The Third Critique Turns from Another Person Toward Myself
This was the third session criticizing Dr. Jeon Hyeon-su. After criticizing his claims about past lives, the wisdom eye, and supernatural powers, I did not want simply to ridicule one man and stop. We cannot look directly into his mind and determine whether he is a fraud or a deluded person who sincerely believes himself. He strongly resembles a fraud to me, but the instant I claim absolute certainty I too become someone pretending to know what I cannot know.
The question therefore changes: what should we learn from a deluded person or fraud? How do we avoid deception, and how do we avoid becoming deluded people full of certainty ourselves? Buddhist liberation is release from confinement within mistaken concepts and thoughts. The process of escaping delusion is the process of gaining wisdom.
Ridiculing another person’s delusion cannot liberate me. Criticism becomes Buddhist study when I ask whether the same structure of certainty exists in me.
The Incomprehensible Language of Ultimate Reality and a Wisdom Eye
We first watched part of an interview on the Sunny’s Growing Together channel. Its title promised “How to See Ultimate Reality by Acquiring the Wisdom Eye,” and its thumbnail said “Matter Made by Mind.” When asked what ultimate mind, ultimate matter, and ultimate reality are, the speaker cannot explain them through something observable. They are invisible to ordinary eyes and visible only to a special wisdom eye, so listeners have no way to verify what the words indicate.
Dr. Jeon says vipassana sees the attributes of dhamma, and dhamma here means ultimate mind and matter. He then says these are invisible, one must enter a state able to see them, and in that state one sees impermanence, suffering, and non-self. Dhamma, ultimate reality, ultimate mind and matter, and a state of seeing keep replacing one another. If listeners cannot follow a sentence toward the same referent, it is not an explanation.
He distinguishes awareness of a moving hand or angry mind as sati rather than vipassana, claiming one must first create a special state through samatha. That implies ordinary people cannot practice vipassana until a third eye opens. Scripture and teaching then become pointless, for only the self-proclaimed possessor of that eye can be trusted.
Do not mistake unintelligible speech for profundity. When words point to different things in every sentence and no object can be observed, language has made fog, not wisdom.
When Meditation Becomes Delusion
When a viewer said meditation becomes delusion, I answered that meditation itself is not wrong. We continually place attention somewhere while breathing, walking, reading, and working. The problem arises when someone stares at one object, reduces external sensation, and concentrates excessively. The brain may generate something of its own, and the practitioner may misread it as ultimate reality or mystical experience.
The same applies to questions about kalapas. Pronouncing an old word and labeling it ultimate matter does not clarify its object. Once we remember that an extinct language was reconstructed through related languages, there is even less reason to treat one word as the absolute name of reality. When “ultimate” is added without definition or observation, the smell of fraud should be suspected.
An image arising in meditation is not truth by itself. Without asking what was experienced and why it was interpreted that way, concentration can harden delusion into certainty.
The Question “Am I Deluded?”
Before the main discussion, I invited viewers to ask me: “You call yourself an arahant. Are you free of every mistake and delusion?” My answer was clear. I am deluded, mistaken, and full of ignorance. When I precisely recognize a delusion, I can leave it, but I cannot know the delusions I have not yet recognized.
To claim freedom from all delusion is to claim knowledge of everything. It means every thought and word one produces is one hundred percent true and never needs correction. Such a person needs neither liberation nor another person’s objection. He presents himself as an omniscient god or a fraud selling certainty.
I too watch Dr. Jeon and feel a conclusion hardening in my mind: “He is a fraud.” Yet I cannot read his mind or know the entire formation of his experience. I cannot eliminate the possibility that he believes his own delusion. The very instant I turn an inference from several examples into fact, the certainty I criticize is working in me.
“I have escaped delusion” claims knowledge even of unknown delusions. Wisdom begins not in boasting of perfection but in admitting that we do not even know everything we do not know.
Discussion Is Possible Only When Another Person Can Change My Claim
A viewer noted that human memory cannot preserve an entire film and retains only fragments and patterns. Understanding the limits of incomplete experience and memory is wisdom about humans and oneself. A person trapped in certainty cannot discuss because no logic or evidence can alter the conclusion.
People often call televised attacks or political contests debates. Genuine discussion, however, leaves room to hear a counterexample and say, “I had not considered that,” or “After hearing you, I cannot remain certain.” When my conclusion becomes identical with me, criticism of my thought feels like an attack on myself and correction becomes impossible.
If no statement from the other side can change the conclusion, it is not discussion. Dialogue begins with the ability to revise one’s words before evidence and counterexamples.
Seeing Jeon, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Kim Keon Hee and Saying “I Am Also Like Them”
I criticized the interview channel for handing Dr. Jeon a microphone merely because he was famous. Inviting someone without judging whether he is lying or deluded spreads superstition, whether from lack of discernment or pursuit of views and money.
Yet today’s study fails if we push these people away as fools utterly different from us. I strongly dislike Yoon Suk Yeol and Kim Keon Hee and criticized conduct that nearly returned Korea to an anti-democratic military dictatorship. But Yoon passed the bar examination and rose to prosecutor general, while Kim can think quickly in persuading people and pursuing her purposes. Intelligence does not prevent superstition and delusion.
The first lesson is “I too am like them.” In what other domain am I closed? Are my beliefs in rebirth, God, a continuing self, karma, good and evil, and social common sense conclusions reached through deep reflection? We may differ in what we believe yet share the structure of never questioning inherited concepts.
The thought “that person is primitive, but I am different” is itself a cave wall. The shell cracks only when I recognize the same structure of certainty within myself.
Who Am I in the Story of the Rabbit and the Turtle?
In the folk tale, we laugh at the turtle who believes the rabbit left its liver hanging in a tree and carries it back to land. Another person’s credulity looks obvious and ridiculous.
But “What lie am I believing now?” is difficult to answer. While deceived, we do not know the deception. A mistake does not feel mistaken until recognized, and a delusion operates as fact for the person living in it. If Dr. Jeon truly believes his experience, the wisdom eye and heavenly beings remain facts in his world until he recognizes his error.
The deeper our Buddhist study, the more we should say, “I was the rabbit, the turtle, Jeon Hyeon-su, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Kim Keon Hee.” We must see ourselves not as spectators of another’s folly but as humans who can believe different lies under the same cognitive conditions.
The most dangerous feature of a mistake is that it looks like fact while we are making it. That is why the habit of doubting my certainty matters more than skill at finding another’s error.
How the Different Time on the First and Thirteenth Floors Shook My World
I long assumed time flows identically everywhere and understood gravity in a Newtonian way. Learning that gravity affects residents on the first and thirteenth floors differently, so their time does not pass with perfect identity, made the world beneath me seem to collapse. The concept of time I had taken for granted into my late forties was mistaken.
The point is not to possess a new explanation as final truth. It is the shock that what felt factual throughout my life could be wrong. Time, space, gravity, love, intelligence, mind, creativity, humanity, God, karma, good and bad, like and dislike, right and wrong were mostly absorbed loosely from parents, school, books, and culture. Ability to use a word is not deep understanding.
In Dr. Jeon’s language, wisdom eye becomes dhamma, dhamma becomes ultimate reality, and then ultimate mind and matter. Words abound without a stable object or logical force. Beautiful heavenly women, long-lived deities, and gods in East Asian official dress project human desire. Calling a dog good so it can become a deity in the next life also imposes human morality to serve a doctrinal conclusion.
A familiar word is not a certificate of understanding. We see our worldview anew only by asking where a concept came from, what it indicates, and before what counterexample it collapses.
The First Verse of the Cave Octads and Stage Zero of Liberation
I read the opening verse of the Cave Octads, which I love: “Bound in the cave, covered by many things, and hardened solid, a person is immersed in delusion.” The cave is the world so familiar that it feels self-evident. The many coverings are words and concepts received from parents, scriptures, school, society, economics, and culture. Hardening means never doubting them.
The beam in my eye is a beam precisely because I cannot see it. Tell someone unaware of colored glasses to remove them and he angrily insists he wears none. Most humans live without knowing their delusions while believing they are free of delusion.
Stage zero of escaping delusion is admitting, “I am bound in a cave and covered by many things.” My thought may be inherited, something absorbed from society without reflection. Only after acknowledging this can another person’s words be heard and discussion begin.
The first step of liberation is not imagining oneself cleanly outside the cave. It is admitting that one is already inside and does not fully know the bonds.
Two Ways to Break Delusion: Observation and Refutational Thought Experiment
After acquiring a skeptical view, we ask: Where did this thought come from? How was it learned, why did it enter my mind, and is it right? Two broad routes break a mistaken concept.
First, directly observe a contrary case. Galileo’s observation of moons orbiting Jupiter created a counterexample to the claim that every heavenly body circles Earth. As observation expanded, the fixed heavenly realm above the sky disappeared. The Korean idea that father and son smoking together is inherently insolent also appeared as custom rather than absolute rule after I encountered a different culture and my father’s permission.
Second, use a refutational thought experiment. Push a claim until its gap appears. If God created the world, who created God? If God alone originally exists by himself, why cannot the same answer be applied to the world? Reaching a logical impossibility can break a claim even without direct observation.
Delusion breaks when the senses observe a contrary case or when thought is pushed until a logical gap appears. Questioning, observation, and reflection are the practical tools of wisdom.
Question How Karmic Morality Justifies Power
Questioning must also address religion’s social function. The karmic claim that kings and the wealthy occupy high positions because they acted well in former lives, while the poor and enslaved suffer because they acted badly, gives rulers legitimacy. I argued that this convenience of government helped states across East and Central Asia embrace Buddhism and build temples and stupas.
If scripture prevents us from questioning such propaganda, present inequality is blamed on a victim’s former life. Even words taught by scripture, parents, teachers, culture, and economics must face the questions: who benefits from this explanation, and under what conditions did it arise? Skepticism is not merely mental hygiene; it is a route out of concepts installed by power.
If rebirth and karma justify a king’s power and a poor person’s condition, they may be language protecting an existing order rather than a neutral law of the universe.
Buddhist Wisdom Is Training, Not a Third Eye
If samatha automatically opened a wisdom eye, the countless practitioners before the Buddha and the monks practicing for decades today should have opened the same eye. Yet no one has jointly demonstrated ultimate mind and matter. There is no third eye, and Buddhist wisdom is not a supernatural power separated from ordinary wisdom.
Buddhist wisdom comes from observing oneself, questioning, and reflecting. We need teachings, writings, and scriptures because dialogue offers other perspectives and counterexamples. If nothing can be known without a special eye, teaching and discussion are useless and Buddhism is subordinated to the authority of people claiming private experience.
I ended with the meaning of a companion on the path. When dependent reflection becomes habitual, another person can point to what I missed and I can answer, “Hearing that, I see I was mistaken.” We become true companions when criticism is understood not as an insult to pride but as help breaking the shell. I closed by hoping we become twenty-first-century Buddhas who question, observe, reflect, and break one another’s delusions.
Buddhist wisdom is the result of training, not mystical experience. We repeatedly escape delusion when we can challenge one another’s certainty, exchange counterexamples, and revise ourselves together.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.