In Korean Buddhism, an immediate and unhesitating reply in a Seon dialogue is often treated as evidence of awakening. If someone instantly counters a question with a strange, abstruse expression, that person can appear to have reached a level beyond ordinary people. I believe that very assumption has sickened Korean Buddhism and become a cliff blocking both lay Buddhists and monastics from becoming Buddhas. Why? Beginning with the Seon question, “What is it like to advance one step from the top of a hundred-foot pole?” I will examine what awakening is, how language and concepts work, and what we must do to communicate something properly to another person.
What Is It Like to Advance One Step from the Top of a Hundred-Foot Pole?
I heard an anecdote in an interview with the monk Hyangbong. One day, another monk came to him and asked, “What is it like to advance one step from the top of a hundred-foot pole?” This is a famous hwadu: at the end of a pole a hundred feet high, or at the edge of a cliff where there is nowhere farther to go, what would it mean to take one more step? Hyangbong reportedly answered at once, “It is very peaceful and pleasant.”
I want to preserve this scene. It may later become an embarrassing moment for Hyangbong, but it displays the problem with Seon dialogue with exceptional clarity. Imagine that you yourself have become a Buddha. A monk who has practiced diligently comes and asks you the same question. Put aside your preconception about how an awakened person is supposed to answer, and consider what Gautama Siddhartha some 2,500 years ago would have done.
For Gautama Siddhartha, “advancing one step from the top of a hundred-foot pole” would not have been a standardized sentence memorized from a collection of koans. Hearing it for the first time, he would have asked, “What does that mean?” Even after the questioner explained its conventional use, he would have asked again, “But what do you mean by saying it?” He would need to know the situation the person faced and the feelings and thoughts that led him to choose that expression.
Before answering the wording of a question, a Buddha asks about the meaning and situation of the person who raised it.
We struggle to imagine this scene because we picture awakening and Buddhahood as something mysterious. Like drawing an elephant with our eyes closed, we create an image in which “an awakened person instantly answers a Seon question” without knowing what a Buddha actually is. Yet giving an instant answer without knowing what the other person means is not awakening. It is a hasty guess.
Awakening Means Understanding a Principle, Not Memorizing an Answer
Buddhist awakening is not an extremely mysterious, transcendent power. It is no different in kind from learning the principle of addition and understanding that one plus one is two and one plus three is four. A person who understands the principle can solve an unfamiliar addition problem. Someone who understands the principles of arithmetic can work through a long and complicated problem, even if it takes time. Someone who has merely memorized answers without understanding the principle cannot apply them to real life as soon as the form of the problem changes.
In Buddhism, that principle is dependent arising. It is the very simple fact that nothing arises alone but occurs and changes in dependence on other causes and conditions. Yet deeply understanding this simple principle and applying it, one case at a time, to my thoughts, actions, mind, and the workings of the world is another matter. When I try to think and live in terms of dependent arising, many ideas I believed to be facts are exposed as delusions.
An awakened person is not someone who rapidly produces a standardized answer, but someone who applies the principle of dependent arising to unfamiliar problems and keeps breaking through his own delusions.
I make this video so that we can practice that together. A claim is not right merely because it has been handed down for a long time or because many people act as if it were true. We can reconsider the familiar scene of “advancing from the top of a hundred-foot pole” in terms of dependent arising. I do not know what was in the mind of the monk who went to Hyangbong. He may have wanted to test whether Hyangbong was awakened, or he may genuinely have wanted counsel about an impasse in his life. Because I never spoke with him, I do not know. Conversation must begin by admitting precisely that ignorance.
Gears That Do Not Mesh and Different Frequencies
Had I been there, I would not have instantly replied, “It is peaceful and pleasant.” If a question and answer do not mesh, they are not the gears of a beautifully running clock. They are parts spinning separately inside a clock, unable to affect one another.
To help break another person’s delusion and enable him to observe even one thing anew, we must first tune our frequencies to each other. No matter how intensely I broadcast, my words will not be heard if the other person has turned on a radio tuned to another frequency. We normally assume that using the same language puts us on the same frequency. In reality, we may use the same word while imagining entirely different concepts.
Identical words do not guarantee identical meanings. Communication begins not by throwing out the same term but by checking one another’s frequency.
Do “Plant,” “Life,” and “Non-Killing” Mean the Same Thing to Everyone?
Ask, “Is a plant alive?” Many people will naturally answer yes, but someone may think it is not. Because each person regards his own answer as self-evident, he easily assumes that everyone else thinks the same way. Language and concepts, however, are formed on the basis of each person’s subjective life experience.
The difference becomes clearer when we discuss the precept against killing. If a plant is alive, should plants be included in the “life” protected by non-killing? If harming life is evil, creates karma, and must never be done, must we avoid harming plants too? Even people who avoid meat out of concern for killing will offer different reasons. One may say that plants are not living beings; another may say they are alive but do not fall within the scope of the precept.
Animals and plants are not as distant as we vaguely imagine. Both are living beings. Yet when we hear “killing,” we first picture killing an animal that moves. Without examining the concept deeply, we believe that we are keeping the precept.
Earlier, when asked, “May I kill a mosquito?” I said that one should definitely kill it. Someone responded that a mosquito must never be killed, and another even claimed that killing one prevents entry into Seon. Yet the speaker also eats rice and vegetables. Our food was other life, and as carbon-based organisms we cannot live without consuming what used to be other living beings. It is not the case that only a mosquito is life while today’s rice and vegetables are not.
Receiving the same precept against killing does not mean practicing the same non-killing, because each person begins with a different concept of life and killing.
Even if two people receive the same Five Precepts in the same place, their concepts of plants, animals, life, and killing differ according to their education, surroundings, and experience. Their concepts may intersect, but their complete boundaries do not coincide. If we fail to see this, we assume that everyone shares the concept inside our own head.
What Trees, Bamboo, Love, and “Love” Reveal About Language
The word “tree” works the same way. I think I know what a tree is and that you know too. But is bamboo a tree? One person assumes it obviously is because it is called bamboo; another knows bamboo as grass rather than a tree. Each regards his judgment as common sense, yet using the same word does not establish that we share the same concept.
We cannot communicate Buddhism without language, but language brings at least two difficulties. One is the indeterminacy inherent in language itself. Words are not created by cutting reality at perfectly exact joints. They are approximate conveniences, and their meanings and uses change across time and place. A dictionary can pair the Korean word sarang with the English word “love,” but Koreans and Americans may use those words for different objects and in different situations.
Even people from the same city of Busan differ. Apart from saying it once or twice to the woman who became my wife while we were dating, I have hardly used the words “I love you.” That does not mean everyone from Busan is the same. We may use the same word when speaking of loving one’s mother, loving a dog, or loving a camera or YouTube, but the experiences and weight inside the word differ. Even two people sitting face to face in the same room met different parents and friends and lived through different lives and media. Their concepts of love cannot be identical.
Not only the language of 2,600 years ago but even the language used in the same room today is never completely identical. Each person’s life inhabits his words.
The Dharma Cannot Be Transmitted Through Mind-to-Mind Telepathy or the Flower Sermon
The imperfection of language does not allow us to discard it. To communicate my experience and awakening and create a possibility that another person can observe the principle, I eventually have to speak. Telepathy cannot do it. If Gautama Siddhartha could transmit the Dharma telepathically, he would have sent it to everyone in the world 2,600 years ago.
I call the stories of mind-to-mind transmission and the Flower Sermon a fraud. The story that the Buddha held up a flower and only Mahakasyapa smiled, receiving the Dharma directly from mind to mind, is not a scripture containing the Buddha’s actual teaching. It is an apocryphal story created later so that Seon Buddhism, lacking a foundation, could trace its first patriarch back to the Buddha. One may enjoy it as a fable, but it must not become a theory of actual communication.
A Buddha does not hand awakening over by telepathy. He uses speech and observation to help another person see for himself.
How, then, do we tune different frequencies? First, we speak calmly and repeatedly in very easy language, checking whether we are imagining the same meaning. Second, we look at reality and objects both people can observe. To someone who believes that prayer can accomplish anything, we could have him throw a rock into water and then pray for it to rise. Only after observing together that it does not rise can we discuss what is possible.
This is the method a Buddha uses. To break another person’s delusion and help him become liberated, I must communicate the principle I have learned in language he can most easily understand and show him facts he can observe for himself. Would a Buddha throw out a riddle and leave the other person to make a hasty guess?
First Ask About the Questioner’s Situation
Return now to the opening dialogue. A monk asks me, “What is it like to advance one step from the top of a hundred-foot pole?” Within the culture and customs of Korean Seon, he may have acquired the preconception that only an awakened person can answer a Seon question instantly. He may have come to test me. But if he approaches me with a Seon challenge, must I respond in kind?
An awakened person should do his utmost to help the visitor gain even a little. I should ask, “What do you mean by that expression? From what situation and feeling did you ask it? What is the hundred-foot pole in your life where you feel unable to take another step?” I must not assume that a single sentence automatically conveyed the person’s heart to me. Only after tuning our frequencies can I answer.
Before interpreting the wording of a Seon dialogue, ask what actual hundred-foot pole the person who uttered it is facing.
It is difficult to communicate a principle even in very easy words, and a riddle makes it harder. Memorizing that one plus one is two differs from deeply understanding addition. Likewise, memorizing the word “dependent arising” differs from understanding language, concepts, oneself, and another person in terms of dependent arising. Because people do not know what a Buddha is, the instant answer “It is peaceful and pleasant” appears to express awakening.
An Instant Seon Reply Is a Non Sequitur 99.999 Percent of the Time
Of course, a question and an instant answer may happen to coincide. We need not completely deny the possibility that the two people’s frequencies match perfectly and something is transmitted like a lightning strike. In most cases, however—99.999 percent, I would say—each person erects a goal at a different place and kicks his own ball. The questioner asks from his goal, and the respondent answers from another. That is a non sequitur, the reality of many scenes we revere as Seon dialogue.
Does an instant reply awaken the other person? Can it break his delusion and help liberate him? What does the respondent know about the questioner? What does he know about himself, language, concepts, and dependent arising? If someone knows none of these things but claims to be awakened, the claim is not evidence of awakening.
A Seon exchange conducted without knowing each other’s context is not communication. It is two radios broadcasting different programs.
I criticized Hyangbong, but Buddhist criticism is not meant to trample a person. I hope it helps him as well. The problem is not limited to an individual’s mistake. The larger problem is a Korean Buddhist culture that has turned this delusion into a standard of awakening.
The Culture of Disconnection That Sustained Patriarch Jinje and the Jogye Order
As a representative example, I have repeatedly discussed Jinje, a former Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order. Jinje occupied that position twice for roughly ten years. I call him a fraud because, while claiming to be awakened, I judge that he does not understand even the most basic Buddhism. The more serious fact is that such a person could sit for ten years as the spiritual head of the Jogye Order.
If an actually awakened person had existed within the order, he would have erupted in anger at seeing a fraud in the patriarch’s seat selling awakening for money and prestige. Yet no one stopped him. People went to learn from him and accepted his claims about inheriting Seon and Dharma lineages. In many videos and essays I have explained why I call Jinje a fraud. The question here is how such a person could remain in that position.
The culture of Seon dialogue lies underneath it. Seon dialogue has a disconnected rather than dependently arisen structure. People ask in riddles and answer in riddles without checking whether the meanings of question and answer are actually connected. If it genuinely transmitted something, Korean Buddhism should overflow with awakened people. But if listening for an hour illuminates none of my delusions, teaches me nothing about awakening or dependent arising, and leaves me ignorant even after ten years of following the teacher, reality has already supplied the answer.
Where the language and communication needed to examine awakening have been severed, the means of distinguishing an awakened person from a fraud disappear as well.
People endlessly repeat phrases such as “What was your original face before your parents were born?” without knowing what they mean. Shouting, striking, or responding to a question with something irrelevant becomes a mark of awakening. The time that should be used to discuss a visitor’s present practice, ask what he misunderstands and where he is stuck, and offer a signpost for one step forward vanishes. Ignoring his question and throwing out one’s own riddle has become the impenetrable iron wall of Korean Buddhism.
A Buddha Does Not Pose a Quiz
The delusion that elevates abstruse, mysterious language while despising plain and easy speech blinds many Korean monastics. Imagine someone mounting the Dharma seat, striking the table three times, asking “Do you understand?” and walking away. Had Gautama Siddhartha done only that, would Buddhism have survived until today? It would have disappeared without a trace. This is precisely why Korean Buddhism is collapsing.
Thinking in terms of dependent arising requires us to examine one another’s practice, mind, speech, and action and to converse deeply. Instead, people hide their minds and present condition while publicly exchanging only mystical and abstruse Seon phrases, displaying them as the appearance of the awakened. Because they do not know what awakening is or what state an awakened person is in, people follow a comedy without recognizing it as comedy. The result is the sinking not only of the Jogye Order but of Korean Buddhism as a whole.
If the Buddha had merely struck a table three times, asked “Do you understand?” and left, Buddhism would never have been transmitted. He is a Buddha because he spoke so people could understand.
What Korean Buddhism must do in the twenty-first century is clear. It must stop treating Seon dialogue as the standard appearance of an awakened person. A genuinely awakened person might sometimes use a startling expression as a tool to shock or guide someone. But it must remain a tool, and something must ultimately be communicated. It must help the other person observe for himself and break his own delusion.
Practice cannot consist in kicking balls toward separate imaginary goals or parting after broadcasting like two radios on different frequencies. If we are curious about awakening, we must ask calmly, listen in detail, and observe together. We must escape the delusion that an awakened person necessarily speaks in Seon riddles.
A Buddha speaks in language you can understand, checks your concepts and level, and shows you reality you can observe directly. A Buddha is someone who gives you the opportunity to break your own delusion.
If Gautama Siddhartha had spoken only in Seon riddles, Buddhism would not have reached the present. It is time to stop the foolish behavior born from the delusion of Seon dialogue.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.