Barobul Buddhism BAROBUL
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LECTURE SERIES

Responding to Your Comments

14 lectures to read in sequence.

LECTURE14

2021.12.04

Can human beings truly be divided into selfish and altruistic types, and what does a fuller understanding of humanity demand from religion in an age of secularization?

Are Human Beings Selfish? — Understanding Humanity Beyond Self-Interest and Altruism

Calling humanity either selfish or altruistic distorts both people and religion. The boundary of the self can expand through family, community, nation, and humankind, while helping oneself and helping others become inseparable in environmental, economic, and social life. Human beings inhabit a broad continuum rather than the binary digits of good and evil or selfishness and altruism, and the species survives precisely through such diversity. In an age of secularization, religion must therefore do more than proclaim communal norms: it must offer practical help to each person's actual life.

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LECTURE13

2021.12.13

If there is no rebirth or judgment after death, where do morality and meaning arise, and on what basis can we hold someone who is overwhelmed by suffering?

If There Is No Rebirth, Is That Annihilationism? — Why We Can Live Ethically Without an Afterlife

Does rejecting rebirth mean that death annihilates all meaning and leaves pleasure as the only goal? The error of ancient annihilationism was not merely its rejection of an afterlife but its denial of causation and interdependence. Through dependent origination, Buddhism sees that I do not exist alone: parents, society, nature, and innumerable past conditions give rise to me, while every word and action leaves effects in the world. Good action is not a transaction purchasing reward in another life; it arises from love and sociality. Precisely because no afterlife will repair the present, we have a clearer responsibility to confront suffering now and change both mental and social conditions.

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LECTURE12

2021.12.16

If Buddhism extinguishes the fires of affliction by releasing everything, is establishing and seeking a “true self” a useful means—or a detour away from non-self?

On Searching for the True Self — True Self and Non-Self

“True self” may sometimes be used as a skillful means for the same final condition indicated by non-self. Yet the moment a mass audience hears “the real me,” people imagine an eternal entity different from the present person and begin searching for it. Buddhism is a path of releasing attachments, concepts, religious cravings, and finally attachment to self, whereas true-self practice creates a new object to seek. Drawing on his own first awakening through impermanence, his father's question “Who are you?”, and a thirty-year detour that finally returned to non-self, the speaker argues for the more direct and less misleading language of impermanence, non-self, concentration, and observation.

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LECTURE11

2022.03.10

If external events do not directly create emotion, how can observing meaning-making and judgment free us from suffering?

Meaning-Making and Liberation

Responding to a viewer’s email, this episode explores how events become emotional suffering through interpretation and judgment, while carefully distinguishing liberation from denial, passivity, or indifference to harm.

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LECTURE10

2022.04.15

Why are Ganhwa investigation and Silent Illumination structurally alike despite their distinct histories and objects, and what matters more than posture in Seon practice?

Why Ganhwa Seon and Silent Illumination Are Not Different at Their Core

Although Ganhwa Seon and Silent Illumination differ historically and use different objects, both gather the mind completely, stop verbal judgment, and enter concentration. The lecture argues that contemporary seated hwadu practice already combines them and uses breath, recitation, dance, and dishwashing to show why absorption matters more than posture or sectarian labels.

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LECTURE09

2022.04.16

From what structure of practice do quietness and continuity through sleep arise, and why do sleep deprivation, bodily torment, and Sangwol-style austerity obstruct rather than deepen concentration?

Quietness, Continuity through Sleep, the Four Jhānas—and a Critique of Jaseung’s Sangwol Seonwon Retreat

Quietness is explained as a result of suspended judgment and deep concentration, not a method of merely sitting silently. Mapping absorption, joy, ease, and immovability through the four jhānas, the lecture argues that continuity through sleep arises naturally rather than through sleep deprivation, and criticizes Seongcheol, Jaseung’s publicized austerity, and Jinje’s praise of the retreat.

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LECTURE08

2022.04.25

If different birth conditions are not the consequences of former-life karma, what causes them, and how should we understand and live within present conditions through dependent arising and scientific inquiry?

Are the Privilege and Deprivation of Birth Caused by a Previous Life?

This lecture rejects karmic rebirth and calculated fate as explanations for unequal birth conditions. Through the poisoned-arrow parable, impermanence and dependent arising, the Chicxulub impact and dinosaur extinction, and the flight of dandelion seeds, it argues that birth is an outcome of countless conditions rather than cosmic moral reward or punishment.

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LECTURE07

2023.01.05

For what purpose and by what principle is Seon practiced, and how does meditative absorption differ from Buddhist awakening?

What Is Seon (Zen)?

This chapter explains Seon as a method of stopping discursive thought through immersion and reaching a mind like a clear mirror and still water, criticizes decontextualized direct-pointing and authorization, and clarifies the relationship between absorption and insight.

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LECTURE06

2023.01.09

Why and with what attitude and method should a person who aspires to awaken practice meditative absorption?

How Should We Practice Seon Meditation?

This chapter explains absorption as resting through comfortable immersion rather than heroic self-torment, criticizes attachment to asceticism and mystical experiences, and presents the joint cultivation of calming and insight as the practical direction of Buddhist training.

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LECTURE05

2023.03.07

From the perspective of dependent origination, impermanence, and not-self, why are people born, and how should each person find meaning in life?

Why Are People Born?

Asking why a person is born is asking who I am, where I came from, and how I should live. When we leave behind imagination about gods, rebirth, and an afterlife and observe, we see that I arose within countless relationships among the universe, nature, and life and am continually changing. The meaning of life is not assigned by someone else; it lies in deciding for oneself how to live this moment, help one another, and be happy.

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LECTURE04

2023.03.10

Why is the claim that deep meditative absorption grants the six supernormal powers or knowledge of past lives a misunderstanding of meditative absorption?

Even in Meditative Absorption, There Are No Six Supernormal Powers

The claim that deep meditative absorption grants the six supernormal powers or knowledge of past lives is fiction made by people who do not know what meditative absorption is. Meditative absorption is a process of becoming fully immersed in one thing, stopping other thoughts, remaining in the present moment, and reaching an unmoving and equanimous mind; only by understanding samatha and samatti correctly can we escape mystical misconceptions.

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LECTURE03

2023.03.12

Why is belief in karma and rebirth a superstition like the emperor's invisible new clothes?

The Fraud of Rebirth and the Emperor’s New Clothes

Belief that karma and its results must return and that rebirth and an afterlife exist is like the emperor's new clothes, which people were pressured to claim they could see. We must not believe the unobservable to be the Buddha's teaching; we must break free from superstition by taking impermanence, not-self, and dependent origination, which can be examined here and now, as our standard.

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LECTURE02

2023.03.14

Why does the belief that the result of my karma must return to me exactly as it was contradict dependent origination?

Slaves to Karma and Its Results: It Is Time to Break Free

The belief that the result of my action must return to me exactly as it was postpones judgment to an afterlife that cannot be observed, attributes present suffering to a past life, and contradicts dependent origination, in which everything affects everything else. To distinguish the core of Buddhism, we must not believe a story simply because it is written in a book; we must understand impermanence, not-self, and dependent origination on the basis of observable facts.

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LECTURE01

2024.05.16

Does Buddhism deny every view as skepticism or agnosticism does, or is it a path that continues to observe and judge through dependent origination without clinging to views?

Does Buddhism Deny All Views? The Relationship Between Skepticism and Buddhism

Buddhism begins from a skeptical perspective, yet it does not stop at ‘we cannot know’; it observes relationships in reality. The crucial difference is that Buddhism does not eliminate views but understands them as learned standards, releases attachment to them, and treats even dependent origination as a view open to observation and criticism.

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