After Criticizing Seon, I Turn to the Monk Ilmuk
Across five broadcasts criticizing Beopsang, I discussed the superstitions he believes in. Yet some people hear the word superstition and think only of ghosts or fortune-telling. Clinging to what I think I know without asking whether it is actually so, settling into that belief and treating it as something supreme, is also superstition. Achieving a particular psychological state and then declaring it to be everything is not Buddhism.
Many people in Korean Buddhism cling to ideas such as everything being made by mind, complete non-discrimination, something permanent, the true self, or a state of non-self, and become lost in delusion. Once they believe they have attained the highest thing, they stop seeing where their own words go wrong. They keep talking without noticing their contradictions. My criticism of Beopsang was not an attempt to catch one person misspeaking. It was also an examination of the Seon Buddhism on which he relies.
How is holding up a staff, tapping the floor, drawing a circle, shouting, striking someone, or raising a finger proof of wisdom? Primitive antics performed under the banner of not depending on words are presented as evidence of awakening. People act mysterious while failing to make a single coherent argument, and this is called Buddhahood or enlightenment. It is living in superstition while wearing Buddhism’s outer shell.
Beopsang relies on Seon and regards the teachings of Western spiritual figures such as Eckhart Tolle as matching what he has realized. I have pointed to similar problems in the remarks of Kim Tae-wan, Mongji, and Lila. They repeat that we should listen to them, that this is the path, that it is certain. Certainty does not make someone wise. Now I want to examine another side. This time it is the monk Ilmuk.
My Target Is the Authority Claimed by “Early Buddhism”
I am not criticizing Ilmuk alone. He occupies a position within what is called early Buddhism. I regard the name itself as misleading—a lie. Theravada, the tradition of the elders, is presented as though it were simply Buddhism as it existed in the Buddha’s lifetime. In my judgment, it too is later Buddhism, just as Mahayana is. It is a southern tradition transmitted south of India, preserved there and spread again, following the Pali Nikayas.
This tradition criticizes the Mahayana scriptures transmitted northward as not being the Buddha’s direct words. Yet it calls its own Nikayas his direct teaching. We are told that five hundred arahants assembled after his death, held a council, memorized the teaching, and handed it down before it was written. I call this a blatant lie. One transmission story cannot turn everything composed later into the Buddha’s own words. Criticizing Ilmuk also means criticizing the Theravada attitude that relies on that authority.
Today’s title is “Hell Because of a Thought Just Before Death?” and the subtitle is “Superstition in the Name of Early Buddhism.” The language is strong, but I did not invent it as clickbait. Let us hear what is actually being said and examine the problems. Rather than playing an entire video from beginning to end, I will select important passages, pause, and ask questions.
Does Being Written in Scripture Make Something True?
The video I selected was a talk by Ilmuk on Hello Buddha TV. He was introduced as the head of Jetavana Seonwon, under a title asking whether even a person who lived a good life could go to hell because of one second immediately before death. There is a question mark, but the talk presents the claim as true. Someone who lived well can supposedly fall into hell because of a single thought at the end.
I encountered the same problem in criticizing Seon: an inability to question words in a book. People fit every experience into those words and imagine they have found “that place.” Those who claim to practice early Buddhism likewise become unquestioning devotees of the Nikayas. The mindlessness and anti-intellectualism are astonishing in people practicing Buddhism in the twenty-first century. It does not even occur to them to ask whether the content is true.
You have probably heard of biblical inerrancy: the claim that every letter and word of the Bible faithfully conveys God’s and Jesus’s words and contains no error. Stories about creating the world in a week, angels and hell, even the extravagant predictions of Revelation, are declared perfect. I call such material fantasy fiction, a mass of superstition. But how different are Buddhists? They find another religion’s stories ridiculous while refusing to question a word in their own scriptures.
I am not saying Ilmuk invented the story by himself. That would be a problem too, but his point is that it is written in the scriptures he follows. That is precisely where he should ask, “Is it really so?” We do not treat Aesop’s fables, Simcheong, the rabbit and turtle story, Hong Gildong, or the Dangun myth as straightforward records of real events. Yet the label scripture turns fiction into fact. I say that almost ninety-nine percent of Buddhist scripture is later human composition.
It is easy to criticize what others believe. What matters is whether I can reconsider the Buddhism to which I belong and the ideas I believe. I cannot claim to teach wisdom while being unable to reconsider my own thoughts. That is why I criticize Ilmuk’s approach. Memorizing many words, broadcasting them, and energetically repeating them on one’s channel do not amount to practicing Buddhism.
The Account of Three Signs Immediately Before Death
Before watching the talk itself, I looked at the key points summarized with the video. Nowadays such summaries may also be generated by AI. This one said that among the many karmic actions of a lifetime, the clearest and strongest—especially heavy karma formed close to death—appears and determines the next life. I was not asking anyone to believe the summary; I was identifying claims we would shortly check against the talk itself.
According to this explanation, one of three things appears at death: karma itself, a sign of karma, or a sign of the place of one’s next birth. I stumble over the first claim. What on earth does it mean for karma itself to appear? Can karma be seen? The second account, in which a knife used in killing or an image of one’s practice comes to mind, is understandable. If someone harmed another with a knife, an image of blood or a blade might arise. But an image arising and an entity called karma appearing are not the same thing.
The third claim is even more astounding. Flames of hell or a heavenly palace supposedly reveal, before death, where we will be born next. We are said to know our future birthplace in advance. Does writing such a thing down make it true? Someone who recites it from memory without a single question is a parrot. Being a parrot is not practicing Buddhism.
Hell for Regret, Heaven for an Offering
The summary included the example of Queen Mallika, who had supposedly done much good throughout her life but briefly fell into a bad realm after regretting a past lie just before death. Already I have to ask: is it not good to realize belatedly that I lied out of greed or to escape blame, and to regret it? Why should the recognition that I acted wrongly become a cause of hell?
On the other side was the story of a hunter, the father of the monk Sona, who supposedly spent his life killing but made a large offering before death and was born in heaven. I will return shortly to the question of why hunting deer, boar, or rabbits should be inherently evil. For now, let us accept their premise that it is bad. Does the story not say that a lifetime of wrongdoing can be dealt with by one final donation? Then this is a religion of donations, not Buddhism.
These two stories emphasize the claim that the state of mind immediately before death decisively affects the next life. I felt ashamed to share the same Buddhist label. Even as fantasy, this is embarrassing fantasy. So I began checking the actual statements in the video one by one.
Begin by Questioning the Claim That Craving Produces Karma
Ilmuk said he had explained karma, the three realms, and craving in previous sessions. Different karma supposedly leads to different births; craving conditions karma; we live creating karma, and some of it determines our next birth. I stopped at the statement that craving produces karma. Is that really so? Consider the original sense of karma. As I explain it, its root means to do or make, like the English words do and make. We are talking about what accumulates through action. Does attaching the word craving complete the explanation?
When I criticize karma and rebirth, many ask what would remain of Buddhism without them. That is because those are all they have learned. Monks have talked about them incessantly, so people identify Buddhism with karma and rebirth. But parroting something because it is written in a book is not study. In the twenty-first century, we need to stop repeating these extravagant superstitions.
The same applies to the three realms. The desire, form, and formless realms are described as actual worlds into which one is born. In my view, the formless realm is an account of meditative states organized into systems such as the nine successive attainments, and the form realm likewise relates to the four dhyanas. Yet these become worlds supposedly existing somewhere. Because hells, hungry ghosts, and animals appear under the desire realm, and because a text mentions six realms of rebirth, people believe those worlds exist. How does a classification in a text become a world in reality?
When a Final Offering Outweighs a Lifetime
Ilmuk explained that not every action of a lifetime determines the next life; rather, the clearest and most significant karma appears immediately before death and causes birth in one of the three realms. I said that if the account had stopped at the claim that our lifetime’s actions affect a future life, I could at least understand it as an attempt to encourage good conduct. That does not mean I agree with rebirth. But when a final thought or image can overturn everything, the story becomes much stranger.
Why tell such stories? In my view, they tell people to bring money and offerings to the temple. Whatever they did in the past, if they come and give at the end, they can reach a good place. This is written into scripture and repeated day after day. I go so far as to call such monks money-obsessed. It is not even simple encouragement of good and punishment of evil: the calculation that a final offering will suffice has entered the picture.
I ask for support too. But I ask people to support this channel if they think the work is right and helpful, and if they want its message to reach more people. That is practical support for work being done now. It is not a promise that paying money will keep them out of hell and send them to heaven. Shaving one’s head and wearing monastic robes do not justify talking that bullshit.
A Commentary Is Not Evidence of Observation
The talk moved from the idea of living well in order to die well to the claim that commentaries specifically describe three forms of mental appearance before death. I stopped again at the word commentary. The scriptural account is vague, so later writers add more detail. The scriptures themselves cannot simply be called the Buddha’s direct words, yet even their commentaries are brought in as factual explanations. Once it becomes difficult to keep expanding a canon, people write additional fiction under the name of interpretation.
Did the commentator directly know what happens immediately before death? Has Ilmuk verified it? Speaking confidently is different from actually knowing. Such explanations were appearing in a newly uploaded video on November 9, 2026, the day of this broadcast. If the purpose were simply to introduce an old story, it could be described as such. Instead, it is being spread as something that actually happens. That is why I call it utterly primitive.
Where Is Karma Stored, and What Appears Before Our Eyes?
Karma itself supposedly appears. Then where is it stored? In the head, the body, empty space, or a soul? Is it something visible? Nobody explains this. People hear the word karma and move on as though everyone knows what it means, without checking what it refers to. I am asking how karma is supposed to appear. Repeating the word is not an answer.
A sign of karma is at least easier to discuss: some image appears before the eyes or in the mind. But calling it a sign of one’s next birthplace makes an entirely different claim. Ilmuk said that flames can indicate hell, running through a field an animal birth, a mother’s womb a human birth, and a beautiful heaven or palace a heavenly birth. Does one suddenly become a prophet before dying?
And after saying that the strongest karma of a lifetime appears, the hunter’s story lets one final offering overturn a lifetime of killing. Where has the criterion of the strongest karma gone? In one explanation, a lifetime of action is powerful; in another, an offering made moments ago is stronger. One should examine whether the earlier and later statements fit together.
Whose Interests Appear in the List of Grave Sins?
In explaining heavy karma, the talk lists drawing blood from the Buddha, killing an arahant or a parent, and breaking the harmony of the sangha. Seeing the Buddha and sangha in this list, I ask who created it. Is this not written from the sangha’s own standpoint, telling people not to harm it? What grounds establish it as a cosmic law that inevitably sends someone to hell?
I compared this with the owner’s standpoint in the Ten Commandments. Do not take my slave, my wife, my house, or my sheep: these are words from the perspective of someone who possesses them. They are said to come from God, yet human interests are plainly visible. Similarly, the claim that dividing the sangha brings hell expresses the group’s own standpoint. We should not revere a statement as wisdom without considering who wrote it and from what position.
A Mental Image Does Not Reveal a Next Life
An image in the mind may be a thought, a mistake, a hallucination, a dream, or a daydream. Suppose we dream of a dragon or a pig, of growing taller or falling from somewhere. These are images humans experience. Why should an image arising immediately before death suddenly reveal the actual location of a next life? How do we leap from the occurrence of a thought to the existence of a future world?
I mentioned a theory of dreaming in which, when visual input is cut off as we close our eyes, the brain generates imagery to maintain visual stimulation. I did not present that as settled fact. I said it was one current theory, that it might change, and that I did not know whether it was actually correct. What matters here is that human imagery is a human phenomenon. Saying that someone saw something does not establish that its object exists externally or will become real in the future.
I also recalled Jeon Hyun-soo’s accounts of seeing heavenly beings: a deity in Eastern clothing, a beautiful celestial woman, or gods clustered on a tree. In my view, these are accounts of dreams, imagery, and delusion. The occurrence of an image is different from a requirement to believe it as fact. Yet people become bound to what appeared to them and fail to question it.
That is also what I want to ask Ilmuk. Have you died? Have you reached the point of death and directly verified the location of your next birth? Saying that a book contains the claim is not verification. As the Kalama Sutta teaches, we should not simply believe and follow something because it appears in scripture. Buddhist literature contains much superstition, but occasionally something essential as well. When the two contradict each other, we need to discard the superstition and nonsense, rather than preserve everything under the label scripture.
Repeating that karma, whose storage place nobody can identify, reveals the location of the next life at death is no different from treating Revelation’s Antichrist, angels, devils, and the number of the beast, six hundred sixty-six, as literal fact. Such rubbish is being spread in the twenty-first century under the name scripture. I keep saying that practicing Buddhism must not mean becoming a parrot.
Does the Butcher Cunda Necessarily Create Evil Karma by Killing Pigs?
Ilmuk began describing four combinations of conduct during life and conduct immediately before death. His first example was Cunda, a butcher who made a living slaughtering pigs. I paused at the fact of slaughter itself. Is slaughter inherently evil karma? Buddhists will have heard of the five precepts and the precept against killing. But before memorizing that killing is bad, have we asked whether that statement is really adequate?
If killing is unconditionally bad and brings hell, then assuming rebirth exists, who among us would escape? We live on pork, beef, and fish. Will we say eating plants is fine? Is a cabbage not alive? What about eating strawberries? We need to consider the basis on which we distinguish plants from animals and living from nonliving things.
Earlier I criticized Seon for seizing only on the aspect of things not being essentially different, then saying everything is made by mind and we should not discriminate. That does not mean we should uncritically accept rigid distinctions from the opposite direction. Here we need to examine the underlying situation again. Fish eat smaller fish, shrimp, or plankton. Does that mean fish in the sea commit evil from birth to death? If they undergo rebirth, must they endlessly descend into worse conditions?
The evolutionary process does not fit this explanation either. If life before humans fed on other life in water, how could humans emerge in a world where such evil karma produces only decline? Whether a cow eats grass or a carnivore eats another animal, much life survives by consuming other carbon-based life. Are creatures born already condemned to act wickedly? I say it is wrong to define killing itself as unconditionally bad.
Am I Pure If Someone Else Kills and I Only Eat?
Suppose we think that the person who slaughters pigs does evil all his life while the person who eats the meat is fine. We have assigned the bad deed to someone else and declared ourselves pure because we did not do it directly. If I did not eat, there would be less reason to have the work done. Is it wisdom to let someone else do it as long as the food reaches my mouth? I called that bullshit. It makes another person responsible for evil karma while calculating a way out for oneself.
I used Yi Sun-sin as an example. Suppose he fought invading Japanese forces and defended the country. Because he killed, must he go to hell while I, who benefited from his protection, merely thank him and remain free of the consequences? Would I say, “Thank you for protecting us, but you created evil karma, so off to hell with you”? Judging by the single word killing, without examining the conditions and relationships of an action, leads to this absurdity.
The Cunda story in the talk added cruelty to slaughter: beating animals with clubs to soften the meat and pouring hot water into them. At death, he supposedly had limbs that curled like a pig’s, made pig-like cries, and saw hellfire. This was then explained as a sign of the place where he would be born, and he was said to have been born in hell. I see conjecture and interpretation being painted over a story written by earlier people. Saying that it appears in the Dhammapada tradition does not end the question of its truth.
Sona’s Father: Black Dogs Replaced by Celestial Women
The second case claims that someone who created harmful karma can repent, change his mind late in life, and be born in a favorable realm. The representative figure is Sona’s father. A hunter whose son was an arahant, he entered monastic life under that son. When he became ill and approached death, he said black dogs were pursuing him. His son supposedly interpreted this as a sign of birth in hell.
So the son obtained flowers, brought his father before the Buddha’s stupa, and had him make an offering. Ilmuk explained that the story took place after the Buddha’s passing. The father felt great faith and joy in the offering and believed he had created great merit. He then supposedly saw celestial women and told his son that a new mother was coming. This was taken to indicate birth in a desire-realm heaven, and the story ends with him being born there.
What kind of explanation is this? One man slaughters pigs all his life and, dying without an offering, goes to hell. Another hunts all his life but makes an offering at the end and goes to heaven. Is it not obvious what the story wants us to do? Donate and make offerings. How is this different from a pastor interested only in tithes? The head is shaved and the clothing is monastic, but the words constantly repeated are donation and offering.
I call this Buddhism’s trade in indulgences. People hear that indulgences were sold in the West and regard it as foolish, yet accept the promise that a final offering in their own religion will secure a good rebirth. The structure is the same: wrongdoing throughout life can supposedly be addressed by giving at the end. We must not keep conflating a request to support work one agrees with and the sale of rewards after death.
I applied the logic to someone like Chun Doo-hwan. After massacring people, would making an offering to the Buddha at the end secure a good birth? Is that fair? The claim began with the strongest karma appearing, but in the end what is given at the last moment matters more than a lifetime of action. I strongly criticize this way of selling karma, rebirth, and an afterlife that cannot be seen or known.
Why Is Queen Mallika’s Regret Unwholesome Karma?
Queen Mallika, the wife of King Pasenadi, then appears as the opposite case. She supposedly did much good throughout her life, but a lie she had once told her husband troubled her. As death approached, she repeatedly thought of it and felt regret. Ilmuk explained that regret is a form of anger and therefore unwholesome karma. I stopped again. Regret is unwholesome? Is that really so?
Consider realizing, on reflection, that something I had diligently done because I considered it right was actually wrong. I regret having lived so foolishly. If that regret leads me to recognize the mistake, repent, and try to do good, is it not good? If regret is unconditionally unwholesome, how is repentance possible? If even the capacity to reconsider oneself is condemned, what kind of study are we being asked to undertake?
Mallika is said to have been born briefly in hell because of that regret, and then to have left it. Does saying she did not stay long solve the problem? The logic remains that someone who lived well and gave generously goes to hell for reconsidering one lie. Earlier, we were told that the strongest karma of a lifetime appears. Is that single lie stronger than all her good deeds? An internally inconsistent fiction is being presented as a case study.
I am not simply saying that every part of the Nikayas is wrong. But I emphatically criticize the attitude of burying oneself in scriptural inerrancy and accepting countless contradictions and old superstitions unchanged. That is superstitious Buddhism, not early Buddhism. The problem is believing such statements absolutely and spreading them to many people today.
The Violence of Explaining Poverty and Appearance as Past-Life Guilt
The problems in scripture are not confined to deathbed stories. There are claims that wrongdoing in a previous life produces an unattractive birth, while good deeds produce beauty. I begin by questioning the standard of beauty. Am I handsome or ugly? Even if I look ugly to you now, I might be considered handsome in another time or place. Beauty has no absolute standard.
We saw Western beauties on television and came to regard their appearance as beautiful. Now Westerners look at Korean or other East Asian idols and call them beautiful. Exposure changes standards. What was a beauty in Joseon like before television? In Japan, were shaved eyebrows and a whitened face not sometimes considered beautiful? What standard of beauty, then, governs being born beautiful as a karmic reward?
The same applies to being born into a wealthy family. A few years ago, someone asked me why some people are born rich and others poor if there is no rebirth. The premise makes rich people good people who acted well in a previous life, and poor people wrongdoers from a previous life. It praises the wealthy, powerful, and conventionally beautiful while branding the poor and powerless as bad people. That is contempt and stigmatization. Will we accept such bullshit merely because it appears in scripture?
The Arrival of Southern Buddhism Must Not End in a New Authority
I do not intend to stop criticizing Ilmuk after this one broadcast. Through his teaching, I want to continue examining the appeal to the name early Buddhism. The term itself has become so contaminated that I try to avoid it. I also try not to casually say, “The Buddha said this.” Were we standing in front of him when he spoke? If we did not hear him directly, what makes us certain that the statement is his?
Buddhism traveled north through Central Asia and China to Korea and Japan, and also south to Sri Lanka, where traditions were preserved. Among the different schools, a substantial body of the elders’ Nikayas survived in Pali and was transmitted again. In the Korean development I described, southern Buddhist material increasingly arrived from the 1990s onward. Japan had encountered its impact earlier.
As background, I discussed Max Müller’s translation work. The Sacred Books of the East project translated not only Buddhist texts but various Indian works, including the Vedas; Buddhist literature was included in the handling of Sanskrit and Pali texts. Japanese scholars participated in that learning, and Korea was influenced through Japan. I also recalled matters discussed earlier, such as Beopjeong’s Upanishad translation. Opening a route to compare new bodies of literature is meaningful.
The arrival of southern Buddhism shocked many people with the realization that Mahayana scriptures were later compositions. Their belief that scripture automatically means the Buddha’s words was broken once. That is a benefit. But the criticism stops when it reaches their own side: Mahayana is not the Buddha’s teaching, while only the Nikayas are. Having broken one authority through comparison, we must now read the Nikayas critically too. If we criticized old scriptures only to absolutize new ones, we have returned to the same place.
That is why I say that if everything in the Nikayas really were the Buddha’s words, I would rather not believe the Buddha. Why insist on attributing all the contradictions and superstitions to him? Of course I do not know what he actually said twenty-five hundred years ago. I cannot even be certain about the person who existed, and even if he did, he may not have thought as we do in the twenty-first century. Right and wrong statements might have been mixed together. What we need to do now, therefore, is filter out superstition.
Councils and “Thus Have I Heard” Cannot Replace Verification
If the claim is that a text is the Buddha’s teaching because it was memorized at a council and passed down, we need to be told which scriptures were present at that council. Instead of giving that list, people call the entire current canon the result of the councils. Later stories are swept into that authority. Whether a council occurred and whether every present sentence has been transmitted unchanged from it are different questions. Do not use the word council to turn later fiction into the Buddha’s direct speech.
The same applies to “Thus have I heard.” Why begin that way? In my view, it grants authority to a story someone has composed. Instead of saying, “I wrote this,” the writer says it was heard from the Buddha. That is how I view the Diamond Sutra’s setting in Anathapindika’s grove, Subhuti, and the encounter in which the Buddha supposedly spoke. There is no reason to apply that criticism only to the Diamond Sutra and exempt the Nikayas.
The story of Moses going up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments likewise says that God gave them, not that Moses wrote them. The Code of Hammurabi also places divine authority at the front. Hammurabi and those around him would have discussed and written it, yet it is presented as received from a god. Turning human writing into the speech of transcendent authority is an old practice. I regard such formulas not as evidence of fact, but as devices of authority that deserve questioning first.
If There Is Non-Self, Who Goes to Heaven or Hell?
In the Nikayas’ rebirth stories, the self is always at the center. I did wrong, so I will be born in a bad place. If I want a good destination, I must give, even at the last moment. I call this rebirth with a self. It assumes an I that continues after death. However often the word non-self is attached, the actual account revolves around that I.
Anatman means there is no such thing continuing after death. If the world is dependently arisen, how could something independent and unchanging move elsewhere when a person dies? Names such as atman, god, sattva, jiva, or soul may differ, but the premise is the same: I continue after death and go to heaven or hell. Something unobservable and unknowable is assumed to exist, and stories are built upon it.
When non-self and rebirth do not fit together, another explanation is invented later, such as the candle analogy in the Questions of King Milinda. One flame lights another, continuity is asserted, yet it is not the same I. I regard this as a later invention designed to attach rebirth to non-self. If the two really are different, why must I suffer for a past-life action I cannot even remember? How is it an explanation to say I was born poor or unattractive because of something done by someone who was not me?
I locate a foundation of Buddhism in not pretending to know what cannot be observed. While admitting that I do not know what the historical Buddha actually said, I can still state clearly the standard of Buddhism I accept. Do not present something you have not verified as fact on the authority of scripture and commentary. I criticized both Ilmuk and the tradition that appeals to early Buddhism from those two angles.
Why Accounts of Heaven and Hell Differ
After the main discussion, I read viewers’ comments. One question asked whether many people speak in common of heaven and hell. I replied that the accounts differ across places and times. Incompatible descriptions cannot all be true. If one is right and another wrong, how can the mere fact that many people tell such stories establish their truth? I regard them, in effect, as falsehoods.
Another viewer asked whether scriptures were created and adopted to reduce crime and rebellion in governing a country. I often say that much of scripture is political. A passage may serve society, a particular organization, or the standpoint of those in power. We should examine which relationships its content preserves and whose interests it serves.
A God’s Law or a Ruler’s Law?
Many remember the Code of Hammurabi through “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” But are a slave’s eye and an aristocrat’s eye actually treated equally? If the relation is not one-to-one, whose standpoint does the law express? Was it written by a god or from the position of kings and aristocrats? Telling people not to steal from an owner without asking whether the possession is truly theirs raises the same issue. Calling for sharing is different from making ownership absolute.
Of course I recognize the need for social agreements. We cannot live together where nobody trusts anyone and people stab one another in the back. Such agreements can help people. But absolutizing that one aspect leads to demands for perfect non-killing, including not killing a single mosquito. Alongside demands to follow rules, the Buddhism I understand points toward not clinging to them—not becoming fixated on a fixed verbal formula.
The adoption of Buddhism by Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, and the cases of China and Japan, should also be considered politically. A king adopts Buddhism and promulgates laws. This is connected with the formation of a ruling class able to impose social agreements. Force alone cannot always secure obedience, so people’s thinking is trained and they are threatened with an afterlife. Perhaps such methods were needed in the past, or suited rulers’ tastes. Does that mean we must still repeat them as facts today?
Established Religions Create the Soil for Cults
If the afterlife, souls, second comings, Maitreya, and the efficacy of rites and offerings are continually taught as facts, cult leaders can build on them. “I am the returned Jesus,” “I am Maitreya,” “Give me your body or your property and you will reach heaven.” Who prepared the ground that makes such behavior possible? The leader did not invent every belief from scratch. Established Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions have already spread the underlying premises.
My criticism is that cults grow because the content of those scriptures already contains falsehoods. A well-known religion is not automatically genuine while only a smaller group is fraudulent. That is why I go so far as to say we need to discard ninety-nine percent if we are to practice Buddhism anew in the twenty-first century. Changing the name without abandoning superstition will not free us from it.
One viewer called this a method that worked when science was undeveloped. Then why does it still work amid today’s scientific development? Because solving mathematics problems and memorizing English do not automatically produce critical thinking. Critical thinking requires training too. Education is busy with memorization and writing answers, but does little to train people to actually question what they believe.
There was a request to criticize another monk, but I do not cover everyone on every occasion. Here I directly examined Ilmuk’s claims, delivered as though diligent study had given him knowledge. To a viewer who said this was not Ilmuk alone but most monks, I answered yes. Regrettably, I see monks displaying mindlessness and anti-intellectualism far removed from the twenty-first century.
Honestly, watching the video was difficult. So many individual statements troubled me that I had to persist through more than two viewings before choosing passages. I had not deliberately hunted for this particular video; it appeared on my YouTube home page that day, and I could not simply ignore it. This does not mean you should merely believe my criticism. Watch the original along with me and consider for yourself where the statements fail to fit and which premises remain unverified.
Are Plato’s Cave and Buddhism the Same?
As I was about to finish, a viewer asked about similarities between Plato’s cave and Buddhism. I replied that although I do not particularly like Plato, we should distinguish how we read the cave story. Buddhism also has the Cave Octad, with expressions about being bound in a cave and hardened. I wonder whether cave imagery was circulating in various places at the time, but cannot declare that a verified fact.
In Plato’s story, people seated in a cave see shadows produced by light behind them. The question is whether those shadows are all there is to reality. Read as a warning against being too captivated by appearances, it may have a very limited similarity. But Plato proceeds to posit Forms. When he speaks of a Form of a cup and establishes some separate perfection, I regard that as another kind of nonsense. It should not simply be identified with Buddhism.
Some elevate Plato as though he were philosophy’s beginning, but I say we need to examine why he was criticized. If someone independently declares that an unobservable, unexperienceable thing exists, it is difficult to answer, “How do you know?” How do you know the heavenly realm is perfect? What exactly is a Form? If a few such questions unsettle the claim, how is it different from imaginative play?
Discussing Roman-period skepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism, I explained that Plato’s claims have difficulty holding their ground against such perspectives. I also said that the Academy itself later turned toward skepticism. Christianity, by contrast, drew heavily on Plato in establishing and interpreting doctrine. Asking about experience and observation is not the same as positing an unobservable perfect reality.
I also brought up Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, a work people commonly associate with the idea that knowledge is power, and discussed its criticism of Plato and Aristotle. Scientific inquiry cannot proceed by declaring things to exist without experience or observation. That is why I answered that, although there is room for a favorable reading of the cave image, Plato’s position as a whole cannot be equated with Buddhism.
Look at the Thought of the Period Behind Similarities in Thomas
Another question asked how I viewed the relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and Buddhism. Rather than declaring a direct connection between the two religions, I suggested examining the philosophies circulating at the time. In my view, even the Sermon on the Mount contains aspects worth considering alongside Epicurean, Stoic, and skeptical perspectives, and Thomas has such aspects too. Similar expressions do not immediately establish transmission from one religion to another.
We need to ask who put scripture into writing. Those able to write vast bodies of Sanskrit or Pali were not just anyone, but the period’s intellectuals and priestly classes. I see Brahmanical positions entering Buddhist literature increasingly in later periods. The process of writing the Bible raises the same issue. We should examine what Greek-writing authors saw, heard, and learned, and which philosophies circulated widely among intellectuals.
I argued that the Epicurean, Stoic, and skeptical views of the time would inevitably be reflected in New Testament material as well. Apocalyptic ideas enter from elsewhere and mix with them. The Indian notion that the world declines because people fail to uphold the law, entering Buddhism as the age of Dharma decline, has a structure similar to Revelation’s account of worsening humanity, the Antichrist, and destruction. I do not accept an age of Dharma decline as a fact. It expresses the notion that the world will perish if people fail to live well.
Every religion contains a mixture of ideas. I put it bluntly: Buddhism is a complete hodgepodge, and so is Christianity. In a dependently arisen society, can one person create an entirely pure thought unaffected by other people, culture, or the period? Ideas influenced one another, including knowledge then called religion that we might now call philosophy or science.
The region in which Christianity formed was also a corridor of exchange between the West and Persia. We should examine what its intellectuals encountered and learned, and what they wrote in Greek. I am not declaring a direct relationship with Buddhism impossible. I am saying that to understand why similarities appear, we first need to consider the major philosophies circulating around the Mediterranean and in the Roman world.
Starting with Ilmuk’s talk on death and karma, today’s conversation moved through scriptural authority and superstition, killing and morality, regret and repentance, religion and power, and philosophical questions. Do not believe something merely because it is written in a book or call it fact merely because it appeared in your mind. We need to be able to question our own beliefs again. Thank you to everyone who shared questions. Let us meet and talk again. May you become a Buddha.
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