Why I Am Criticizing the Monk Beopsang for the Fifth Time
I wanted to stop criticizing the monk Beopsang. Yet his talks expose, with remarkable clarity, problems we inevitably encounter in practicing Buddhism. They provide such concrete examples of what we should not do that I cannot avoid discussing them again. This is the fifth installment. I am not criticizing merely for the sake of criticism. I want to examine what is wrong and go on to ask how we should actually practice Buddhism.
My title is “Study Without Understanding Is Useless,” and the subtitle is “Korean Buddhism Ruined by Mindlessness and Anti-Intellectualism.” What happens when people practice Buddhism in a way that refuses to use the intellect or rejects it altogether? People caught in that approach attach every conceivable name to their experiences: awakening, non-discrimination, oneness in waking and sleeping, or non-self. But giving something an impressive name does not make it Buddhism. I want to explain why this is not the Buddhist path.
This problem matters not only to those who listen to Beopsang, but also to people who repeatedly listen to various teachers of Seon Buddhism. More important than what someone claims to have realized is the kind of thinking their words produce and how those words function in actual life. I am using a criticism of Beopsang as a way to say something I believe you need to hear.
What “Study That Is Not Understanding” Promises
The video we watched was one of Beopsang’s lectures on the Song of Enlightenment, titled “Study That Is Not Understanding—What Is the Experience of Awakening?” Its thumbnail said “Study That Is Not Understanding,” “‘Ding’ (the sound of a bell),” and “Just This.” That is why I chose the title “Study Without Understanding Is Useless.” I want to question directly the claim that this is a form of study that does not proceed through understanding.
I see this as selling an illusion under the name of awakening. The greater problem is that the speaker himself believes it to be unmistakably Buddhism and awakening. That does not mean I intend to dismiss every statement in the video as wrong. Some statements are right and others are wrong. We therefore listened to an actual excerpt and examined what was problematic in it.
In the excerpt, Beopsang says that people come to believe all their searching was meant to lead them to this particular teaching. They no longer need to wander in search of a practice; an inexplicable conviction arises that this is the final path. This is precisely where I stop and ask: Where does the certainty that “this is the path” or “this is the final answer” take you?
When Stronger Conviction Means Fewer Questions
A conviction that stops questions can lead you down a path that has nothing to do with wisdom.
What I repeatedly warn against is that certainty and sense of self-evidence. Once you are submerged in them, instead of gaining the wisdom needed to live wisely, you sink into the belief that “I have awakened” or “this is it.” You then live without further questions, without even a question mark. I call this the height of mindlessness and anti-intellectualism, and I believe it has ruined Korean Buddhism.
In the next part of the video, Beopsang speaks of people who spent ten years here or five years there without finding an answer. They had thought awakening could not happen in this life and that they must accumulate merit across successive lives. Once their faith in this study becomes firm, he says, they come to hear him in person and their lives change. Having finally found it after all their searching, they become certain that all they need do now is continue with this.
He also gives the example of older women who tell him, “What a relief that you are younger than I am.” Their request that he stay healthy and continue teaching, he explains, expresses a firm commitment to pursue this study until they die. Once that power of faith arises, they cannot turn back. Because it is clear to them that no higher study exists, they continue forward, however slowly. He calls this the power of diligent practice.
Listening to this, I thought that a person does not necessarily need bad intentions to gaslight others. I am not declaring Beopsang a fraud. How could I know that without entering his mind? The same applies when I discuss Kim Taewan. My strong criticism is not an attempt to judge someone’s hidden intentions. Its focus is the way these teachings produce the conviction that “this study is the final answer” and “this is the supreme goal.”
A Study That Leaves the Bell but Excludes Understanding
But what was the title of this study that people are encouraged to regard as the final answer? “Study That Is Not Understanding.” A bell is struck or something is tapped, and people are told that this is study without discrimination, something they cannot reach through understanding or through the mind’s intellectual activity. At the same time, it is repeatedly presented as Buddhism’s final goal. Those who come are held to this one practice and told to do only it.
Questions should arise: “Is this right?” and “Is this the right path?” Instead, questions stop, leaving only the instruction to listen again and again. When the command not to understand or think things through is combined with certainty that this is the highest study, people are held in place and made into fools. I criticize that structure as the same as a cult, differing only in its outer shell.
What concrete problems arise, then, when Buddhism is practiced without understanding? To someone certain that “it is non-duality,” “it is one mind,” or “this is the final awakening,” I want to present several actual situations. If you claim to have practiced Buddhism, that study must function as wisdom in life, applicable and helpful in living. This fundamental premise must come first.
A Question for the Advice to “Live Lightly”
Buddhism must be applicable and helpful in my actual life as wisdom for living.
Beopsang often advises people to live lightly. Rather than carrying the weight of insisting that this must be done, that is right, or something else is wrong, he tells them to live lightly. What lies beneath that advice? The claim that what you see is an illusion made by your mind. I propose that we take this claim at its word. Is living lightly really all that is needed?
During the broadcast, a viewer responded, “Here we go again.” I said that anyone who wanted to rebut me was welcome to do so directly in the live discussion. Instead of merely objecting to my words, they could answer the question. I was asking them to respond to concrete examples that reveal what happens when people stop at the word non-duality and become trapped in mindlessness and anti-intellectualism.
Suppose a robber appears before your mother, holds a knife to her throat, and threatens her. Can you be lighthearted then? Or suppose you accidentally disclose a state secret while working. Or perhaps you are accused of something you never did and subjected to water torture by an agency like the old security service while being forced to confess. Can you treat life lightly then? These questions require actual answers.
Can We Be Lighthearted in the Face of Disaster and War?
We remember the Sewol ferry disaster. I have worn a yellow ribbon in my broadcasts, and when its anniversary comes around we speak about it again and carry it in our hearts. Sewol is not the only case. Young people who came to enjoy Halloween in Itaewon crowded into an alley, and many lives were lost. Can you receive those deaths lightly? I am asking whether “live lightly” applies unchanged in such circumstances.
There is also the war between Russia and Ukraine. One might say that something looks tragic from close up and comic from a distance; because we are not experiencing that war directly, it may feel like a distant country’s affair. But what about the Korean War? Bombs and missiles fell, bullets poured down, people were killed as alleged spies, and people killed one another with guns and blades amid ideology and war. Can that be taken lightly?
I am not listing these cases for sensational effect. I am examining the realities that a statement must answer to when it is offered as a truth applicable to everyone. Do your mother’s death, pain inflicted on your body, and the deaths of your neighbors all become light merely because you change your mind once? Can the phrase “one mind” replace actual judgment and wisdom?
We Do Need to Examine the Traps Made by the Mind
Of course, Beopsang may not have those extreme cases in mind when he advises people to live lightly. I acknowledge that. People do suffer because they are bound by concepts of their own making. They may insist on living in a fine place, wearing impressive clothes, becoming rich, or ask why they alone are ill, and fall into traps they themselves have made.
We can ask such a person, “What is the concept you are holding on to?” or “Why are you bound to it and tormenting yourself?” If they believe something must be right or must be done without thinking critically about it, we can point out that their own thoughts are tormenting them. Beopsang often speaks in this way. I am not rejecting every such statement.
But moving directly from there to “this world is an illusion,” “your mind created it,” or “life passes like a dream, so live lightly” creates a very different problem. The fact that some concepts create unnecessary suffering is not the same as the claim that every real suffering is an illusion made by the mind. If you collapse these into one claim without understanding, no practical wisdom emerges when circumstances differ even slightly.
The Two Burdens I Carried Throughout My Life
I, too, carried two burdens throughout my life. On one side was “I must”: I must lift my family’s circumstances and earn a great deal of money. On the other was “I want”: after making money, I wanted to drive a good car, live somewhere nice, be respected by others, and change education and the world. Carrying both what I thought I had to do and what I wanted to do, I tormented myself.
What did I need in order to dismantle those burdens? I am an impermanent being who might die tomorrow. I had to see that, by staking everything on a future that might never materialize, I was wasting today and this moment while tormenting myself. I needed to understand the structure of what held me captive.
This does not mean abandoning effort toward a goal. It means understanding that, even while working for tomorrow or for what I want to do, I must be able to live with satisfaction today, in this moment. Only after that understanding does the burden on my shoulders change. I can do the same work while feeling much less weight in my mind. In that sense, we can advise someone to live lightly. But this lightness comes from understanding, not from discarding it.
Would You Say the Same Thing to People Under Bombardment?
If, on the other hand, you say the world is an illusion of your own making and therefore you should live lightly, I will ask again. Another example I raised in the broadcast was Israel firing missiles and bombs at Hamas, with children and adults killed and schools and hospitals attacked. How will you explain that through the concept of non-duality? If you tell people under bombardment, “Live lightly. It depends on your mindset. Accept it all,” does Buddhism become applicable to their lives?
There are people over whose heads bombs fall, whose friends and comrades die beside them, whose spouses and children die. Will you go to them and say, “This world is an illusion, and your pain was created by your mind”? Some people simply cannot live lightly on the strength of that instruction. The issue is not confined to whether I alone feel comfortable. In reality, even the attitude of seeking comfort only for myself resolves nothing.
What kind of wisdom is it to claim awakening while being unable to answer a single question, and continually persuade others that the place you have reached is the highest one? I have not brought in a whole collection of doctrines today. I have taken one piece of advice—live lightly—and asked whether it actually works. If you cannot answer even that, what has been resolved?
Am I Saying We Must Always Live Under a Burden?
A counter-question may arise: “Then how are you telling us to live? Must we carry the whole world on our shoulders? If the Itaewon disaster occurs, must we think about nothing else all year?” That is not what I am demanding. Nor am I asking you to carry a burden like vowing, as Ksitigarbha does, not to become a Buddha until everyone else has become one or everyone has been brought out of hell. How could a human being live that way? That, too, may be another desire to become a god.
But the world is not a place where we can live lightly all the time. Some burdens must be received as burdens. I may be in difficulty, or it may be a neighbor or someone in another country. The moment even those realities are treated lightly, concern for social, economic, and cultural problems disappears. If everything is made by my mind and all I need do is accept it, then whatever happens to anyone in the real world ceases to matter.
The thinking can become: whatever Trump does, whatever Yoon Suk Yeol does, whether North Korea fires missiles or Russia and Ukraine go to war, all I need do is live lightly. This is why I say mindlessness and anti-intellectualism have ruined Korean Buddhism. An invitation to examine the mind is transformed into permission to turn away from society and the world.
Living Through Dependent Arising Means Responding to Society Too
Some suffering requires examining my thoughts; other suffering requires society to change.
If you merely lift and strike a staff, ask “Do you understand?” and become absorbed in non-discrimination, you become ignorant of worldly affairs. I criticize many people in Korean Buddhism, with very few exceptions, for their indifference to social problems and inequality. When someone discusses politics or economics, the response is, “Why is a Buddhist discriminating?” or “Why are you talking about that?” Such responses do not protect Buddhism; they stop intellectual engagement.
Those who practice Buddhism should be the very people who live through dependent arising. We must examine how our thoughts and concepts torment us, recognize when we are attached to something misguided or pursuing something pointless, and free ourselves from it. At the same time, we must understand that some problems do not disappear merely because we settle our own minds. Examining causes and conditions also reveals problems that require changes in society.
Sometimes I need to go and help in person. Sometimes help takes the form of words, and sometimes of action. At times I need to participate in society and add my voice to others. Making those judgments requires understanding. Holding on only to the claim that everything is one does not generate the wisdom to judge what help is needed and when.
At this point I spoke harshly. If they cause harm instead of helping the world, would twenty thousand stones not be better than twenty thousand monks? People at least eat and defecate; stones do neither, and they do not talk nonsense. I was criticizing a situation in which a few good words are followed by talk of karmic retribution, misguided prayer, incantations, and rebirth that leads people astray. If they merely repeat empty prescriptions without offering wisdom for actual living, what are they there for?
We Are Human Beings, Not Stones
You might say, “Everything is simply the result of things coming together and separating; everything is me, and it can all be left to flow.” But the person saying this is a human being. We are living creatures. Miss a meal and we feel hungry; fail to move our bowels properly and our stomach may hurt terribly. What does it mean to erase those human conditions and take a position where nothing that happens matters?
Recognizing that some suffering comes from my misguided thoughts differs from claiming that everything is caused by thought and that the absence of thought and discrimination is awakening. What wisdom can arise from the latter position? I asked whether one could tell everyone to live lightly, and went so far as to criticize that attitude as psychopathic. How is it different from wanting every person in the world to live like a stone?
I criticize an attitude that remains indifferent when the Itaewon disaster occurs, when Yoon Suk Yeol imposes martial law, or when people die in missile attacks. Worldly affairs cannot always be regarded lightly. Putting down unnecessary burdens I have created for myself is not the same as treating another person’s suffering as nothing.
Questioning the Desire to Become Perfect
Someone may ask, “I want Buddhism to free me from all pain so that nothing troubles me. If some things must still be received as burdens, why practice Buddhism?” To a person suffering unnecessarily because they are bound by concepts of their own making, I say: look at that misguided attachment. But I cannot tell everyone that their suffering is a matter of mindset. That does not examine the person or the situation.
We need to know that we may be frogs in a well, know that we are human, and live from a human standpoint. We should not hold on to the desire to become perfect. Yet the illusion of complete awakening, the highest awakening, or “this very place is that place” produces neither thinking through dependent arising nor questions. If all year long you repeat that this is not study done with the intellect, what sort of study is it?
There is no study in abandoning thought and questions. I said: do not practice Buddhism without dialogue, thought, or intellect. That is not the real Buddhist path. To put it harshly, it only produces idiots who pretend to be intelligent while remaining stupid. The question I am asking—“How should we live?”—is itself a genuine hwadu, a question for inquiry. We must use it to challenge the posture of claiming knowledge after questions have stopped.
Can We Tell People Facing Inequality Merely to Change Their Minds?
In an earlier broadcast, I even told Beopsang to stop talking nonsense, stop broadcasting, and come see me. Here again I emphasize that he needs to carry questions within himself. Instead of declaring his current teaching the highest awakening, he needs to ask what his words mean in reality. I could bring hundreds of questions, but today I am asking one.
Inequality can be so severe that some people go hungry and their children cannot receive a proper education. Meanwhile, people who call themselves wealthy or elite boast that their own excellence made them rich and spout bullshit about poor people not working. Will you tell people to live lightly even then, because it supposedly depends only on their mindset? Shaving your head and calling yourself a monk does not exempt you from these questions.
What I have raised today is only a tiny portion of the many questions I have always carried. Even after I thought I had become something, questions kept arising. If someone says to live lightly, we should ask whether that is really possible; conversely, we should also ask whether we can always live under a burden. I am not trying to hand you a single correct answer today. I want you to carry the question within yourselves.
Buddhism should not be treated as making all suffering disappear as though it never existed. Some suffering cannot be resolved through the mind alone. Erase that fact, and both the questions and people’s actual lives disappear from view.
To a Viewer Asking What Makes an Arahant
A viewer asked what qualifies someone as an arahant and said they wanted to attain unsurpassed perfect awakening. I replied that I had never described myself as an arahant who had attained such an awakening. I do not use that term for myself and reject the concept itself. An arahant as I understand it is not someone who has reached a lofty, perfect state and never says anything wrong.
It is someone who has begun to understand even themselves through dependent arising, someone in whom questioning has become embodied and who continues to ask questions. It is not a person who accepts words such as Buddha, arahant, or unsurpassed perfect awakening without knowing what they mean merely because they learned them or read them in a book. It is someone who thinks critically when another person makes a claim, asking, “Does that really exist?” and “What is it?”
I look at whether observing oneself and the world has become part of daily life, whether one lives in a Buddhist way, continually sheds old skins, and is ready to become free again. Can one ask questions in conversation and bring forth wisdom in oneself? Can one help the other person gain wisdom too? That attitude is what I mean by an arahant. The viewer can live that way as well. It is not a rank from which to boast of extraordinary height.
Even if you have attained some realization, how can you establish that it is the highest? To call it the highest, you need comparison. But can you compare your realization with that of every other person? If not, you cannot know it is the highest. This is why I call the very term unsurpassed perfect awakening un-Buddhist. Nor is the problem resolved by saying, “Confirm this place and you are a Buddha.” My focus is not a particular state, but an attitude toward life that thinks through dependent arising.
Where Does the Wisdom in Precepts, Concentration, and Wisdom Appear?
Another question concerned the wisdom in the threefold training of precepts, concentration, and wisdom: what exactly does it mean, when online explanations differ? I replied that I do not regard precepts and concentration as Buddhism’s core; wisdom, the question of living wisely, is central. To avoid leaving wisdom as a vague word, we need to return to the question I raised earlier.
One person may live under a crushing burden because they are deeply attached to the belief that something must be done or resolved. They torment themselves by asking why they are poor or unattractive. We can help that person ask whether misguided thinking is generating their suffering. Words that help them step out of a treadmill of self-inflicted distress can be an expression of wisdom. They can also move toward that way of thinking themselves.
But can we say exactly the same thing to everyone? To someone whose baby starved to death soon after birth, can we say, “Receive whatever comes and let go of whatever goes—why suffer?” We need to think deeply about the difference. Merely accepting the instruction to live lightly does not produce wisdom. We need to consider whom we are addressing, in what circumstances, and what we mean.
We Must Abandon the Idea That Confirming One Thing Ends Everything
When a comment suggested that one could know all dharmas and still find real life difficult and painful, I asked again: what do you think you know by all dharmas? Are you mistaking not knowing for knowing? The world arises through conditions and changes. The claim that confirming one thing ends the matter, or that solving one thing solves everything, fails to see that changing world.
The Beopsang video we watched emphasized the conviction that this is the right path and that this alone is enough. I criticize that way of thinking as the height of mindlessness. It does not even approach wisdom. Wisdom comes through deep thought. We must carry within ourselves the question of how to live, whether lightly or under a burden, and reflect, observe, and think. Only then can an answer of our own emerge.
That is why I repeatedly said that today I was asking a question rather than supplying an answer. I was not inviting you to take away another phrase to apply to everyone. Unless you carry the question yourselves, my words too will become something you merely hold on to and believe. Study means allowing that question to work within you.
Discussing the Objection That I Focus on Life in the Desire Realm
A viewer suggested that I focus on human life in the desire realm while Beopsang moves across its boundaries. I laughed and asked whether I was supposedly focused on the desire realm. Then I returned to a concrete situation. When missiles hit hospitals and schools and fathers and daughters die, do you call those people’s lives life in the desire realm? If so, why is it the desire realm? Giving something a name must not substitute for answering.
The viewer answered in terms of a world of thought made up of perceptions or representations. I asked whether Beopsang was then speaking of something other than such a world. From my standpoint, I could describe it as a life pulled along by what has been conceptualized. From that perspective, ora and para are alike. That is why Buddhism says to become free of both ora and para.
I am not claiming to know everything about Beopsang as a person. Such a claim would be unwarranted and rude. We need to see exactly what is being criticized, and Beopsang himself needs to understand it too. Calling real suffering the desire realm or saying someone moves between realms does not answer the question I have raised.
“Do Not Cling” Is Different from “None of It Matters”
The discussion also brought the objection that Beopsang was simply teaching people not to cling too much. I replied that advice not to cling excessively can certainly be given. But it is different from saying that none of it matters and that it is all a momentary dream. Small differences in wording matter. Asking about those differences should not be dismissed as wordplay, because the question is how the words function for actual people.
A lecturer may think they are speaking to the few people sitting in front of them. But on YouTube, large numbers of people watch the public broadcast. We must think deeply about whom our words may affect, how they may affect them, and whether they really apply to everyone. Words that feel comforting to me do not necessarily have the same meaning for someone else.
To someone who feels they cannot go on after a business failure, we can say that businesses can fail or succeed and that other people fail too. It may help to advise them not to be bound solely by the thought that they must succeed, and to live more lightly. But someone else may experience divorce alongside a business failure, lose a child, damage their health, or develop cancer. What if poverty prevents them from taking their parents to the hospital, or their child dies after suffering school violence? Will you still simply tell them to live lightly?
Not everything is determined by how we set our minds.
Freedom from torment caused by problems of the mind is extremely valuable. But Buddhism means addressing this person and the problem actually holding them. If someone needs to be asked why they are clinging to something, ask them—but do so on the basis of questioning and thinking through dependent arising. That is what keeps us from saying anything that comes to mind. Once questioning stops, we can speak without knowing what realities our words erase.
Do Not Stop Questioning, Observing, and Thinking
This is my criticism of the mindlessness and anti-intellectualism into which Korean Buddhism has fallen under the name of Seon. People believe they are awakened, but when questioned point by point, they retreat into saying this is not study conducted through language and logic. If they cannot offer wisdom applicable to actual worldly affairs, do not ground themselves in such questions, and repeat teachings in which thought has stopped, Buddhist wisdom cannot emerge. Nor can they offer another person genuinely wise words.
I would like to end my criticism of Beopsang here. I am not continuing because I want to criticize more. I have used an actual example of a mistaken path to communicate what I needed to say. In that sense, this criticism can itself be an expedient means. But what you should take away is your own inner question, rather than the name of the person being criticized. Without that question, you will again be trapped in the illusion that wherever you have arrived is the highest place.
Please do not stop questioning, observing, and thinking. The Buddha I speak of is found in a life that does not stop doing those things. That is the path of wisdom, the Buddhist path, and the path of the arahant. I also thank those who contributed questions to today’s discussion.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.