Today I want to discuss the perfection of ethical discipline. The monks of the Jogye Order must all have received precepts. As a lay disciple, I do not know every monastic precept in detail, but I do know that monks must at least observe the five precepts expected of laypeople. I want to address three that were violated in holding the national monks’ rally: non-stealing, truthful speech, and non-killing.
The monks may immediately object: whom did we kill, what did we steal, and what lie did we tell? Before raising those questions, however, we must ask what a precept is. How could merely obeying commands turn someone into a Buddha? If a precept is understood only as a restriction one reluctantly avoids breaking, it cannot reveal the path to Buddhahood. A precept contains a spirit that leads life toward awakening.
Completing a precept means living the spirit behind its words
Jesus said he had come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He went beyond the command not to steal and told people to give even an undergarment to someone who demanded an outer garment. He went beyond loving one’s neighbor and taught love for enemies. He said to offer the other cheek when one was struck. I see these teachings as a completed form of the Buddha’s precepts. Fulfillment does not stop at passively avoiding a textual violation; it carries the original spirit of the words to its conclusion.
Stealing becomes possible when mine and yours are held as firmly separate. The Buddha lived without possessions. He begged for food and spent his life as a renunciant who did not accumulate property. He embodied such a life because he knew the precept’s essence. His disciples should understand that non-stealing ultimately points toward a life of non-possession.
Treating temples and cultural properties as one’s own is stealing
Yet the Jogye Order has abandoned non-possession and non-self and is taking other people’s money. Saying this may provoke legal action. The Order may claim that everything is being done according to law: the cultural property belongs to us, the temple containing it belongs to us, part of the mountain is our land, and this is a protected zone, so anyone passing through must pay.
Secular law may permit such an argument. Under the Buddha’s law, however, it is wrong. The land is not a monk’s personal land, and neither a temple nor a cultural artifact is a monk’s private possession. A monk is originally a person who can own nothing. Forms such as alms-begging may change with time and place. Concrete disciplinary arrangements may change, but the spirit of non-possession and non-self must not be lost.
Once that spirit is forgotten, cultural properties are mistaken for personal possessions. Leaders shout that extraordinary measures must protect them, make inflammatory statements, and tell ordinary hikers, “This is our area, so pay if you pass through.” Taking other people’s money on the strength of something that is not truly one’s own violates not only non-possession but even the outward form of non-stealing.
One must ask whether cultural property matters more than the Buddha’s law
Some may object that cultural heritage is extremely important. It may indeed matter to the Cultural Heritage Administration or to the state. A temple’s statues and pagodas may have historical value. But for a practitioner, which matters more: a cultural object or the Buddha’s law?
Shouting about protecting artifacts while lacking even the spirit of non-possession reverses the proper order. When the visible prohibition on taking what is not given is breached, it is difficult to imagine how far the inner spirit of non-possession has already receded.
Lawmaker Jeong Cheong-rae’s criticism should have awakened the monks sharply. It was like the speech of the Buddha or Jesus, a prophetic challenge offered before a mistaken power. The Jogye Order, however, did not receive it as an occasion for reflection.
An intention to destroy a critic violates non-killing
The Order attacked the lawmaker with distorted speech and gathered the intention to harm him. Thousands assembled to demand that he resign his parliamentary seat and be expelled from his party. They threatened another pan-Buddhist rally if this did not happen. Their minds were filled with the violence of seeking to remove and politically destroy an opponent.
The precept against killing is not fulfilled merely because no physical life has yet been taken. In a precept, the animating spirit matters more than the visible result. Non-killing contains compassion that abandons the wish to harm and non-self that does not rigidly divide self from other. The teaching to offer the other cheek likewise displays a completed form of this discipline. This spirit of ahimsa, or nonviolence, is why Gandhi loved the Buddha’s teaching.
When non-killing is genuinely practiced, compassion and non-self lead inexorably toward Buddhahood. That is the perfection of ethical discipline. It is no discipline to fill one side of the mind with a desire to damage another person, let greed erase non-possession and non-self on the other side, and speak only the language of compassion.
One cannot preach discipline while violating three precepts
The monks at the national rally violated discipline as practitioners. They lost the spirit of non-stealing and took other people’s money, distorted and attacked a critic, and abandoned the spirit of non-killing by threatening to end one person’s political life. As long as the promise remains that another mass rally will be held unless he resigns, the threat continues every day.
As time passes, violence continues against a politician’s lifelong work and vocation. Whatever help he has given others throughout his career is ignored while resignation is demanded. The pressure is even imposed in the name of all Buddhists, although ordinary Buddhists were never asked what they thought. Conduct close to that of Mara has been pursued under Buddhism’s name.
After hearing this, consider why I say three precepts were violated. To become a Buddha, one must not cling to the letters alone but preserve their spirit. At times the protection of people and life and the realization of compassion require placing that spirit before form. Are you truly practicing the perfection of ethical discipline? Please examine your conduct and repent.
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