A Good Question Is Already a Form of Study
Wednesday was a day for questions and conversation. Today’s topic came from a comment by Sorge Sorrow, who was also present in the livestream. The new humanities channel introduced itself with the lines, “Growth and awakening come not from speed but maturation. Remain with the question.” I felt this was not casual curiosity but a question matured through reflection.
We first looked up the German word Sorge: concern, anxiety, care, and solicitude. Heidegger used it for the human mode of being. Humans live by planning futures, relating to others, and caring for themselves. This connected directly to today’s topic.
The question was simple: “Please examine whether the temporal and spatial idea of ‘here and now’ in Korean Seon Buddhism is really right.” I saw this as the beginning of Buddhism and philosophy. Intelligence ignites when we stop before an established slogan and ask, “Is that really so?”
A good question is not a short demand for an answer. Study has already begun when we stop before a hardened concept and ask whether it is truly right.
Questioning, Dependent Thought, and Criticism Before the Name Buddhism
Before answering why Buddhism speaks of the here and now, I asked what Buddhism is. The label itself is not Buddhism. Skeptical, dependent, causal, and critical thinking are Buddhism. Around 2,500 years ago, traces of intellectual civilizations flared across China, India, Central Asia, Persia, the Mediterranean, Greece, and Rome. We cannot conclude there was nothing earlier; records may not have survived or been discovered.
The central fire was questioning answers set by gods, kings, and tradition. Why must I live this way? Why is a king a king? Why must a slave remain a slave? Whose property is this? Buddhism, philosophy, and science all begin here.
Thus “here and now” cannot be worshiped because a scripture or Seon master said it. We must ask what problem it addressed, what direction it indicates, and whether it is literally possible. Repeating an aphorism while banning questions turns Buddhism into an incantation.
Buddhism is not the name of an answer but an attitude of questioning. Without asking what “here and now” was meant to do, it becomes another superstition.
Religion Covers Present Inequality with an Afterlife
The first reason for emphasizing the here and now is religion’s habit of directing attention from present life to an afterlife. It tells the poor that suffering comes from former karma and promises reward in another birth or heaven if they endure and behave. Such belief may comfort someone near death, and I cannot insist that every dying person be shaken awake.
But those who spread the story as a social rule often do not want the system to change. It keeps subjects from asking why a king is king, why a noble is noble, and why a slave must remain a slave. Beneficiaries give law and religion authority and repeat that this life merely passes, so live obediently for the next one.
Poverty, war, violence, and inequality remain untouched. Buddhist stories saying wealth results from past virtue and poverty from past wrongdoing perfectly suit kings, nobles, and entrenched interests. Sending causes, reward, and punishment into former and future lives eliminates the need to question present power.
Afterlife reward can offer comfort, but when it prevents change to present inequality it becomes a slave’s law. The here and now first demands that we turn toward reality.
Ur-Nammu, Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments, and the Authority of “Thus Have I Heard”
We examined how laws and scriptures protecting current order acquire authority. The older Code of Ur-Nammu already prohibited theft before Hammurabi. Prohibitions on killing, theft, sexual misconduct, and falsehood shared by the Ten Commandments and Buddhist precepts were ancient social agreements, not Buddhism’s unique invention.
The issue is packaging human rules as divine or buddhic speech. Hammurabi’s stele depicts the king receiving law from a god. The Bible opens by attributing the words to God, and Buddhist scriptures open with “Thus have I heard.” I criticized these openings as first lies used to manufacture authority.
Short, repetitive verses can be transmitted orally. The Heart Sutra, Dhammapada verses, or “like wind not caught in a net, like a lion unstartled by sound, wander alone like a rhinoceros horn” are memorable. But claims that long prose scriptures were perfectly memorized at councils after the Buddha’s death are not credible. We should suspect later writers attaching Buddha’s or God’s name to their work.
“God said” and “I heard it from the Buddha” do not guarantee truth. Ask whether authority was borrowed to compel obedience to a human rule.
The Property Hidden Behind “Do Not Steal”
The Ten Commandments prohibit coveting a neighbor’s house, wife, male and female slaves, ox, and donkey. The writer’s social position is visible: a person already owning home, wife, slaves, livestock, and power says, “Do not even desire mine.” Would a destitute slave write the same sentence?
“Do not steal” presupposes “This is mine.” But why do air, wind, sun, rivers, and land become someone’s property? How can a person, wife, or slave belong to another? Calling an owner’s rule God’s command lets even slavery become divine order.
Land ownership is no fixed essence. War and sale change borders and owners. Israel’s claim to a promised land does not make Palestinian expulsion naturally legitimate. It is a claim guarded by power. Buddhism, philosophy, and science begin by asking, “Is it truly yours?”
Before prohibiting theft, ask what belongs to whom. A law that assumes ownership can transform a ruler’s desire into divine order.
The Social Here and Now Refuses to Postpone Reward and Punishment
The Sermon on the Mount says worry cannot add to life and tomorrow should worry about itself. Why defer all reward and punishment to an unverified afterlife? If wrongdoing requires punishment, do it now; if good action deserves reward, give it now. This is my social interpretation of the here and now.
There is no separate royal blood. A military leader becomes king and then performs rites claiming heavenly mandate, while religion crowns him and creates legitimacy. State religions use the same grammar as “Thus have I heard” and “the word of God”: they suppress dissatisfaction and secure power.
We must ask why today’s society is undemocratic, why war and violence occur, and why some can travel in space while others starve. Why does a country described as a top global power have extreme suicide, inequality, and collapsing birthrates? Politicians, philosophers, and humanists who ignore these questions have no standing to preach the here and now.
The social here and now is not meditation fixing the mind in the present. It removes excuses of karma and afterlife and asks us to repair poverty, violence, and inequality today.
Past Pain and the Second, Hundredth, and Thousandth Arrows
The second reason for the here and now is our habit of chewing over past pain. Few people laugh daily for decades over an old success, but a humiliation or assault returns for months and years. Severe shock remains in the brain and may become PTSD.
We recall failing to confront an intimidating attacker and condemn ourselves. Old violence and rape can return as pain today. The event fires the first arrow; memory and regret keep firing the second, third, hundredth, and thousandth.
I too spent a bleak year studying alone after failing university entrance. “Kicking the blanket” over an embarrassing act works similarly. We should reflect and learn, but need not endlessly punish today’s self for a completed event. Letting the past remain past is one meaning of the here and now.
The event fired the first arrow, but from the second onward I may fire again through memory. Learn from the past without endlessly sentencing today’s self.
The Unarrived Future and the Thirst of Craving
The other side is a future not yet held. When I started broadcasting, I expected people to understand immediately. After four years and 2,400 subscribers, a mental standard of one million would make each new subscriber invisible and leave only deficiency.
“I will be satisfied only after achieving that” turns aspiration into thirst. A child loses interest in a desired toy and asks for another. The mind moves toward what is absent. Aspiration is not inherently bad, but conditioning happiness on its result makes the present continuously unsatisfactory.
Human effort acts, while completion depends on countless causes and conditions. Plant the apple tree today, but do not mortgage life to the demand that fruit must appear. Prepare and act while accepting incomplete control.
A family flower-viewing trip this spring may lack one person next year. We take existing family, body, and time for granted while pursuing what is absent. The here and now tells us not to lose what is already in our hands.
Prepare for the future without sacrificing today to thirst for results. Plant the apple tree, but do not insist that life becomes worthwhile only when it bears fruit.
Humans Cannot Literally Live Only in the Present
Then I pushed the question further: can humans really live only now? “Now” itself resists a fixed definition. Life is continuous, and nearly every action is grounded in the past and directed toward the future.
A family picnic tomorrow requires buying ingredients today and making gimbap in the morning. Even reaching for food anticipates the near future of eating. Farming, study, hunting, fishing, and broadcasting pursue ends. Humans are planning animals and cannot live without futurity.
Conversely, language, common sense, knowledge, experience, character, and the sense of self come from the past. Remove all past and there is no basis for judgment; eliminate every future and no step can be taken. An isolated present cut from past and future is a convenient concept, not a possible life.
I recalled the story of an old woman asking a monk carrying the Diamond Sutra: past mind is gone, future mind has not arrived, present mind flows—where will you place the dot? The present is not a fixed point but a directional question about where the mind is placed.
The present is not an isolated point cut from past and future. It is the direction we choose now within a continuity that learns from the past and moves toward the future.
Criticizing Seon Buddhism’s Command to Empty the Mind and Stop Discriminating
Many Korean Seon teachers mistake the here and now for sitting blankly without thought. They call temporarily forgetting past and future in meditation awakening and demand an empty mind without discrimination. But humans cannot live that way.
Reflecting on the past and planning a future require thought and distinction. When war, suicide, and social breakdown occur, refusing to distinguish right from wrong produces indifference. Because Korean society and the world affect me through relations, private blank happiness is not awakening.
I criticized self-proclaimed patriarchs and awakened teachers in very harsh language. If they repeat true self, spirituality, non-self, and empty mind without understanding their terms or speaking about society, a stray dog would make a better claimant to awakening. Taking emptiness and the here and now literally without their direction produces ignorance, not wisdom.
Eliminating discrimination may abandon judgment and responsibility rather than create awakening. Thoughtless peace before war, suicide, and inequality is not Buddhist wisdom.
One Meeting, One Chance, and Wholehearted Attention to the Person Before Us
We speak of one meeting, one chance because a meeting may never return. We make another appointment, but I or the other person may die before it. That is why I try to convey what I can and meet the person before me wholeheartedly.
This does not cut away past and future. Awareness of experience and future disappearance is precisely what makes the present meeting precious. Doing one’s best now stands upon what was learned before and what may happen next.
I also admitted that my response might differ from the questioner’s intention. Genuine conversation requires asking, “Why did you ask this?” and hearing the answer. A livestream’s delay and long monologue have limits. Wholehearted meeting does not finish my answer; it opens space for another question.
One meeting, one chance does not imprison us in a point of time. Knowing we may not meet again, it asks us to attend fully and keep dialogue open now.
Being-Toward-Death and Contemplation of Bones
Later, Heidegger returned through existentialism. Humans are thrown into the world, and awareness of death can release them from idle talk and others’ gaze to decide their own lives. I rejected talk of a transcendent being as nonsense, but accepted that confronting death resonates with Buddhism.
Buddhist contemplation of bones watches corpses decay, be eaten by birds and insects, and scatter as bone. In India bodies could be left in a cold forest for exposure. Whether Gautama Siddhartha did this is uncertain, but the direction is, “You too will die like this.”
If a soul continues and rebirth follows, why confront bodily decay? This practice faces ending rather than comforting afterlife. Knowing death may come at any time makes present meetings and choices vivid and helps break rules that torture us with unreal futures and completed pasts.
We face death not to believe in another life. Recognizing that I too disappear makes today’s encounters and choices clearer.
Philosophers’ Limits and Time Compressed by Artificial Intelligence
Past philosophers mixed insight with nonsense. Nietzsche and Montaigne were no exception. Montaigne’s vast Essays contain errors alongside a human flow of questioning, reflection, and change. We must read philosophers within the limits of their periods and accessible information.
Modern people can search 2,500 years of claims and rebuttals in one place. AI begins in seconds what once required days across libraries and books. Reaching in a week knowledge that once demanded ten years resembles pulling future knowledge into the present. It feels like working with a thousand assistants smarter than oneself.
AI opens extraordinary study while threatening social disruption and suffering. Compressed labor and knowledge benefit some and displace others. We face a wave of duality unlike anything in our lives. That is why we must consider the future and change society now; literal presentism cannot understand it.
Artificial intelligence compresses time by pulling future knowledge into the present. Seeing both benefit and harm requires learning from the past and planning future structures.
Be Neither the Ant nor the Grasshopper
I concluded that aphorisms must be understood by direction rather than letters. The here and now does not mean living like a grasshopper with no preparation for tomorrow. Nor should we live like an ant preparing only for winter while losing present life.
Reflect on the past without firing repeated arrows at yourself. Plan the future without thirsting for an achievement as the sole condition of happiness. See the people, body, and society already present and do today’s work wholeheartedly, while still discerning war and inequality and preparing what comes next.
Being neither ant nor grasshopper is not a lazy compromise. It means observing which extreme holds us and continually correcting direction. Asking what “here and now” points toward and reinterpreting it in life is genuine Buddhist study.
Be neither an ant that loses the present nor a grasshopper that abandons the future. Within temporal continuity, do today’s work without bondage to craving or rumination.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.