mean?

Why It Is So Hard to Have an Abortion — Questions That Change Me

A Buddha is not someone whose mental pain has vanished completely. Buddhism’s wisdom is to acknowledge the unavoidable pain of living as a human and a living being, including abortion and loss, while refusing to keep firing a second and third arrow through foolish attachment.

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LECTURE49

2025.09.12

When we escape the certainty that we already know and continue to question and observe, how can we understand desire and happiness, the path to Buddhahood, and anger more wisely?

On the Thought ‘I Know’: Is the Desire to Become Rich Empty, and How Does One Become a Buddha?

This discussion examines how the certainty that ‘I know’ stops questioning and turns into dogmatism, then distinguishes the desire to become rich from the attachment that happiness is possible only after achieving a goal. It defines a Buddha not as someone at a mystical endpoint but as a person in whom questioning, observation, and reasoning through dependent arising have become embodied, and applies the same principle of questioning to commands to eliminate anger.

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LECTURE48

2025.09.12

Is Buddhist enlightenment the cessation of thought and discrimination, or is Buddhist wisdom the ongoing process of questioning, observing, and thinking through dependent arising?

Live Without Thinking? Mr. Kim Tae-wan of Musim Seonwon, That Is Not Buddhism — Questions Change Me

This chapter criticizes the absorption-centered view that calls thoughtlessness and non-discrimination enlightenment, arguing that Buddhist wisdom begins by questioning, observing, and judging reality through dependent arising. It then develops the discussion through viewer questions about the delusion of making future achievement a condition of happiness, how to live between today and tomorrow, consciousness, money, and social conditions.

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LECTURE47

2025.09.12

In a complex and dependently arisen world, can anyone prophesy the future of an individual, a nation, or the Earth with certainty?

Can We Prophesy the Future? — Questions Change Me

This chapter criticizes claims of certain prophecy about individuals and nations through the lens of dependent origination and complex systems. It distinguishes philosophical interpretation of the I Ching from prophecy and explains why questioning and probabilistic thinking are necessary to escape superstition grounded in destiny, mystical powers, and authority.

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LECTURE46

2025.09.09

How should we judge whether claims about qi practice, supernatural powers, and prophecy made in the names of science and Buddhism are true?

The World Is Full of Lies: The Buddha’s Thirty-Two Marks, Tanheo’s Prophecies, and Qi Practice — Questions Change Me

Beginning with the relationship between effort and genetics, this essay examines the International Scientific Meditation Center, the Buddha’s thirty-two marks, qi practice, the true self and supernatural powers, Tanheo’s prophecies, and the I Ching. It separates falsehood and superstition from fact by asking whether claims can be universally observed and repeatedly verified, arguing that in a dependently arisen world only conditional, probabilistic prediction—not certain prophecy—is possible.

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LECTURE45

2025.09.06

What must we question to avoid voice phishing and the lies filling the world, and how is that attitude connected to the Buddhist practice of questioning, observing, and reflecting?

How Not to Fall for Voice Phishing: Question the World’s Lies and Your Own Judgment

Voice phishing exploits fear and the promise of gain to take away our time to think, but recognizing that anyone can be deceived and cultivating the habit of questioning, observing, and reflecting can reduce the harm. The problem leads from external lies to Buddhist liberation and wakefulness: questioning our own judgment, education, religious power, and social systems as well.

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LECTURE44

2025.09.03

Did the Buddha directly create the twelve links as dependent origination, or were they constructed later to explain rebirth and transcendence of birth and death?

Did the Buddha Create the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination? — Questions Change Me

The twelve links and dependent origination are not the same. Dependent origination observes actual relations among causes and conditions, while this video argues that the twelve links were assembled later to explain rebirth and transcendence of birth and death. It examines the sixfold sequence in the Atthakavagga, textual layers, Theravada, and the political function of karmic retribution.

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LECTURE43

2025.08.29

How do meditation methods differ, and how should we distinguish meditation’s temporary calm from the underlying conditions of suffering examined in Buddhism?

I Want to Study Meditation, but There Are So Many Types—Ganhwa Seon, Silent Illumination, Chanting, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Tantra, MBSR. What Is the Difference? — Questions Change Me

Before choosing among ganhwa seon, silent illumination, chanting, the four foundations of mindfulness, tantra, and MBSR, this talk examines the human trait that makes meditation work. Immersion in one object briefly interrupts other thoughts and judgments, but suffering returns if external circumstances and internal standards remain unchanged. Buddhism is not a technique for preserving permanent calm; it studies and changes both external conditions and internal judgment.

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LECTURE42

2025.08.28

Why is proper Buddhism so rare, and how did Buddhism become contaminated as a ruling ideology that suppresses questions?

Why Is Buddhism So Contaminated? The Establishment Hates Questions Most

This essay asks why proper Buddhism is so rare by examining the illiteracy and survival conditions of ordinary people, ruling classes that feared questions, monastic copying and the maintenance of order after Ashoka, the absolutization of discipline, and human wishes. A religion and society that suppress questions, criticism, and doubt harden under authority and cease to hear people’s suffering; recovering Buddhism begins by recovering the question.

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LECTURE41

2025.08.19

How can we help someone close to us feel a little more at ease and begin asking their own questions without trying to force their emotions and thoughts to change?

How Did I Respond to My Wife’s Emotional Changes? A Confession: How Knowing a Little Buddhism Made Me Torment Those Around Me

Answering a question about how I respond to changes in my wife’s emotions, I confess how I once used my small knowledge of Buddhism to demand that people around me change their thinking. I explain why giving enlightenment instead of the empathy someone seeks can become the conduct of a tyrant, and how my relationships changed after I understood that awakening cannot be commanded by another person but arises dependently through one’s own questions and conditions.

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LECTURE40

2025.08.13

What do I pursue because I believe it is right, sacred, and valuable, and can I criticize that belief and the conditions that formed it as readily as I criticize others?

What Is Wrong with Venerable Pomnyun’s Pilgrimage? — Questions Change Me

Using Venerable Pomnyun and Jungto Society’s pilgrimage to India as a starting point, this lecture asks how favorable words such as service, love, purity, and sacred place already contain value judgments. It examines why land where Gautama Siddhartha lived should be called holier than other land, where the standards behind our pursuits originate, and why we easily criticize another person’s indoctrination while failing to criticize our own beliefs. Buddhism, it argues, must combine action with a reexamination of one’s values and a dependent-arising account of how every judgment was formed.

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LECTURE39

2025.08.07

Do we need suffering in order to feel happiness, and why do we torment ourselves by focusing on what we lack rather than the conditions we already have?

Do We Need a Certain Amount of Suffering to Feel Happiness? — Questions That Change Me

Happiness and suffering may be felt through contrast, but that does not mean we must manufacture pain. This essay examines sukha and dukkha, the first and second arrows, the danger of defining an unstimulated life as happiness, and the need to observe exactly when our own thoughts begin to torment us.

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LECTURE38

2025.08.07

How can a person step out of the desperate belief that life is worthless without marriage, without suppressing the desire for intimacy and family, and live the present life directly?

If I Cannot Marry, I Want to End My Life in My Mid-Forties: Questions Change Me

This response addresses a viewer who feels that without marriage he has no value as a man or a human being. It does not deny biological and social desires for intimacy, sex, and children, but separates those desires from the imagined guarantee that marriage will provide happiness, sexual fulfillment, and a stable family. Drawing on the lecturer’s own marriage, his spouse’s illness, business failures and back injury, and possibilities including betrayal, divorce, illness, disability, and the death of a child, it shows that life does not unfold according to one’s wishes. The viewer is encouraged to meet people and make real efforts while refusing to make marriage a condition that postpones the value of the present.

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