Why Is Seeking Perfection a Problem?
Some people may ask, “What is wrong with seeking perfection?” I want to answer in one sentence: seeking perfection is foolish. To explain why, let us examine an expression that the monk Seongcheol often promoted. I previously discussed jangjwa-burwa, the practice of never lying down, and now I will examine dongjeong-ilyeo, mongjung-ilyeo, sukmyon-ilyeo, and ommae-ilyeo.
Ommae-ilyeo means that one’s mind should remain the same not only while awake but also in dreams and even in deep, dreamless sleep. Ilyeo, in plain Korean, means being constant or remaining the same. The claim is that one’s mental state must be identical before sleep, after falling asleep, while dreaming, and while deeply asleep.
The reason pursuing perfection is foolish is simple: a human being cannot be perfect.
Seongcheol’s Standard for Judging Awakening
When people came to Seongcheol saying that they were awakened or wanted to discuss their Buddhist studies, he reportedly began by asking, “Can you maintain sukmyon-ilyeo? Can you maintain ommae-ilyeo?” If they said no, he would crush them with, “Then what do you mean you have awakened?” As such claims gained authority, the belief that a Buddha must be perfect became deeply embedded in Korean Buddhist tradition and culture.
I want to remove that belief first. The idea that a Buddha is a perfect being is a thorn that actually prevents people from becoming Buddhas. It is an obstacle that must be pulled out before studying Buddhism. If someone asks what is wrong with remaining the same, the answer is that you cannot remain the same.
The belief that “perfection is Buddhahood” does not lead us toward a Buddha. It is a thorn that prevents us from becoming Buddhas.
A Person Trying to Turn a Stone into Gold
Let me put it more simply. Imagine a person pursuing alchemy in an attempt to turn a stone into gold. He thinks that if he tries harder and discovers the right method—if he practices with extraordinary determination—he might succeed. A person who does not know that a stone cannot become gold may devote his entire life to the attempt.
But no matter how much of a lifetime he devotes to it, the impossible remains impossible. We call a person who spends his life trying to turn a stone into gold foolish. A human being who longs to become something perfect is doing the same thing. Words such as yeoyeo, ilyeo, and “remaining the same” may sound wonderful, but dressing an impossibility in beautiful language does not make it possible.
Foolishness is believing that the impossible is possible and devoting one’s life to it.
A Dependently Arisen Mind Cannot Remain the Same
The most basic principle of Buddhism is dependent arising. It is what I continue to explain throughout the “21st-Century Arahant” series. Everything arises in relation to other things, and because it is related, it cannot remain permanent. Ommae-ilyeo, however, demands that the mind remain constant and permanent. From the outset, it moves in the opposite direction from dependent arising and impermanence.
The human mind is affected by other things. In particular, body and mind continuously affect each other. A confused mind affects the body, while bodily pain or lack of sleep makes us drowsy even when we try to study. If someone is malnourished and suffers back pain yet keeps sitting in a painful posture without lying down, that person cannot preserve a sound mental state.
The mind does not exist independently, separated from the body and the world. If neither the body nor anything in the world affected the mind, perhaps it could remain constant. But such a mind is not the mind of a living human being. An actual mind is connected to the body, enters relationships with the world, and continually changes within those relationships.
Dependent arising means affecting and being affected, and a mind that affects and is affected cannot remain permanent.
Sleep, Food, and Death Change the Mind
Falling asleep, feeling full, drinking coffee, smoking, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, resting, and even breathing affect the mind. So does meeting a friend. The death of someone close to us—a beloved partner or a child—has an undeniable effect. Not only physical impact on the brain but also emotional shock and every external circumstance change our mental state.
We are connected to the world, and within that connection the mind continually affects and is affected. To demand that the mind always remain the same is therefore to desire the impossible. If yesterday’s body differs from today’s body, yesterday’s self and today’s self must also differ. Similarities may continue, but we still change little by little.
The wish for a constant mind is not wisdom born from reality. It is an inverted fantasy born in a dream: although the mind cannot remain the same, one imagines, “This must be possible,” and pursues it.
Ommae-ilyeo is not the completion of wakefulness. It is an inverted fantasy that treats the changing human mind as unchanging.
Understand Greed, Anger, and Delusion Instead of Merely Forbidding Them
You have probably heard much about greed, anger, and delusion in Buddhism. But most people have only been told not to engage in them; they have not properly learned what delusion or foolishness is. If Buddhism is a religion of wisdom, it cannot stop at commands such as “Do not be angry” or “Do not be foolish.” We must understand why anger is a problem and what makes something foolish.
If the world is a certain way, can desiring its opposite make the opposite come true? Does trying to turn a stone into gold make it gold? Wanting the mind to remain the same when it cannot is foolish. Wanting human perfection when humans cannot be perfect is also foolish. Believing in an omnipotent god where no omnipotent being exists, and expecting that god to answer one’s prayers, is likewise foolish because it treats the impossible as possible.
Greed, anger, and delusion are not matters that end with an order to abstain. We must understand which pursuits run contrary to reality and are therefore futile.
Buddhism Was Reversed into a Religion Seeking Transcendence
We call it foolish because it fails to see reality as it is and runs in the wrong direction. Sukmyon-ilyeo and ommae-ilyeo—the wish for the mind to remain unchanged even in deep, dreamless sleep—are delusions. Practicing such a futile pursuit for ten or a hundred years will not make it possible. Someone may instead cling to the belief until falling into the delusion that he has attained that state and begin speaking nonsense.
Buddhism does not seek an unchanging state. Nor does it seek transcendence. It tells us to be liberated from all longing. Yet at some point Buddhism was reversed into a religion that desperately longs for something, a religion that seeks to attain a state beyond the human condition.
I believe this history began much earlier than China or the Chan tradition. Perhaps within one or two hundred years after the Buddha’s death, people had already failed to understand dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self and turned Buddhism back into a religion seeking transcendence. Because people have heard such claims whenever they opened their eyes for nearly two thousand years, believing them is not merely the fault of any one individual.
Buddhism, which tells us to be liberated from all longing, was transformed into a religion longing for perfection and transcendence.
The Buddha Is Not a Buddha of Ommae-Ilyeo
Seongcheol proclaimed ommae-ilyeo and presented it as though it were a standard of Buddhahood. But a Buddha is not a Buddha of ommae-ilyeo. A Buddha is a wise person. A wise person does not foolishly pursue the impossible but sees reality as it is and lives wisely.
Can someone who desires the foolish goal of ommae-ilyeo be a Buddha? Can that person actually achieve ommae-ilyeo? No. We should not deny living human beings in an attempt to manufacture a perfect mind.
A Buddha is not a perfect and unchanging being. A Buddha is a person who abandons foolish pursuits and lives wisely.
I hope you become living human beings. I hope you become wise human beings. That is the direction Buddhism pursues.
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