A Broadcast Where Questions Matter More Than Answers
On Wednesday evening, March 25, 2026, I began while waiting for viewers to arrive. I first mentioned that Mr. Lee Gi-hak, who regularly attends our monthly open gathering, had asked me to criticize videos in which Dr. Jeon Hyeon-su speaks about past lives and rebirth. I announced that beginning Friday we would watch parts of several videos and examine what was wrong with them.
This evening was meant for questions and answers rather than a prepared lecture, yet I said questions matter more than answers. A small audience is an advantage because one’s question is less likely to disappear. I repeatedly invited anything—something trivial to others but important in one’s life, Buddhism and practice, social problems, or a claim heard in another video.
As long as I do not know everything, questions must continue.
Why Does a Buddhist Broadcast Criticize?
People may wonder why a program called Buddhist criticizes others so frequently. I answered that criticism is foundational to Buddhism. Buddhism is often misunderstood as living without distinguishing or disputing anything, but if liberation is its aim, we cannot avoid looking critically at our own thought.
Liberation is not escape from rebirth and not one transcendent event that ends everything. It is repeated freedom from one’s own foolish thoughts and delusions. That first requires recognizing that I may be thinking foolishly. Critical thought begins by asking, “I know, believe, and consider this right—but is it really so?”
Critical thinking lies at the heart of Buddhist liberation.
Criticizing Myself and Criticizing Scripture
Most concepts in my head were not created by me alone one morning. They came through family, school, society, books, scriptures, tradition, other people’s words, and my experience. I cannot liberate myself by observing only an isolated self while treating imported concepts as obvious.
Criticizing external knowledge and authorities therefore performs the same task as criticizing my own thought. I must ask whether a claim is observable and coherent rather than believe it because it is written in scripture, transmitted for centuries, or spoken by a famous doctor. Criticism of others can become practice that removes concepts installed within me.
Criticizing scripture and teachers means criticizing the sources of my own thought.
Does Ordination in the Jogye Order Help Awakening?
In an earlier broadcast I was asked about ordination after retirement and said I could not recommend entering the Jogye Order. Conditions vary according to temple and preceptor, but the monastic community I have observed is more likely to obstruct awakening than support it.
If an institution neglects awakening while worldly scandals, power struggles, money-driven elections, and even fraudulent supreme patriarchs are possible, entering it does not bring anyone closer to buddhahood. Robes and formal ordination do not guarantee practice. Institutions and environments are dependent conditions and should not be romanticized.
Look not at the form of ordination but at the people and conditions a monastic system actually produces.
The Undeclared Means Unable to Answer, Not Mere Silence
A question claiming that no rebirth means annihilation while atman means eternalism led first to the meaning of the undeclared. I argued that avyākata should not be reduced to “not recorded” or “the Buddha declined to answer.” It means that an answer cannot be given because the matter cannot be known.
If asked whether an afterlife exists, the right answer is that we do not know. Why? It cannot be observed by seeing, hearing, or feeling. What cannot be observed cannot be known, and what cannot be known should not be presented as knowledge. This is the basic Buddhist stance disclosed by the undeclared.
Because it cannot be observed it cannot be known, and because it cannot be known we must say we do not know.
One Person’s Vision Is Not Universal Knowledge
Even if someone says he personally saw a past life or afterlife, that alone does not make it fact. If nearly everyone else cannot verify it and he demands belief on the basis of a special ability, we should withhold belief until it can be confirmed. Private experience needs publicly available conditions before becoming universal knowledge.
The claim that others cannot see because they lack ability blocks refutation in advance. Whatever evidence appears, the claimant can escape by saying the critic lacks the gift. When unverifiable certainty is sold as truth, it becomes superstition rather than wisdom.
“Only I saw it, so believe me” is not observational evidence; it is a device for escaping verification.
The Rabbit Who Left His Liver Hanging on a Tree
I used the fable of the rabbit and the turtle. The rabbit, taken toward the underwater palace, deceives the turtle by saying his liver was left hanging on a tree on land. The turtle believes him and carries him back, although no one has verified that a liver was actually hanging there.
Believing an unobservable claim because it forms a persuasive story is superstition. The same standard applies to afterlives, the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, gods, and a being entering Māyā’s womb. Stories may be culturally interesting, but an unverified narrative cannot become Buddhist fact.
Believing the unseen liver and believing the unseen afterlife involve the same problem.
Buddhist Scriptures Are Also Full of Superstition
Buddhist scriptures contain enormous quantities of rebirth and heavenly-world stories. Yet these conflict with the foundational attitude that the unobservable cannot be known and that one should not claim knowledge of what is unknown. The label scripture does not dissolve the conflict.
If no one has seen the Heaven of the Thirty-Three or verified the acts of gods, these passages may be folktales and novels carrying Buddhist titles. To see Buddhism directly, we must criticize our own scripture and admit that un-Buddhist and superstitious elements may fill it.
Writing superstition in scripture does not transform it into wisdom.
Atman, Soul, or Any Continuing Subject Is Eternalism
Whether it is called atman, soul, true self, gandharva, or jīva, a subject that survives death is eternalism. Avoiding one word and adding a more complicated explanation does not change the claim. “I do not continue, but I continue by changing” hides rather than resolves the contradiction.
When a rock breaks into sand, a separate rock identity does not remain. Likewise, there is no observed basis for a subject carrying the present self’s rewards and punishments after body and relationships disintegrate. A soul renamed remains a soul.
Whatever name is used, saying a subject continues is eternalism.
The Scriptural Trap That No Rebirth Means Annihilation
Texts such as the Sāmaññaphala Sutta include attacks on the denial of rebirth as annihilationism. I called this a representative claim that makes Buddhism foolish. Saying there is no afterlife is not the same as saying that every process of change suddenly becomes nothing.
The binary of annihilation and eternalism cannot see dependent change. Without inventing a subject transcending death, we can still recognize that the materials, relations, and effects of a body continue under other conditions. “No rebirth means annihilation” rests on treating birth and death as events of an independent substance.
Rejecting rebirth does not reject dependent change.
The Unborn and Undying Does Not Declare an Eternal Being
The unborn and undying should not be read as a declaration that some eternal substance never appears or disappears. The world keeps changing, while we cut a segment from that flow, give it a name, and say that it was born and died.
Birth and death are useful conventions in daily life. Mistaking those conventions for fixed structures of reality gives rise to souls and afterlives. The unborn and undying does not deny change; it asks us not to reify independent birth and death inside change.
Birth and death are names humans attach to sections of a changing flow.
When Is an Egg Born and When Does It Vanish?
We say an egg is born when a hen lays it. Yet it was already forming inside the hen and did not suddenly leap from nothing. After emerging, it continues to change, becoming a chick or being eaten and becoming part of another body.
Because we define a particular form and function as an egg, we call one point birth and another destruction. In reality, materials and relations continue changing. Understanding this weakens the reason to imagine human death as a soul’s independent movement into another world.
The egg did not independently arise and cease; we called one segment of change an egg.
How Different Is Human Death from Plankton Death?
We do not imagine that every ant, cockroach, fish, shrimp, and photosynthetic plankton enters an afterlife, yet we reserve rebirth for humans. This grows from fear of death, belief in an independent self, and the delusion that human beings are essentially special.
Humans are living beings not fundamentally separate from dogs, whales, monkeys, cats, and mosquitoes. When we place humans at the center of cosmic reward and imagine that their stories continue after death, dependent origination and non-self disappear. A comforting story about death must be distinguished from fact.
If mosquitoes do not need rebirth, first question the premise that humans are cosmically exceptional.
Karmic Retribution Requires the Same Self to Continue
For present punishment to repay a past-life crime and future reward to repay present virtue, the person acting and the person receiving must be identical. If the past being is not me, I am being punished for another’s crime. If it is me, an unchanged continuity has survived death.
A severed arm and the subject after total bodily dissolution are not the same problem. Once something carrying karma after the entire body breaks down is introduced, atman returns under another name even while non-self is spoken. Rebirth-based retribution structurally requires eternalism.
If the past self is not me, punishment is unjust; if it is me, the theory is eternalist.
Rebirth Is Not a Third Way Beyond Eternalism and Annihilation
Defenders of rebirth often call it a middle way that is neither eternalism nor annihilation and then add long explanations. Yet if a subject bearing karmic responsibility continues after death, it is another name for eternalism. Without continuity, the subject of rebirth and retribution disappears.
Length does not solve a contradiction. Instead of repeating “it does not continue, yet continues,” ask plainly what continues and who receives reward or punishment. If this cannot be answered, the middle way becomes decoration concealing a contradiction rather than a solution.
Before calling rebirth a middle way, answer what actually continues.
Why Buddhists Must Attack Buddhist Scripture
When I criticize corrupt monks, the Jogye Order’s supreme leaders, rebirth, and retribution in scripture, I am told that a Buddhist is defiling Buddhism. But if nonsense appears in scripture, Buddhists should expose it first. Ignoring contradiction to protect scripture preserves faith rather than Buddhism.
The purpose of criticism is not to erase Buddhism but to separate its wisdom from superstition and authority. A religion unable to criticize its own scripture cannot honestly speak of liberation. Breaking belief releases living questions from dead texts.
To preserve Buddhism, first attack the un-Buddhist elements inside Buddhist scripture.
Biblical Criticism and Buddhist Scriptural Criticism Are Alike
Christians may assume Matthew wrote Matthew, John wrote John, and every sentence is God’s word. Critical study raises questions about unknown authors and the mixture of neighboring myths, period superstitions, cultural customs, and personal philosophies.
Buddhist scripture is no exception. We cannot criticize superstition in the Bible while protecting every sutra as the Buddha’s perfect speech. If most scripture is superstition, religion becomes meaningful only by identifying the elements that can still lead people toward love, peace, and wisdom.
Criticizing another religion’s scripture while treating mine as infallible is not self-criticism.
Ninety Percent of Scripture May Be Later Creation
I called the story that Ānanda perfectly recited all of the Buddha’s words at the First Council and monks preserved them unchanged a blatant falsehood. Early communities likely memorized central teachings and short verses; otherwise Buddhist transmission could hardly have formed.
But no evidence shows that today’s vast canon was all organized there and preserved word for word. No one can list exactly who recited every discourse and verse at that council. I argued that more than ninety percent of existing scripture may have been composed by later people.
Do not let the complete memory of one Ānanda guarantee the entire enormous canon.
The Arrogance That Only the Nikāyas Are the Buddha’s Words
Some Theravāda advocates say their Nikāyas are entirely the Buddha’s words while Mahāyāna texts alone are non-Buddhist speech. I answered that more than ninety percent of the Nikāyas may also be later attribution. The label early scripture is not proof of direct speech.
Even a wise passage close to early Buddhism cannot be established as the historical Buddha’s exact sentence. We did not sit before him, and we do not possess a verifiable record of every stage of transmission. The wisdom of content must be distinguished from the authority of authorship.
Saying Mahāyāna alone is later while every Nikāya is authentic is also unverified faith.
Gandharva and Non-Self Rebirth Are Souls Renamed
The Abhidharmakośa’s story of a gandharva entering at conception is one of many devices used to explain rebirth. Gandharva, jīva, and “rebirth without a self” are said to differ from soul, but the central claim remains that something moves from the dead into new life.
The Buddha’s birth myth likewise depicts a being in heaven entering Māyā’s womb, an imagination of self-based rebirth. When ancient imagination is rescued as doctrine rather than read as imagination, non-self becomes a label for soul theory. Look at the claim itself rather than its technical name.
Calling the moving subject gandharva instead of soul does not make the subject disappear.
Dependent Change Does Not Need a Rock’s Afterlife
The way beyond the eternalism-annihilation binary is not a third substance called rebirth but seeing the world as relational change. When a rock breaks, its material changes into sand and other forms. No separate rock identity continues in an afterlife.
I am like the rock. Conventionally we speak of my birth and death, but I am a temporary process made by countless conditions. Recognizing change and effects without turning that process into an eternal subject is dependent observation.
The continuation of change and the eternal continuation of my identity are completely different claims.
Why I Stopped Reading the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
I admitted stopping midway through a Chinese translation of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Not consulting Sanskrit or Pali was a limitation, but my impression was that too much of it served logic for logic’s sake and defenses designed not to lose arguments.
After one says that dharmas and concepts are empty, an opponent asks whether the concept of emptiness is also empty. Instead of twisting language to win, we can simply admit that this thought too is human and may be empty. We can remain open to future observation changing present understanding.
There is no need to create another absolute logic merely to defend a doctrine.
A Logic Quarreling over the Finger Pointing at the Moon
If I point to the moon and someone ignores it to object that the finger is not the moon, I can add endless explanations to defeat that objection. I felt much of the treatise resembled logic built for such argumentative defense.
Any logic can be criticized in countless ways. When we try to preempt every criticism, reality disappears and logic itself becomes the goal. Rather than explain every defect of the finger forever, return to the question that helps us see the moon together.
Seeing the moon matters more than winning by proving that the finger is not the moon.
I Will Not Pretend to Know a Treatise I Do Not Know
I clearly said that I had not read the entire treatise and did not know it well. Accurately understanding an author would require checking original language and translation problems, and I had not done that work. It is better to state the boundary than manufacture authority.
Admitting ignorance can coexist with a critical impression from the portion read. I need not say nothing because I do not know the whole, and I cannot claim mastery because I read a part. Distinguishing what is known from what is not is critical thought.
I have not read the whole treatise, so I do not know it well and will not pretend otherwise.
If a Book Takes Seven Years to Understand, Let It Go
When a comment said the treatise requires more than seven years of concentration, I sharply advised against such study. Claiming that Buddhism and dependent origination demand seven years of scholastic study locks Buddhism inside academic authority and obscurity.
Study should help break my delusion and observe where thought, action, and emotion arise in daily life. Does perfectly explaining a difficult book make anyone a buddha? Time spent mastering complexity is not evidence of awakening.
Seeing one delusion today may be more Buddhist than studying one book for seven years.
The Middle Way Treatise Is One Person’s Logic, Not All Buddhism
Calling the treatise “Buddhist logic” erases the contradictory traditions inside Buddhism. It is the logic of its author and, more broadly, one development of Prajñāpāramitā and emptiness. The vast name Buddhism contains many incompatible claims.
I too argue that emptiness, dependent origination, Prajñāpāramitā, and early Sutta Nipāta verses form Buddhism’s core, but this is my selection and claim. The name Barobul Buddhism also defines Buddhism in a certain direction. We should not confuse our interpretation with one uniform totality.
What I claim to be Buddhism and the idea that Buddhism is actually one thing are different statements.
Why Consciousness-Only Conflicts with Dependent Origination
Consciousness-only makes consciousness primary and continuing, but I argued that if it cannot explain where consciousness comes from, it differs little from an enduring substance. Dependent observation sees consciousness as a phenomenon arising through body, sense, environment, and relationship.
From my position, a school that rejects emptiness and clings to continuing consciousness is not Buddhist. Others may call me a heretic for saying so. The disagreement itself shows that Buddhism cannot be reduced to one logic. Test claims against dependent origination and non-self rather than a school name.
If consciousness alone continues, ask how that differs from an atman with a slightly changed frame.
Nirvana Is Extinguishing, Not Death
Asked about the difference between nirvana and death, I first unpacked the word. Nirvana was transliterated as yeolban in Korean. I interpreted nir as negation and the remainder as a state: something present is extinguished and disappears, as fire goes out or wind stops.
When the fires of greed, anger, and delusion die and an emotional vortex stops, this can be called nirvana. Death is the biological event of dying; nirvana is the stopping of mental agitation when its cause disappears. Making them identical removes practice from living experience.
Death is death; nirvana is the extinguishing of what had shaken me.
Equanimity, Unshakability, and Tranquility Name the Same Change
When wind stops and a lake becomes still, we can imagine unshakability and equanimity. When noise disappears, the resulting quiet is tranquility. These words do not name separate transcendent realms but describe from different angles a mind after the cause of agitation is gone.
Before nirvana, conditions made me noisy and unstable. Willpower cannot maintain quiet while those conditions remain intact. We must see what caused confusion and what vanished when quiet returned if nirvana is to be understood as an actual change in life.
Nirvana is not an eternal location but a change in which agitation stops because its cause has disappeared.
Reading Nirvana Through “No Disturbance” in the Heart Sutra
I read the relevant Heart Sutra phrase not as the common “no fear” but as “no disturbance.” Because there is no obstruction, there is no disturbance of mind. When the standard “I must succeed” collides with failure, anger, sadness, and resentment arise.
The inner obstruction “it must be this way” causes agitation. When that obstruction disappears, disturbance disappears too. The following inverted delusions and ultimate nirvana describe the same movement: leaving delusion and inverted thought brings quiet. The Heart Sutra explains nirvana as cognitive change, not death.
Because there is no obstruction, there is no disturbance: when the obstacle disappears, agitation disappears.
Liberation Removes the Beam Before My Own Eyes
Liberation means being loosened and becoming free. From what? From my delusion, mistaken thought, fixed frames of right and wrong, and compulsion to succeed. Seeing that these were obstacles shaking and tormenting me begins release.
I read Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount—to remove the beam from one’s own eye before another’s speck—in the same direction. Before judging another, see what encloses me and what I treat as obvious. Waking from delusion is personal liberation.
Liberation is not escape to an afterlife but freedom now from my own delusion.
Reconsidering Nirvana with and without Remainder
Nirvana without remainder is commonly described as the state after death. I joked that once mind, body, and concepts are gone there is nothing left to be shaken, so calling this a special nirvana is odd. Death is death. Buddhist practice should concern nirvana with remainder while alive.
Nirvana with remainder admits that a person may become quiet after release from one bond while other conditions and attachments remain. “Remainder” is not a mark of failure but a realistic recognition that a living human cannot become a perfect godlike state.
Look at bonds actually loosened while alive rather than perfect quiet imagined after death.
Perfect One-Hundred-Percent Nirvana Is Non-Dependent
If a supposedly awakened person remains eternally undisturbed when a spouse or mother dies, a child is kidnapped, or war erupts, the claim contradicts dependent origination. Humans are part of the world and affected by relationships and events. A state immune to every condition imagines an eternal god.
Bondage arises dependently, noise arises dependently, and quiet liberation also arises through causes and relations. A living human’s nirvana therefore cannot remain one hundred percent forever. One delusion may end and quiet may appear, while another condition can shake us again.
Perfect and eternal nirvana turns a dependent human into a non-dependent god.
The Joy of a First Liberation and the Return of Agitation
A practitioner can break one delusion and suddenly feel the mind relax. Once an attachment is recognized, the disturbance it caused disappears with its cause. I described this as resembling the first beginning of stream entry.
For a moment it may feel as if everything has been awakened, but another problem later shakes the mind. This experience teaches both the reality of liberation and the meaning of nirvana with remainder. Do not mistake one period of calm for universal completion.
One delusion breaking creates real quiet, but it is not the end of every delusion.
Because Every Person Is Bound Differently, Liberation Continues
People are bound to different objects, and one person contains countless attachments and delusions. A single liberation does not release all of them at once. We must keep recognizing, “This too was a delusion; this too was a foolish thought,” and become free repeatedly.
If Buddhism contains nothing perfect and eternal, self-observation does not stop after becoming a buddha. Practice before and after buddhahood is not fundamentally different. A buddha is someone who keeps reviewing and correcting, not a finished product that can never be shaken.
Liberation is not graduation once and for all but repeated freedom from countless bonds.
A Buddha Knows the Possibility of Personal Delusion
A buddha understands that he may be a frog in a well. He says he knows what he knows and does not know what he does not know, recognizing that language and concepts are human abstractions rather than reality itself.
Such a person does not block questions with the title awakened. Because delusion can return, he continues observing and receiving criticism. An attitude admitting error is closer to buddhahood than authority claiming perfection.
A buddha is not someone who knows everything but someone who knows he can fall into delusion again.
Practice Begins with the Cave Verses
The Cave Verses describe a person bound in a cave, covered by countless things, hardened, and lost in delusion. I read the cave as the perceptual frame made by certainty, repeated exposure, social concepts, and belief.
If I do not know what binds and surrounds me, I cannot become free. I must question what appears obvious once and again, observing where the belief came from. This is liberation from the cave and the way to live real Buddhism.
Only when I ask what my cave is can a path out of it become visible.
Buddhism Is Practical Rather Than Obscure Scholasticism
When told that seven years of study are required, I said I would rather not practice Buddhism at all if it meant such obscure complexity. Buddhism’s core is not possessing a difficult logical system. Anyone can begin by discovering a delusion in life and becoming actually freer from the suffering it creates.
The broadcast grew energetic because viewers supplied questions. I closed by announcing a Friday criticism of Dr. Jeon Hyeon-su’s rebirth claims and wishing everyone buddhahood. Questions made the broadcast, and questions make practice. Do not believe blindly; ask again about scripture, teachers, and my words too.
Buddhism is not seven years of difficult argument but the simple practice of seeing and leaving a delusion today.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.