Why I Am Continuing with Part Two of My Critique of Hongik Academy’s Yoon Hong-sik
After my first broadcast criticizing Yoon Hong-sik and Hongik Academy, a viewer left a comment. The gist was that I had not attained kenshō while Yoon had, so I was not qualified to criticize him. That very claim prompted this second installment. Someone presents himself as enlightened, and his followers presume that he has reached a special state and use it to block criticism. I want to examine how this structure is created.
A fraud does not always arrive looking shabby. He is more likely to have read many difficult books, rapidly reel off impressive terms, and combine unrelated traditions so that he appears to possess exceptional insight. A listener can easily feel overwhelmed when kenshō, true self, spirituality, spiritual intuition, the I Ching, tarot, the Cheonbugyeong, and Christianity come out one after another. Yet the number of words is not the depth of wisdom.
I have no intention of verifying whether Yoon had some mystical experience. The moment an unverifiable experience becomes the basis of authority, questions are shut down. We need only look at what he actually claims, whether it accords with observable facts, and whether it contradicts itself. The standard of criticism is not a certificate of enlightenment but coherence of thought and grounding in reality.
Introducing oneself as enlightened is not a license that grants immunity from criticism. The more someone claims a special state, the more precisely we must question him.
Buddhism Is a Religion That Breaks Superstition Rather Than Adding to It
I announced Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion as the video we would watch in my next broadcast. As its central idea suggests, Buddhism as I understand it is not a religion that adds one more object of belief. It is the wisdom of moving beyond religion: instead of demanding belief in gods, souls, an afterlife, destiny, or invisible energy, it frees us from superstitions made by human beings.
Much of Buddhism in practice is just the opposite. Many people in monastic robes speak about karmic imprints, past lives, reincarnation, spirits of the dead, rites that convey them onward, the miraculous response of Avalokitesvara, and miracles of relics. Going to a temple does not make those claims Buddhist. Superstition does not stop being superstition because it bears a Buddhist label.
Yoon does not speak only about Buddhism. He brings in Christianity, the I Ching and tarot, the Cheonbugyeong, and all sorts of spiritual language. People may find him impressive for supposedly encompassing many traditions, but I see that mixture as colliding with Buddhism’s project of breaking superstition. Collecting many different names does not create facts.
One can sell superstition in the name of Buddhism, but superstition does not thereby become Buddhist wisdom. Buddhism is a path that subtracts delusion rather than adding beliefs.
Why I Consider Greek Philosophy Alongside Early Buddhism
I have said that Greek traditions such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Pyrrhonism can in some respects be regarded as “Greek Buddhism.” I see philosophy concerned with release from pain and anxiety developing amid contacts between India and the Greek world after Alexander’s campaigns. At least in some respects, these traditions appear closer to the concerns of early Buddhism than the Buddhism now covered in superstition.
The ataraxia they discussed is a state of undisturbed tranquility. It concerns freedom from desire, fear, and mistaken judgment rather than discovering a mystical soul or decoding the universe. I regard this realistic and philosophical attitude as important to understanding Buddhism.
Memorizing the lineage of a philosophy is not itself wisdom. The words Stoic, Epicurean, and Pyrrhonist can become ornaments as soon as someone lines them up to sound impressive. What matters is thinking about what they observed and by what reasoning they addressed anxiety. The same rule applies in East and West: do not worship names; question their contents.
Knowing many philosophical names is not enlightenment. Study begins only when we reconsider, in our own thinking, the questions behind those names.
The Idea of a True Self Is Already Hidden Inside “Seeing One’s Nature”
Kenshō literally means seeing one’s nature. It must therefore begin by presuming that everyone has an unchanging nature, Buddha-nature, or true self. Yet no-self, a starting point of Buddhism, denies such a fixed self, while dependent origination sees everything as arising within relationships and conditions. The idea that a complete true self has always resided within me directly opposes the direction of no-self and dependent origination.
“I saw Buddha-nature” sounds like an extraordinary experience, but nobody else can verify what was seen. Without offering evidence that Buddha-nature exists, a person declares that he saw it, then uses that declaration to authorize his words. How can a claim to have seen something whose existence has not even been established prove the truth?
I do not criticize kenshō because I have failed to experience it. I ask what the concept itself presupposes. Once an unobservable true self is posited, people are divided into those who have seen it and those who have not, and the latter are made to follow the former. A religious hierarchy has already been created. Questions disappear, and the person who monopolizes the experience determines the answers.
Before saying that one has seen something, ask whether the thing supposedly seen actually exists. Kenshō that presumes a true self is not proof of no-self.
Patching No-Self and True Self into One System
Within Buddhist history, incompatible claims—no-self and Buddha-nature, emptiness and true self—came to coexist. Texts such as the Awakening of Faith attempted to patch these contradictions into one system. If the phenomenal world is explained as a conditional dimension beneath which lies a pure mind or suchness, an immutable ground can be restored even while no-self is still professed.
A similar structure appears in Yoon’s explanations. He relegates the dependently arisen world before our eyes to conventional truth or a temporary level, while elevating true self and spiritual radiance to a more ultimate truth. He uses Buddhist terminology, but the result is two worlds: this changing, dependent reality and an unchanging true reality beyond it. That is dualism.
I believe this order must be reversed. What we can verify is reality changing within relationships. Calling an unverifiable true self “ultimate” does not make it more true. The moment the observable world is lowered and an invisible world is raised, Buddhism returns to metaphysics and belief in souls.
Lowering reality as conventional and elevating an unverifiable true self as ultimate is not no-self. It is dualism dressed in Buddhist terminology.
The Questions of King Milinda Exposes the Collision Between No-Self and Reincarnation
The Questions of King Milinda, or Milindapañha, takes the form of dialogues between the Greco-Bactrian king Milinda and Nagasena. It clearly reveals the difficulty later Buddhists faced when they tried to maintain reincarnation while teaching no-self. If there is no immutable self, they cannot avoid the question of what exactly passes into another life.
The image of one candle lighting another is used to explain the contradiction. The flame is said to be neither the same nor wholly different. Inventing an analogy, however, does not resolve a contradiction. We can observe one flame lighting another, but we cannot observe anything passing from a dead person into a next life. The analogy merely joins different problems through similar language.
I do not see the Milindapañha as a record completed at one time. I see a text that grew as explanations from several periods were added to shorter dialogues. As Buddhism spread and reincarnation was taken up again, the contradiction with no-self had to be patched, and those traces remain in scripture. The antiquity of a scripture’s title does not make every answer in it a saying of the Buddha.
If there is no self, there is no fixed subject that reincarnates. The candle image illustrates the contradiction; it is not observation proving transmission after death.
Why an Awakened Person Does Not Divine or Prophesy
An awakened person, as I understand one, does not claim to know the future. Because he understands how the world moves through extraordinarily complex relations among conditions, he knows the limits of his knowledge all the more clearly. Casting an I Ching hexagram or laying out tarot cards to read Heaven’s will and an individual destiny is not evidence of wisdom. It is an inability to endure not knowing.
Prophecy and prediction must be distinguished. Prophecy says that something will certainly happen. Prediction uses available information and repeated tendencies to state a probability, while allowing that it may be wrong. Seeing dark clouds, consulting weather data, deciding that rain is likely, and taking an umbrella is prediction. Saying that the universe sent me a sign and therefore it will certainly rain tomorrow is prophecy.
We cannot completely determine even what will happen one second from now. That does not mean we cannot judge anything. The more observable causes and conditions we have, the better our prediction can become. Wisdom is not the capacity to pretend that uncertainty is gone. It is the ability to distinguish what and how much we can know, then judge within those limits.
Prediction supplies grounds while containing the possibility of error. Prophecy fixes an uncertain future without offering grounds by which it can be tested.
Causality Does Not Justify Divination
During the broadcast, a viewer argued that if every event has a cause, the chance hexagram or card drawn must also have a cause and could therefore be connected to the future. This misconstrues causality from the outset. The fact that there is a cause for a card being in a position is completely different from the claim that the card reveals the future of my marriage or business.
I used the example of a projectile or a thrown ball. If we measure launch angle, speed, wind, gravity, and other conditions, we can calculate approximately where it will land. That is because we observe and calculate causes connected to the result. A bird striking it in flight, however, changes the trajectory. The calculation remains useful, but because we cannot know every condition completely, it is still a prediction.
If a tarot card or I Ching hexagram is causally connected to my future, that link must be shown. There is no observed causal relation between a card’s color or number, or a tossed coin, and a later change in my career. Borrowing the general sentence “everything has a cause” while omitting the specific link is not an argument. It uses the word causality as an ornament.
The fact that drawing a card has a cause does not make the card a cause or sign of my future. A causal claim must demonstrate the actual link.
“Many Sages and Scholars Believed It” Is Not Evidence
The viewer also said that numerous sages and scholars in East and West practiced divination. If belief by brilliant people and the longevity of a tradition were standards of truth, heaven and hell, witches and ghosts, hereditary rank, and every old superstition would all be true. A person can contain wise and foolish parts at the same time.
I do not accept arguments that lean on such authority. A story that Einstein believed something, or that an ancient sage cast lots, does not establish the reality of the belief. One must offer observations and reasoning that stand even after the famous name is removed. A claim that collapses without a celebrity’s name is dependence on authority, not knowledge.
The live exchange grew rough, and I blocked the viewer after he kept repeating the same claims and disrupting the broadcast. My rough language and the point at issue should be distinguished. Anyone can ask a question, but endlessly repeating authority and sophistry without any intention of hearing an answer is not a discussion. Open questions are necessary, but I need not surrender an entire broadcast to endless wordplay.
Longstanding belief by famous people may be a historical fact, but it is not evidence that its object is real. Look for connected grounds, not authority.
Reading the I Ching as Philosophy Versus Using It to Divine
I am not saying the I Ching contains nothing worth thinking about. Insights such as the sun’s rising and setting, the fact that good times do not continue forever, and a change of phase after changes accumulate can provide philosophical material for reflecting on life and society. Combining two states three times to form eight trigrams and symbolizing patterns of change is also interesting as human abstraction.
The situation changes when philosophical symbols become instruments for telling individual fortunes. There is no observation showing that yin-yang, the five phases, or the sexagenary cycle governs everything in the universe and human life. There is no evidence that the universe repeats the same operation in sixty-year units. Constructing an elaborate symbolic system is not the same as nature operating according to that system.
We can read the I Ching and think about rise, decline, and rhythms of change. But if we toss coins or dice and use the resulting hexagram to decide tomorrow’s contract or romance, we turn philosophy into superstition. Using a book containing some good ideas as an oracle does not make the oracle wise.
The I Ching’s symbols can prompt philosophical questions. The moment random symbols are connected to an individual future, however, it becomes groundless divination.
Combining Tarot and the I Ching Does Not Make an Experiment
Yoon discusses studying all 78 tarot cards and interpreting them in combination with I Ching hexagrams. He adds dice or other devices to cross multiple systems and describes the practice as though it were experimental. Mixing more materials does not make an experiment. An experiment must state what is being tested, how the result could prove it wrong, and whether it recurs under the same conditions.
Mapping meanings between tarot images and I Ching hexagrams is a human interpretation. Adding symbols from the Cheonbugyeong or Christianity, yin and yang, and meanings of numbers makes the interpretive options endless. Whatever result appears, one can later select a story that fits it, leaving no way to judge it wrong. The more elaborate an interpretation immune to refutation appears, the more dangerous it is.
The idea that the universe secretly sends information about my destiny at the very moment I draw a card is radically anthropocentric. There is no evidence that a world of innumerable living things and moving matter arranges card order to send one individual a code. The desire of the reader creates meaning in a chance arrangement.
Combining different forms of divination does not strengthen verification; it multiplies escape routes for interpretation. A system that can call every result correct is not an experiment.
The Word “Spiritual” and the Soul of an Ant
The word “spiritual” presumes something beyond the body: the idea that a human being has a soul separate from the body and that it continues after death. Here I ask about the soul of an ant. If a human has a soul, does an ant have one? How far down the line do we grant souls—to cockroaches, trees, bacteria, and viruses?
Humans are not special beings completely severed from other life. We eat, grow, respond to our environment, and at death the matter that constituted the body disperses again. To think that only humans exceptionally possess an eternally continuing entity turns a human wish into a cosmic fact. The wish not to die and not to have relationships end is understandable, but a wish is not evidence.
The long use of the word “soul” does not prove the soul’s reality. Words for dragons, goblins, and heaven also exist. Language is a tool people created to classify experience, imagination, and desire. We must not confuse the existence of a word with the existence of an independent entity to which it supposedly refers.
Before believing that only humans have immortal souls, ask about the souls of ants and bacteria. The desire to be special is not evidence of reality.
Jesus’s Name Cannot Substitute for Evidence of an Unverifiable Claim
A live exchange also arose over whether Jesus spoke of a soul. I suggested distinguishing the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount from the Jesus drawn by later doctrine. None of us can verify exactly what the historical Jesus said. We cannot conclude that a sentence was spoken exactly as written simply because it appears in a Gospel.
The important issue is not to hold a scripture-verse contest over whether Jesus used precisely the word “soul.” The question is whether the soul actually exists, whoever claimed it. When a holy person’s authority substitutes for a claim, the attitude is no different from absolutizing Buddhist scripture. The explanation must stand without borrowing the names of Jesus, the Buddha, or Laozi.
I am not saying we should discard good teachings. If the Sermon on the Mount contains words that make us reconsider our lives, we can read and reflect on them. A few good lines, however, do not make souls, heaven, and miracles factual. Respect for a figure must be separated from metaphysics circulated in his name.
A holy person’s name is not evidence. Remove the authority of who supposedly said it and see whether the claim still stands before observation and reason.
A Fraud Lines Up Impressive-Sounding Words
The language of a fraud has a characteristic form. It endlessly places side by side Heaven’s will, yin and yang, reason and emotion, conscious and unconscious, true self and spirituality, I Ching and tarot, philosophy and numerology. Each word has a long history and a different context, but those differences are not explained. The listener does not understand, yet feels as if he has heard an extraordinary unified theory.
Having read many books is no safeguard. If read sentences are not examined in one’s own thought, knowledge becomes an echo or a parrot’s speech. Some collect words from hundreds of books without closely examining the causality of a single sentence. Another person may watch one minute of a video and begin thinking by asking, “Why? What is the evidence?”
Yoon’s words appear to encompass every tradition, but I see them as a way to decorate himself with fragments of unrelated authorities. A complex sentence may be wise, but it is not wise merely because it is complex. If, after hearing an explanation, we still cannot tell what to observe or what failure would make us abandon the claim, the ornate language is functioning as fog.
Knowledge reveals itself not in the number of terms but in the depth of questions. The more impressive words are connected, the more carefully we must check each connection.
People Who Wear Good Names and Symbols as Costumes
“Hongik,” meaning broadly benefiting humanity, is a phrase with a positive meaning. Putting Hongik in an organization’s name, however, does not make its actions beneficial. Anyone can use a good word, which is precisely why people trying to decorate themselves like to appropriate one. We must separate the goodness of the signboard from the truth of its contents.
I gave the example of far-right forces that wrap themselves in the Taegeukgi and shout patriotism while relying in practice on foreign interests. Holding the national flag does not make someone a patriot. A symbol can become a shield against criticism, allowing opponents to be branded anti-national. “Hongik” and “spirituality” can be used as the same kind of decoration.
Titles and clothing are no different. Monastic robes, a doctorate, an academy, the word philosopher, or the label enlightened master cannot replace scrutiny of the contents. To judge a person, look not at the impressive name he selected but at his actual claims and actions, and at his response to questions. Only after the coat of authority is removed can the skeleton of the argument be seen.
The name Hongik, the national flag, and monastic robes do not guarantee anyone’s truth. The better the symbols someone wears, the more closely examine the actual contents.
Why Lotteries and Divination Do Not End as “Just Fun”
I believe lotteries should be abolished. The state operates a gambling house by exploiting the hopes of poor people and takes a large portion of the sales. Knowing the probability of winning is minuscule, it collects money by selling the hope that “perhaps I will be the one.” My mother sometimes bought a ticket after a good dream, while my father never bought one. A familiar family memory cannot hide the harm of the structure.
It is easy to say that one consults an oracle “just for fun.” Yet if we clearly understood that tarot, the four pillars, and I Ching divination tell us nothing about ourselves, there would be no reason to ask them about the future. The fun arises because some expectation remains that perhaps the card contains something about me.
Divination can obstruct rather than deepen self-understanding. Instead of directly examining the conditions under which I feel anxious and what I want, it persuades me that my birth date, cards, and hexagrams explain me. Responsibility for real relationships and choices is transferred to external symbols. Even if it begins as a small amusement, we must see the structure by which greater anxiety produces greater dependence.
Lotteries sell the hope of poor people; divination sells the anxious person’s need for meaning. Calling it “fun” does not eliminate that structure of dependence.
Numerology Is Not the Logic of Numbers but Delusion About Numbers
Mathematics and numerology are entirely different. Mathematics handles relationships through rules and proofs. Numerology presumes that certain numbers conceal the secrets of the universe and human destiny. It leaps from the fact that something can be expressed numerically to the conclusion that numbers mystically govern the world.
An example appears when Yoon connects the zero card in tarot to true self and spirituality, and assigns the sun and moon to reason and emotion, male and female, conscious and unconscious. There is no causal ground for why zero must mean true self or the moon must mean emotion. Familiar symbols are assigned, then that arrangement is explained as a principle of the universe.
Arrangements of numbers and images can be beautiful and impressive. A beautiful correspondence is not evidence of fact. The interpreter may create a relation and then mistake it for something discovered. I do not call this language philosophy. It is divination dressed as philosophy, a numerology that dazzles people.
Using numbers does not make something mathematics. Attaching unverifiable meanings to numbers and selling them as cosmic secrets is numerological delusion.
“Spiritual Intuition” Gives the Cult Leader the Power to Judge
Yoon speaks as if spiritual intuition is a higher test than emotional intuition. The problem is that nobody can objectively verify what spiritual intuition is. Rational review and empirical confirmation can be shared with others, but the claim “my spirit intuited this” can be judged only by the person making it.
If a follower questions the master, the master can say the person has not yet reached spiritual intuition. Agreement proves enlightenment, while disagreement proves inferiority. The system is built so that every objection loses from the start. This is not a method of verification; it is an instrument of gaslighting that preserves power.
A cult leader creates a world visible only to him and a state only he can recognize. He then says that entry into that world requires following his interpretation. At that moment, a practice community changes from a community of questioning people into a group worshiping the master’s inner life. Because this structure truly exploits people and ruins lives, I believe it must be publicly called fraud.
When an unverifiable “spiritual intuition” becomes the highest criterion, the cult leader ultimately becomes the sole judge of truth.
Superstition Inside Buddhism Creates the Market for Frauds
If the critique ends with Yoon, it sees only half the problem. He can exploit the name of Buddhism because Buddhism itself is already full of superstition. People say that the forty-nine-day rite conveys a dead spirit onward, karmic imprints from past lives determine our present destiny, prayer to Avalokitesvara produces miraculous responses, and relics emanate mysterious energy.
People who have lost a parent may gather for forty-nine days, share grief, and remember the deceased. The possibility that a rite comforts the living is wholly different from actually sending a dead soul into another world. The moment comfort and metaphysical fact are mixed, a religious professional can sell an unverifiable service.
If monks preach superstition while condemning only outside cults, they spit in their own faces. Unless Buddhism criticizes superstition in its own scriptures and practices, people mixing spirituality, true self, and divination will keep borrowing Buddhist authority. To remove the ground on which frauds stand, we must first clear away the superstition within.
Cults do not enter only from outside Buddhism. Internal superstition that sells rites, karmic imprints, and miraculous responses as facts has already created their market.
Look at the Self Within Conditions and Relations Instead of Buddha-Nature
The claim that everyone contains an unchanging Buddha-nature sounds warm. But when we ask what that nature actually is, only more vague words return. Do ants and cockroaches have it? Where can an immutable nature be verified in someone whose memory and personality have changed profoundly through dementia? We must not assume existence merely because the idea sounds kind.
I do not believe something eternal resides within me. Who I am arose through relationships among my parents and ancestors, society and civilization, the language I learned, the food I ate, sunlight and water, the people I met, and innumerable events. Remove any of them and I could not be exactly the same person. This is dependent origination, and the inability to find an independent, fixed me is no-self.
No-self does not make me insignificant. It shows how deeply I am connected to the world. The absence of an eternal true self is not nihilism; conditions change at every moment, leaving room for me to make different choices. Instead of worshiping a fixed nature, we must understand the relationships operating now.
Do not search for immutable Buddha-nature inside yourself. See dependent origination: parents, language, food, sunlight, and society came together to produce who you are now.
Do Not Claim to Have Verified What Cannot Be Observed
True self, soul, afterlife, spiritual intuition, and destiny revealed by cards have one feature in common. The claimant is certain, but another person cannot confirm them in the same manner. Believing in an unverifiable object may be an individual freedom. But the moment someone calls it a verified fact, teaches it to others, and gains authority or money, it becomes a subject for social criticism.
I do not think I can forcibly remove a belief from someone’s head. Those who want to believe will continue to believe. That does not mean we must remain silent in public. To keep superstition from occupying the language of fact, we must say that we do not know what we do not know and publicly identify a false claim as false.
A society living with twenty-first-century science and philosophy must be able to question the authority of oracles, souls, and kenshō. A question does not insult people; it protects them from false authority. What a fraud fears most is not profanity but a question that relentlessly traces the broken causality between his ornate words.
Do not believe; question. Demand grounds, connections, and testability from anyone who pretends to know what cannot be observed.
Freedom from Superstition Is the Beginning of Awakening
I did not make this broadcast because I hate Yoon as an individual. I criticized a structure that invokes kenshō and spiritual intuition, dresses tarot, the I Ching, and numerology as philosophy, and claims to know an unverifiable world. This structure is not confined to one person. In religion, practice, politics, and education alike, people use good names and difficult words to construct authority.
Our task is not to move from one guru to the next. It is to refrain from divination and prophecy and develop the strength to endure an uncertain world as uncertain. We should directly observe our anxiety and desire, and use verifiable causes and probabilities when we make judgments. Acknowledging the possibility of error is wiser than certainty that pretends to know everything.
Buddhism is no exception. Whether it is written in a scripture, spoken by a monk, or said by me, we should remain questioning. When superstition inside Buddhism is cleared away and no-self and dependent origination are understood as the relations of reality, Buddhism becomes a path out of delusion rather than a business selling souls. Do not make a fraud into a special being; each of us must become a person who questions.
Awakening is not the discovery of a mystical true self. It begins by relying on neither superstition nor authority, seeing real conditions, and asking our own questions.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.