27 lectures to read in sequence.
2023.02.04
Why is it wrong to call the form realm a world of light, and why did no one in the Buddhist establishment correct the error immediately?
Jinje’s description of the form realm as a world of light is rebutted through the distinct meanings of form in the five aggregates and six sense objects, while the Buddhist establishment’s failure to correct the error is criticized.
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2022.08.23
What public action and structural reform must Seongpa and the Jogye Order take so that discipline, harmony, and repentance become more than empty words after the Bongeunsa violence?
This open letter asks Supreme Patriarch Seongpa to respond to the assault of former Jogye Order employee Park Jeong-gyu during his reinstatement protest. It contrasts a layman reciting loving-kindness with violent monastics and demands investigation, accountability, repentance, and structural reform.
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2022.05.01
If Dharma is a tool leading people toward awakening, how should scriptures, precepts, and practices be interpreted for particular times and people, and why must the Jogye Order create a new Dharma for the twenty-first century?
Dharma is defined as a tool fitted to each person rather than a body of literal texts. The lecture criticizes scriptural literalism, mantra magic, and the supremacy of Ganhwa Seon, examines Seongcheol’s influence and Buddhist skepticism, and calls for a twenty-first-century Dharma shaped through science, philosophy, and exchange.
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2022.04.28
If actual freedom from affliction—not Zen performance or institutional authority—is the measure of awakening, what do the desires and conduct of Jogye leaders reveal, and who should lead the order?
Using the second great vow to cut endless afflictions, this lecture defines Buddhahood as freedom from distortion rather than omniscience or skill in Zen dialogue. The sparrow-and-mill metaphor explains calm and insight practice, while critiques of Jinje and Jaseung argue that desire revealed in conduct disqualifies religious authority and that the Jogye Order needs ethical, clear-eyed leaders.
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2022.04.21
If Jogye monks who vow to hear suffering beings mobilize for cultural assets and institutional interests during a national disaster, can they be called disciples of the Buddha, and where must reform begin?
Using the first great vow to save limitless beings, the lecture criticizes the Jogye nationwide monks’ rally of 2022. It contrasts suffering created by the IMF and COVID-19 crises with the order’s mobilization for cultural-property interests, arguing that an institution deaf to beings in hell has become a religion of artifacts and must be reformed.
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2022.04.18
Can an order that protects powerful monks while dismissing employees and reformists who criticize wrongdoing still be an equal Buddhist saṅgha, and why are reinstatement and leadership resignation required?
The lecture condemns the dismissal of a lay employee who criticized Jaseung and the order’s power structure. Applying the eight standards announced at the order’s founding in 1962, it contrasts leniency toward powerful monks accused of violence, financial and sexual misconduct with punishment of employees and reformist monks, and demands reinstatement and wholesale leadership resignation.
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2022.04.12
Is a lotus-carved foundation stone a Buddhist sacred object that no one may sit on, or did the Jogye Order confuse cultural heritage with the Buddha’s teaching and manufacture an unnecessary conflict?
The Jogye Order condemned President Moon Jae-in and his wife for sitting on a lotus-carved foundation stone. This lecture argues that Buddhism has no inherently sacred objects, that a durable foundation stone is not harmed by sitting, and that the order confused heritage with Dharma while using cultural property as institutional authority and income.
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2022.04.01
How can a patriarch who invokes compassion and benefiting beings prioritize cultural promotion over pandemic suffering, then preach harmony and beginner’s mind without confronting the Jogye Order’s own abuses?
Seongpa’s inaugural address emphasized culture, harmony, and beginner’s mind while overlooking pandemic suffering and institutional wrongdoing. The lecture examines the House of Sharing funds, retaliation against whistleblowers, pressure on critical media, and argues that beginner’s mind without accountability merely erases the past.
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2022.03.30
Do the Diamond Sutra’s four marks merely mean attachment to self, other, group, and longevity, or do they reject ātman, pudgala, sattva, and jīva as rival subjects of rebirth?
The lecture challenges Seongpa’s reading of the Diamond Sutra’s four marks as simple divisions of self and other. It traces them to ātman, pudgala, sattva, and jīva—rival concepts of a rebirth-bearing subject—and argues that rejecting these marks rejects an eternal self and any substitute carrier of rebirth.
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2022.03.24
Why must a power structure that treats temples and donated communal assets as a monk’s private property become an object of repentance and reform?
This episode traces the conflict surrounding Bulgwangsa, criticizing the use of monastic authority, temple property, financial opacity, and organizational power to suppress the lay community, and calls for transparent audits, accountability, and repentance through relinquishing control.
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2022.03.06
In a Buddhism of impermanence, not-self, and humility, why do leaders who elevate themselves through lineage, statues, ritual, and political power require repentance rather than reverence?
Using humility, impermanence, and not-self as standards, this episode criticizes Jinje’s lineage claims, transmission certificate, and lifetime statue, as well as Jaseung’s publicized retreats, pilgrimages, ritual hierarchy, and unofficial power, calling on both to relinquish authority and repent.
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2022.02.18
Why does a bow meant to lower the self become a ritual that strengthens hierarchy and the recipient’s conceit when offered three times to a living monk?
Prostration can be a practice of relinquishing self and observing conceit, but requiring three bows before a living monk may do the opposite by feeding the monk’s pride. A genuinely awakened person does not seek elevation over others. Using an image of Jaseung receiving bows from a chair, this essay argues for mutual bows and equal respect.
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2022.02.14
When pressure against a vulnerable institution is named 'destroying falsehood and revealing truth' and called a pilgrimage, how does that naming itself become the opposite of compassion and a form of verbal falsehood?
Violence is not resistance against a stronger opponent; it is commonly the use of power against someone too weak to retaliate. Compassion and giving also address the vulnerable, but protect rather than crush them. This episode condemns the pressure placed on Buddhist Focus under the noble label of a 'walk for destroying falsehood and revealing truth.'
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2022.02.13
Is holiness created by office and enforced deference, or does it arise naturally from a life that relinquishes authority, tolerates criticism, and treats everyone equally?
Can a temple employee be dismissed for calling the Supreme Patriarch and President mere figureheads? Just as a corporate chair is not the owner of a public company, religious leaders do not own the Jogye Order. Holiness cannot be manufactured through rank and obedience; it emerges when authority is relinquished, criticism is allowed, and people are treated equally.
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2022.02.11
In an age when digital records do not readily disappear, what history will the Jogye Order's actions and its monks' silence create, and what must we remember?
Buddhist Focus, branded a disloyal outlet and pressured by the Jogye Order, announced its closure after sixteen years. Yet digital memory preserves both the newsroom's resistance and the order's election-season mass rally, as well as the silence of monks who did not oppose it. Before the record, action and silence alike become responsibility.
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2022.02.06
If corruption is no longer individual misconduct but a structure in which an entire order protects mutual weaknesses, who must reform the Jogye Order and by what principles?
Despite investigative reports and public outrage, the Jogye Order did not change because corruption was not confined to a few individuals; its leadership and surrounding structure had become a cauldron of collusion. Reform therefore requires collective pressure, removal of entrenched leaders, distributed authority, financial transparency, fair resource allocation, and lifelong security for all monks.
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2022.02.04
When power will not report its own wrongdoing, why does blocking journalism and internal criticism harden corruption, and what kind of ecosystem must a reformed Jogye Order build?
Reform cannot be accomplished by the sangha alone; it requires an ecosystem connecting believers, scholars, civic groups, and journalism. Because power never volunteers its own wrongdoing, critical speech needs protected outlets. This episode condemns disciplinary action against dissenting monks, legal pressure against surveys, and the Jogye Order's blacklisting of Buddhist Focus and Buddhist.com.
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2022.02.03
How can a vast religious order in which money and power inevitably arise stop relying on individual virtue and use shared Buddhist ideals to build an unprecedentedly flexible and accountable organization?
The misconduct revealed by the national monks' rally is not the fault of one leader but of an entire structure that supports authority without oversight. A large order inevitably generates money and power, so reform must move beyond judging individuals and build systems in which corruption cannot take root. Buddhism's shared ideals of non-possession, not-self, impermanence, compassion, and awakening make an unprecedentedly flexible organization possible.
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2022.02.01
Before becoming a Buddha, how can an imperfect practitioner cultivate prajnaparamita amid everyday giving, ethical conflict, and the collective conduct of a religious order?
Prajnaparamita is not a practice reserved for someone who already possesses wisdom. It is the effort to review mind and conduct during giving, ethics, patience, diligence, and concentration and to see without distortion. Applying that standard, I challenge a Jogye Order that blocks mountain paths with cultural-property fees and suppresses individual judgment in favor of a single collective voice.
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2022.01.31
Is the perfection of concentration a seated form performed at certain times, or a genuinely quiet and unwavering mind sustained through ordinary and collective action?
Concentration is not the appearance of sitting but the actual gathering of mind upon one object until unwanted thought, desire, and fear stop. Even the first concentration offers a taste of liberation of mind and makes the unchanged world appear new. Chanting, prayer, breath, and koan practice are different tools of absorption; the agitated speech and gestures at the national monks' rally displayed little of such equanimity.
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