Why I Criticize Kim Tae-wan Again
This broadcast is the second part of my criticism of Dharma teacher Kim Tae-wan. I am not criticizing him to show off or make my name known. We practice Buddhism to walk a path of wisdom and live more intelligently. Yet when people hear the words Buddhahood, awakening, liberation, and nirvana for years without asking what they mean, Buddhist practice can turn them into deluded people trapped in certainty. My father practiced Buddhism all his life, but as his beliefs strengthened, he too became increasingly rigid.
A confident person attracts others. When someone declares that he has seen his nature, entered remainderless nirvana, and become a wise teacher, listeners may mistake confidence for evidence of truth. But someone unable to examine his own certainty plants the same delusion in followers. As bad currency drives out good, the awakening business that rejects questions pushes wiser speech out of society.
Korean culture often treats direct disagreement as impolite and discourages criticism of authority. Yet silence before false claims nourishes dogmatism and fascistic relations. I also reflected on how profanity and ridicule in my earlier criticism sometimes blocked the argument. I will therefore try to center the logic while retaining the force required to call a falsehood false.
Criticism is not an attempt to destroy a person. It is a condition of wisdom that prevents confident authority from dragging others into delusion.
The Central Diagnosis Is an Absence of Dependent-Arising Thought
The entire criticism can be summarized as an absence of thought grounded in dependent arising. Buddhism is a path of wisdom, and wisdom begins by observing that no phenomenon arises independently. Yet Kim Tae-wan’s account loses sight of bodily, neural, mnemonic, linguistic, environmental, and social conditions. A single inner experience becomes an awakening that transcends every condition.
His goal is a perfect state in which nothing disturbs the mind and thought and discrimination disappear. Once that goal is fixed, dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self no longer matter. “I experienced it directly” replaces scripture, logic, and other people’s experiences. Someone can then claim direct realization and Buddhahood without understanding dependent arising.
Without dependent-arising thought, one does not ask about the causes of experience. One does not examine why the mind became comfortable, which conditions of brain and body quieted thought, how long the effect lasted, or whether it occurs the same way in others. The fact of an experience immediately becomes the conclusion, “This is Buddha and remainderless nirvana.”
I do not deny the experience. I criticize the leap that ignores its causes and conditions and interprets it as perfect awakening.
Korean Buddhism Caught in the Net of Patriarchal Chan
This problem is not confined to Kim Tae-wan. Korean Buddhism has long been caught in the net of patriarchal Chan. Interpretations of non-discriminating wisdom and nirvana survived while the questions Buddhism asks and the wisdom it offers became obscure. Claims that recognizing true self, original nature, or original mind brings Buddhahood are modern forms of that old net.
Patriarchal Chan invokes “not relying on words,” mind-to-mind transmission, and directly pointing to mind while kicking away the ladder of explanation and study. Raising a staff, shouting, lifting a finger, or answering “This,” “Drink tea,” or “Have you eaten?” is presented as transmission higher than language. But an action that cannot tell the other person what to understand may be esoteric theater rather than communication.
The result is a road of thoughtlessness instead of wisdom. Words and logic are dismissed as sophistry, and one special experience supposedly transcends all study even when dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self remain unknown. With no standard for self-criticism, the claim “I am awakened” hardens. Flexibility and dialogue disappear, while those without the experience are told they cannot understand.
The greatest harm of patriarchal Chan is not that it speaks of mystery beyond words, but that it cuts off questioning, explanation, and verification and still calls the result wisdom.
How a Personal Experience Is Inflated into an Absolute Meaning
Anyone can experience a moment when thought subsides and the mind becomes comfortable. Releasing one attachment can suddenly remove obstruction and bring quiet. This may happen in meditation or in a moment of breaking a long-held illusion, accompanied by relief and joy. I do not claim that such experiences are unreal.
The problem is the interpretation added afterward: “This is my original mind,” “I have left thought and discrimination,” “This is remainderless nirvana,” or “I am a wise teacher and Buddha.” A conditioned event in an individual brain and body becomes an eternal original ground inherent in everyone. Scriptural terms are attached to the experience, and those names are then reused as proof of the experience.
This interpretation arises from a mistaken goal. Because the Buddha was first deified as a being without emotion or disturbance, a temporary experience of comfort is connected to that perfect goal. Instead of investigating what occurred, the practitioner fits the experience to a previously heard image of Buddha.
An experience may be real, but calling it remainderless nirvana and Buddhahood is another guess that requires verification.
The Title “Mind Practice Is Not Study” Is Already a Problem
The BTN video I selected for criticism is titled “Mind Practice Is Not Study.” Kim Tae-wan compares flour with foods made from flour, gold with objects made of gold, and water with waves. Just as people manipulate a formless basis into many forms, he says original mind has no fixed shape, no thought, and no knowledge.
He calls efforts to cultivate a peaceful, kind, or quiet mind fabrication and conditioned activity. One must directly experience an inconceivable awakening beyond thought and discrimination, which he calls remainderless nirvana. There is no method, it cannot be known through thought, and one must suddenly break through before an iron wall.
But Buddhism is study, understanding, and a path of intellect. Even the fact that concepts differ from reality and language has limits is understood through learning and reflection. To explain that the word “tree” abstracts countless individual trees, we need precise language. Recognizing the limits of knowledge is entirely different from discarding all knowledge.
Saying mind practice is not study kicks away the ladder to wisdom. Buddhism cannot move one step without understanding and reflection.
The Contradiction of Kicking Away the Ladder and Demanding That We Climb
Following Kim Tae-wan’s logic exposes a contradiction. Study cannot reach it; thought and language cannot know it; it cannot be seen, heard, or felt; and there is no method. Yet one is told to trust the wise teacher and the Buddhist Dharma, keep listening, and suddenly awaken one day. Every path is erased, and then one is commanded to climb it.
He says it cannot be known but asks us to listen to him, and says discrimination cannot reach it while presenting his explanation as correct study. Only experience can confirm it, yet his authority rests on claiming that he had the experience. The listener has no criterion for truth or falsehood. Failure to experience it proves only that the listener is not ready, while doubt itself becomes discriminating delusion.
In this structure, failure cannot refute the doctrine. If ten years of listening brings no awakening, the disciple has simply not broken through. If a peaceful experience occurs, it is interpreted as proof of the teacher. Because no outcome can make the teacher wrong, faith rather than verification remains.
When knowledge, method, and verification are denied while belief in the teacher is demanded, the result is not a path of awakening but unfalsifiable authority.
Remainderless Nirvana Is Not a Permanent State without Thought
Kim Tae-wan interprets an experience beyond thought and discrimination as remainderless nirvana. He reads the Diamond Sutra’s vow to bring innumerable beings into remainderless nirvana as extinguishing the mind’s countless discriminations and delusions without residue. He says the thoughtless ground must be directly confirmed.
Nirvāṇa points toward something ceasing or being extinguished. When wind stops or a wavering flame goes out, quiet follows. We can use the language of peaceful nirvana for the comfort that arises when attachment and delusion temporarily cease. But a flame going out once is different from becoming an independent, permanent state in which no flame can ever arise again.
A living human encounters new conditions and again thinks, remembers, and reacts. We grieve when a mother dies, feel pain when the body is injured, and are disturbed by new social problems. We may notice new attachment and repeatedly become free from it, but we cannot possess a remainderless state in which everything is permanently extinguished.
Liberation and nirvana are not permanent states acquired once; they are repeated processes of recognizing and leaving newly arisen illusion and attachment.
Perfect Imperturbability Conflicts with Dependent Arising and Impermanence
Perfect liberation and imperturbability mean being unaffected by any condition. Yet body and mind arise amid light, sound, brain, memory, family, society, viruses, illness, hunger, and innumerable conditions. Seeing requires light, eyes, and brain together. There is no separate object called mind existing independently of the body.
Music recalls our university years, and illness changes mood and judgment. This is a dependently arisen human being. Because conditions affect us, we cannot remain constant and are impermanent. To posit a mind never disturbed by anything is to manufacture an autonomous god rather than understand a dependently arisen human.
True self, original nature, and seeing one’s nature meet this desire for perfection. Texts say everything arises dependently while also claiming that Buddha has no pain and every defilement has vanished forever. When those claims conflict, we should not blindly trust deifying passages. We must judge again by observable human life and dependent arising.
Perfect imperturbability is not Buddhism’s final state. It is a divine quality placed outside dependent arising and impermanence.
Experience and Feeling Are Already Discrimination and Brain Activity
To report that thought and discrimination disappeared, one must already feel a difference. “Quiet,” “peaceful,” and “unobstructed” are discriminations relative to noise, anxiety, and obstruction. If nothing at all could be felt or known, the person could neither confirm the experience nor remember and describe it.
Linguistic thought is not the only brain activity. Feeling, sensation, attention, memory, and experience are also activities of brain and body. Feeling peace and later recalling “There was no thought” both require discrimination and memory. Experience occurs within conditioned human cognition, not in a mystery outside discrimination.
The phrase “I did not know it through discrimination; I experienced it directly” defines discrimination too narrowly. Direct seeing, lifting a finger, striking with a staff, or exchanging a glance all require distinguishing and interpreting signals. The contrast in which writing is discrimination but action transmits the essence directly does not hold.
The claim that experience lies outside discrimination results from failing to observe how experience is felt, remembered, and described.
Meditation Brings Quiet but Cannot Replace Wisdom
Meditative concentration can reduce mental noise and temporarily calm distress. It can provide rest when life is overwhelming and help us step back from attachment. There is no need to deny this benefit. Yet when we leave meditation and meet family and society again, new emotions and problems arise.
Wisdom is the ability to understand what I mistook, which conditions produced a problem, and which choices are now possible. It requires observation, questioning, comparison, and reflection. A meditation that suspends thought cannot by itself tell society how to prepare for artificial intelligence or reduce violence and inequality.
Discipline, concentration, and wisdom should not be read as a ladder on which prolonged concentration automatically yields wisdom. Meditation may create space for observation, but without subsequent reflection and self-criticism it does not become wisdom. Absolutizing quiet as awakening can instead stop practical judgment and compassion.
Meditation may be a tool for rest, but wisdom arises when we question and reflect on what we observe.
The Imperfection of Knowledge Is Not Anti-Intellectualism
Human knowledge is incomplete. Language abstracts reality, while memory and judgment can fail. We should therefore question what we know and compare other perspectives and evidence. This is critical thought. But the incompleteness of knowledge does not imply that every thought and item of knowledge must be discarded.
If every knowing is labeled discriminating delusion, we cannot understand non-arising and non-ceasing, name-and-form, or non-self. To leave an illusion created by a concept, we must explain how the concept formed and what it hides. Criticizing the limits of language is itself intellectual work that uses language and concepts precisely.
Teaching people to stop thought and seek no knowledge slides into anti-intellectualism. If the wise teacher cannot be understood but must be trusted, and questions must be dropped as discrimination, disciples surrender judgment. Buddhism itself survived because Buddhas and wanderers spoke, debated, remembered, and recorded.
The skepticism “My knowledge may be wrong” is the opposite of the anti-intellectual command “Abandon all knowledge.”
Absolutizing No Reliance on Words and Mind-to-Mind Transmission Creates Superstition
When speech is difficult, we can use drawings, gestures, mathematics, programming code, or action. What matters is not verbal versus nonverbal but whether the other person receives information accurately and can judge independently. Even responding to a finger tap by bringing water depends on interpreting a signal through prior experience and convention.
When the flower sermon and mind-to-mind transmission are treated as historical truth, verification disappears. “It cannot be said” and “You must experience it directly” become shields protecting a claim from criticism. The moment an unobservable and unspeakable something must be believed, superstition begins.
I do not tell viewers to watch only my channel or hear only my words. Wisdom exists outside Buddhism—in Christianity, Legalism, Mohism, philosophy, and science. We should read widely and criticize my claims too. A teaching that says not to look elsewhere but trust only the wise teacher is gaslighting rather than wisdom.
No reliance on words is not a command to abandon language. When paths of understanding and verification are blocked, mysterious teaching becomes superstition and control.
Public Criticism Must Leave Room for Reply and Self-Correction
I criticize Kim Tae-wan forcefully and in public. If I misrepresent him, he can respond in a video or text, and we can converse. But because I criticized statements he has made for decades, he should first hear the argument and identify specifically what is wrong. Merely saying I must ask him personally does not erase the meaning of a public statement.
During the broadcast, a viewer pointed out that I muted his chat while allowing another person to continue and that this was partial. I acknowledged the point and apologized. I believed one person was disrupting the program, but my judgment could itself be partial. Accepting a correct criticism is one example of the self-criticism I advocate.
I must keep examining the expression and tone of criticism. I thought shouting and profanity communicated the problem more effectively, but some listeners became stuck on the tone and missed the argument. I will not try to eliminate all anger. I must observe the result and revise my method according to what communicates more wisely.
Someone who speaks of awakening should not block criticism but hear concrete objections and revise mistaken judgments.
Dialogue Helps the Other Person Develop Voluntarily
A genuine Buddha’s teaching does not subordinate another person to the teacher’s experience. It listens to which illusion traps the person and why they suffer, then helps them understand and make their own next judgment. Questions and explanations must fit the person’s conditions and level of understanding. This is dialogue.
Speech, writing, and action are all means of carrying information. We should select the clearest and most precise. A circle or staff may be used if it communicates sufficiently, but not because it is inherently higher than language. If the listener misunderstands, we need another analogy or sentence, must check their understanding, and invite further questions.
Kicking away the ladder prevents voluntary development. People repeat the teacher’s words while waiting for sudden awakening. Dialogue instead builds the ability to examine one’s thought, compare perspectives, and walk independently. Living like a Buddha is not one experience but the cultivation of this self-critical attitude.
The purpose of dialogue is not to inject an answer but to help another person discover their illusion and make a wiser judgment independently.
Buddhism Is a Path of Wisdom for Real Life
A viewer asked what Buddhism is and what truth the Buddha taught. I answered that Buddhism is the path of finding how to live more happily and wisely in present reality. It is not entering another-dimensional state by abandoning reality. It observes the immediate task and cause of suffering and makes a judgment we can act on now.
Buddhist study has helped my life. I learned ways to address suffering and refine thought, and it helped me remove many long-held illusions. Acquiring critical thought took me a long time. I broadcast in the hope that others can find a shorter road than the one on which I wandered.
A wise life does not possess perfect answers. It acknowledges ignorance, makes a judgment, observes the result, and corrects an error. Because the world and its conditions continually change, yesterday’s answer may not fit today. Buddhism is the dependently informed effort to find the best available response within change.
Buddhism is not a state transcending reality but wisdom that examines real conditions and continually seeks the best path presently available.
Become Free from Both Ora and Pāram
I understand an old Buddhist core as wisdom that becomes free from both ora and pāram. Ora is worldly desire on this side: a life swept away by beauty, money, reputation, pleasure, likes, and dislikes. Yet after leaving the worldly, the pursuit of immortality, escape from rebirth, supernatural power, absolute purity, or perfect imperturbability is another desire called pāram.
Pāram means crossing, the farther shore, and the transcendent desire for the highest. Translating the terms only as this shore and the other shore hides the problem. Siddhārtha is said to have left worldly life, denied bodily desire, and practiced asceticism to escape aging, illness, and death. Seeing that pursuit of pāram as a vain thought and changing direction gives rise to the wisdom of leaving both ora and pāram.
Unsurpassed complete awakening also creates an image of the highest. How could one know that I am supreme or this awakening is complete? A Buddhism that warns against transcendence but then establishes a highest state contradicts itself. Kim Tae-wan’s belief that he attained perfect remainderless nirvana is the same illusion of having reached pāram.
We must become free not only from worldly desire, ora, but also from pāram, the desire for perfection and transcendence.
There Is No Perfect State, Yet We Must Continue to Judge
Buddhism can be compressed into the short phrase, “There is no such thing.” There is no eternal true self, perfect imperturbability, or final awakening that knows everything. But we cannot stop in nihilism and say nothing exists. We still decide, act, and live with others every day.
That is why thought grounded in dependent arising is necessary. We examine causes and conditions, recognize the limits of our knowledge, and still make the best judgment available from current information. When evidence shows that judgment wrong, we revise it. Observation, speech, writing, criticism, dialogue, and experience all serve as tools in this process.
Buddhism is not reaching a perfect state once. When certainty, attachment, and disturbance return, we recognize them and repeatedly become free. Instead of kicking away the ladder and waiting for the sudden, we question, understand, and converse, living one step more wisely today. That is what becoming a Buddha means to me.
Nothing is perfect, yet judgment must continue. Buddhism is the effort to find the best course through dependent-arising thought and correct our errors.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.