A Spring Livestream That Began with Cherry Blossoms
On Monday, April 7, 2025, I began the livestream with a cold. The runny nose that had started on Friday had not gone away, even after I visited a clinic, received medicine, and got an injection, so my voice still sounded nasal. The medicine at least brought the symptoms under control and made the broadcast possible. While waiting to begin the main discussion, I spoke with viewers about health and heard that balloon flower root syrup could help the respiratory tract. Some worried that my cold had kept me from seeing the blossoms, but fortunately I had already gone.
The cherry blossoms in Busan appeared to reach their peak around that Sunday and Monday. Saturday had been unpleasant, but Sunday and Monday were warm and clear. As I grow older, I realize how rarely peak blossoms, fine weather, and the time and ability to go outside all coincide. People with jobs may have only the weekend, but by then the flowers may have fallen, or rain may come, or the wind may be too strong. A clear day at the height of the blossoms therefore comes only a handful of times in a person’s life.
I drove my mother, whose knees make long walks difficult, and my younger sibling along the cherry-blossom road beside Busan’s Oncheoncheon Stream and over Dalmaji Hill in Haeundae. I wished that my mother could stroll there, but I was still glad that we could see the flowers together from the car. As I returned to later in the broadcast, seeing the wind, sunlight, and flowers and noticing what is already present in my life is not separate from training the mind.
The Custom of Receiving Three Full Bows from Living People
Before the main broadcast, I asked viewers not to greet me in the chat with palms joined and a half bow. I joked that if many people bowed, I would have to return every one of them, but my concern was not mere inconvenience. Some monastics climb onto a Dharma seat and begin only after receiving three full bows from laypeople. I believe the custom of making three bows to a living person, and of accepting those bows as a matter of course, must disappear.
Someone may make three bows before a Buddha image while remembering the deceased Buddha whom it symbolizes. Between living people, however, joined palms and a mutual half bow are enough. An institution in which one person prostrates three times and a person of higher status receives it feeds the pride and sense of superiority of monastics who have not awakened. If a person who ought to cultivate humility instead uses a hierarchical ritual to elevate himself, it is a harmful practice. The Buddha, too, would not have sought such prostrations from living people.
Does Buddhism Rise When the Yeolamgok Rock-Carved Buddha Is Raised?
What the “Raising a Thousand Years” Project Claims
This led naturally to the Jogye Order. From April through the Buddha’s Birthday season, the order stages many events, while Ven. Jinwoo, its president, promotes Buddhist meditation and speaks of taking it to the world. There is nothing wrong with discussing meditation. But when exaggeration and nonsense are attached to it while the work Buddhism should actually do is avoided, criticism is unavoidable.
A representative case is the project to raise the fallen rock-carved Buddha at Yeolamgok on Mount Namsan in Gyeongju. A rock-carved Buddha is an image cut into the face of a natural rock. The Yeolamgok image fell, but its face narrowly avoided striking the ground and survived without catastrophic damage. Studying and conserving it as cultural heritage is one matter. Making the act of standing up a stone image bear the future of Korean Buddhism and the Republic of Korea is something altogether different.
The Jogye Order calls the project “Raising a Thousand Years.” It speaks as though standing the “rock-carved Buddha” upright will power a thousand years of prosperity and become a signal for the revival of Korean Buddhism, national development, public unity, and flourishing national fortune. People gather for prayer meetings of 108 bows, attributing to the stone an implication that Buddhism and the country will rise when it rises. At precisely that point, I ask:
Will Korean Buddhism truly stand upright if the rock-carved Buddha is stood upright? Will the country’s future and national unity arise automatically when a stone Buddha image is raised?
My answer is unambiguous: that is superstition. Rather than spend that money standing up the rock-carved Buddha, it would be better to feed one poor person well. I am not calling for the destruction of cultural heritage. I am saying that cultural conservation must not be confused with the revival of Buddhism. There may be technical and heritage questions about raising a fallen sculpture. But the moment the act is called a sacred Buddhist undertaking and linked to the force of a future millennium and national prosperity, a stone is being treated as the Buddha and the nation’s destiny is being entrusted to superstition.
Is the Buddha’s Work the Work of Erecting Buddha Images?
A bulsa, a Buddhist undertaking, literally means the work of the Buddha or the work of Buddhism. We should therefore first ask what the Buddha’s work is. Before his death, did the Buddha tell his disciples to erect images of him everywhere, build enormous temples, draw boundaries around land, bar people from entering, and admit only those who paid? If a Buddhist institution that speaks of non-possession treats land and cultural properties inside a national park as its private property and charges admission, its conduct resembles the business of a merchant or a gang more than the work of the Buddha.
The Jogye Order traditionally distinguishes between ipanseung devoted to study and practice and sapanseung responsible for administration. Yet when people who have not studied deeply seize authority and budgets, they can present a project like the rock-carved Buddha as the most urgent Buddhist undertaking. Nor do the supreme patriarchs and supposed practitioners necessarily offer sound teaching. When the former patriarch Jinjae or the current patriarch Seongpa delivers deliberately obscure words from the Dharma seat, or Seongpa says that he has already transmitted everything with his eyes but speaks because he cannot simply descend in silence, I have to ask: if everything was already transmitted by his eyes, why open his mouth again? In the broadcast I snapped, “If you transmitted it all with your eyes, shut your mouth and speak with your eyes. Seongpa, you sham monk. Stop pretending to possess what you do not.” We need to explain and think together about what Buddhist teaching is and how it can enter our lives. An inscrutable gesture should not be dressed up as awakening.
Jinwoo also became president as the sole candidate, without competition. The absence of a rival may mean that a power bloc chose its candidate in advance. When those who benefited from power under former president Jaseung continue to occupy the leadership and the structure has lost its capacity for internal correction, changing the face at the top changes nothing. If people captivated by wealth and power control the order, the public face of the Jogye Order moves ever farther from Buddhism.
Life Must Be Seen Before Temples
What Did They Mourn When the Wildfires Came?
The same problem appeared when recent wildfires burned old temples and cultural properties. It is understandable to regret the loss of a temple. Yet a Buddhist response should first speak of impermanence and see the people who died or were injured in the flames and the countless other lives that perished. Trees and animals burned, and people who could not evacuate lost their lives. If an order wails only that its own temple or Buddha image has burned, where is its concern directed?
Temples and Buddha images are things human beings made from wood and stone. When they disappear, they can in principle be made again. A life that is gone cannot be called back. In the face of wildfire, Buddhism ought to speak of the suffering of living beings, the impermanence of all things, dependent arising through which lives exist in relation, and the practical question of how to help victims. If one’s concern stops at property called “our temple,” how different is that from mourning the loss of a source of income?
This is why I said, in deliberately harsh language, that I would not give a single won in the name of the Jogye Order as a whole. There are, of course, monastics within the order who think well and do admirable work. I am not claiming that every monastic is the same. But if the patriarch, president, and official acts that represent the institution remain silent about life and suffering while speaking only about temples, cultural assets, and institutional rights, that visible conduct represents the order to the public.
When a Nationwide Monastic Assembly Should Have Been Held
I also recalled the nationwide monastic assembly organized to pressure the political world after lawmaker Jeong Cheong-rae criticized cultural-property admission fees. If monastics receive state support to manage cultural heritage inside national parks, draw a boundary across public access, charge the public again, and then convene a massive assembly because someone criticized that practice, they do not show the humility expected of a bhikkhu. Did the Buddha tell them to draw a line around land and bar anyone who did not pay from entering a temple? That is the work of gangsters and a band of profiteers. I therefore asked, “Is this the Jogye Order, or a gangster order?” The word bhikkhu itself refers to one who lives on food received from others. Contemporary monastics may not be able to live by alms rounds, but they should at least retain the attitude of lowering themselves.
There was another moment when a nationwide monastic assembly truly should have been held. On December 3, 2024, when Yoon Suk Yeol mobilized the military and attempted to turn its weapons against the public, the monastics could have gone to Seoul and declared that democracy and the people must be protected. I would have recognized that as Buddhist action. If they had assembled to mourn and help when wildfires killed people and destroyed homes, that too would have been a genuine Buddhist undertaking. Instead, the institution mobilizes efficiently to defend income and claims over cultural properties while remaining silent before state violence and the suffering of the poor. Its claim that it is restoring Buddhism is internally incoherent.
If Buddhism is to stand upright, more monastics must speak on social issues, as the Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice does. They should criticize policy and political power, organize alternative voices, and stand before violence and inequality. Buddhism today, however, is excessively conservative. When a religious group bound together by belief protects only its authority and property, indifferent to whether poor people live or die, shaving one’s head and wearing monastic robes does not make the conduct Buddhist.
Why the Jogye Order Is Losing Its Future
Several years ago I wrote an essay titled “The Jogye Order Is Dead.” Its central point was that the spirit of Buddhism had disappeared from the order. A religious institution that does not criticize and examine itself inevitably decays. The same is true of an individual. Without self-reflection and self-criticism, a person who simply does what he wants cannot recognize his mistakes. Even a small gathering must continually ask whether it may be doing something wrong. In a structure where an order descends from above and monastics are mobilized en masse, criticism from below and internal reform are difficult.
The order speaks of the next thousand years through a stone image while failing to see even ten or twenty years ahead. According to figures I had seen, more than 80 percent of Jogye monastics were over fifty. If the number of young people entering the order continues to decline, in ten years the overwhelming majority will be over sixty. Temple attendance is falling and empty temples are multiplying. Several Buddhist lay organizations I visited do worthwhile work, yet most members appeared to be over fifty, with almost no people in their twenties, thirties, or forties. An organization that cannot reach the next generation cannot have a future.
This aging does not belong to the order alone; it is connected to an extremely aged society. As young people become fewer, young monastics and younger members of Buddhist groups also become fewer. Buddhism should therefore ask why people cannot afford to have children, why the suicide rate is so high, and why poor and struggling people fall into despair. Every practical effort to improve the birth rate and reduce suicide is a real Buddhist undertaking. If Mahayana Buddhists want to become Avalokitesvara, they must hear and respond to the cries of people writhing in suffering. They cannot finish by standing up a rock-carved Buddha and calling that a bulsa.
At this point my anger boiled over and I went so far as to say, “You sham monks wearing the disguise of monastics and making a living by selling the Buddha—how dare you speak of the Buddha?” The language was extreme, and I immediately acknowledged that in the broadcast. But I would not soften the substance. I also explicitly limited the criticism: it did not mean every monastic in the Jogye Order. There are good monastics in the order, and I have met people there with admirable thought and principles. My target was the leadership and official conduct that publicly represent the institution.
A Religion of Leaving Religion and a Living Buddhist Undertaking
I broadcast under the name of Buddhism, but I do not believe I am confined within a Buddhist fence. I appreciate portions of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Tao Te Ching, and sayings of ancient Greek philosophers. I speak primarily through Buddhism because the Buddha’s teaching encountered my life and deeply influenced it. As I understand it, the teaching itself helps us leave religious belief and authority behind. This is why I call Buddhism the religion of leaving religion.
I do not need to criticize every form of Christianity separately. If I criticize superstition inside Buddhism thoroughly, superstitions in other religions are exposed at the same time. “Buddhist” and “Christian” superstition bear different names, but both ask people to believe what cannot be known, depend on authority, and turn away from reality. We can learn wise words wherever they occur in religion or philosophy and criticize contradiction and superstition wherever they occur. Truth does not belong to a signboard marked “Buddhism.”
A genuine Buddhist undertaking restores the will to live to someone who has lost meaning and fallen into despair. Whether successful or poor, a person can collapse when the image he wants others to see diverges from his actual life. If Buddhist teaching helps expose that illusion and helps people use their one life for living together rather than robbing and killing one another, that is the Buddha’s work. Mental pain is connected to physical stress, and a person bound to an illusion can destroy both himself and others. Showing such a person a path of observation and reflection is far more urgent than raising a rock-carved Buddha.
Money, Political Parties, and Democracy Also Rest on Belief
A viewer remarked that money and political parties also contain superstitious elements, and that belief penetrates deeply into our lives. I agreed. The monetary system we use each day, and institutions called political parties and democracy, are built in large part upon agreements that people collectively choose to believe. Widespread use does not make such a system an eternal truth or reality in itself. If we criticize religious faith in a stone Buddha while believing social and economic institutions to be absolute entities, our criticism remains incomplete.
People should therefore study the economy, society, and culture that directly shape their lives. Because we use money every day, we should understand money and banking; we should also learn how capitalism, exchange rates, political parties, and democratic systems operate. We cannot see reality if we remain trapped inside the frames of communism, capitalism, or democracy exactly as we were taught them. We should not believe something merely because it appears in a book or other people repeat it. We need broader information and deeper reflection.
I believe contemporary banking, monetary, and capitalist systems are structured to favor those who already have wealth and to intensify the divide between rich and poor. I am not an economist or sociologist and did not attempt an economics lecture in that broadcast. I did insist, however, that we cannot live responsibly while remaining ignorant of the institutions that move our lives. The attitude that frees us from religious superstition and the attitude that critically studies familiar social institutions grow from the same root.
The “Self” Made from Reputation and the Question of Suicide
Why Place Radically Different People Under One Question?
At this point I discussed the death of Jang Je-won. I have no intention of defending his wrongdoing; I regard what he did as a grave crime. My question was why even such a person would die by suicide. I also mentioned Park Won-soon, a young actress who had recently died, Choi Jin-sil, Roh Hoe-chan, and Roh Moo-hyun, people whose lives and public evaluations differ enormously. I was not placing them on the same moral plane. Some people may feel that grouping them is itself insulting, and I understand those differences. I placed them together at one point only: why does someone who is socially known and has achieved a measure of success take his or her own life?
I cannot know the concrete reasons behind deaths reported as suicides. I cannot say with certainty what Jang Je-won or Park Won-soon thought at the end. What I offer is therefore an inference. Human beings are social animals, and the way family, acquaintances, and the wider society see us substantially shapes the feeling of “who I am.” Sociality is necessary for life, but danger arises when the image produced by other people’s gaze is mistaken for the self itself.
When I tried to mention Roh Hoe-chan, his name would not come to me. I stumbled through possibilities such as “Jeong Hae-chan” and “Lee Hae-chan” until a viewer supplied the name. I then made fun of myself: I claimed to have admired him so much, yet could not even remember his name. The candid joke that nouns were becoming harder for me to recall was part of the livestream. Apart from the humor, the fact that even Roh Hoe-chan, whom I admired, took his own life made the question of training the mind more urgent.
A person can cling to an image: I am a fine politician; I am righteous; I am exceptional enough to be president, a legislator, or an actor. Then, when actual conduct no longer matches that image, social status and reputation collapse, or the world refuses to follow one’s wishes, the meaning of life can disappear at once. The more tightly one is bound to how one must appear, the less strength remains when the image breaks. I admired the humane and progressive aspects of Roh Moo-hyun, Park Won-soon, and Roh Hoe-chan, which makes their deaths more painful to me. Their positions did not arise solely because each was individually exceptional; innumerable causes and conditions made those achievements possible. If that had been seen deeply, might another path have remained even when the self-image collapsed?
Training the Mind Means Looking Again at One’s Emotions
An awakened person is not a transcendent being who never becomes angry and has eliminated depression, resentment, and indignation. During this broadcast, I myself became emotional and used harsh profanity while discussing the Jogye Order. What matters is whether, after anger arises, I can look back and ask why I became angry. When rage, depression, or a sense of injustice appears, instead of immediately being dragged along by it, I should be able to observe, question, and examine what moved me.
The Jogye Order can claim that raising a rock-carved Buddha will set the nation upright, and it can convene a nationwide assembly to defend cultural-property fees, without knowing what is shameful, precisely because it does not observe its own words and desires. If it speaks of Buddhist meditation and awakening as a way to make the public happy while failing to examine what is right and wrong, its language and conduct split completely apart. An institution’s self-criticism and an individual’s training of the mind are not separate problems.
The Further Illusion of Trying to Eliminate All Seeking
When a viewer suggested that we must escape from “seeking,” I replied that this expression also requires examination. I once said that we should leave seeking behind. Yet a human being is a being that seeks. We seek food and survival, anticipate tomorrow, and give life meanings of our own. If I wanted absolutely nothing, I would have no reason to broadcast, criticize the Jogye Order, grieve my father’s death, fear my mother’s death, or feel grateful for life while looking at cherry blossoms.
Awakening is therefore not a state in which seeking has vanished altogether. It is a state in which I know what I seek, why I seek it, that it may not be fulfilled, and that the object of my desire may itself be an illusion. I too once wanted to become the perfect Buddha imagined in my mind, and I began broadcasting while clinging to an illusion that I had reached arhatship. The fantasy that a human must eliminate greed, anger, and delusion entirely and want nothing at all was another misguided illusion.
Do not try to eliminate desire. Observe what you desire and why. Training the mind begins by knowing that it may not all be fulfilled and that the image you grasp may be an illusion.
If the Diamond Sutra’s “give rise to a mind that does not abide anywhere” or the practice of giving without attachment to signs is interpreted to mean the complete disappearance of desire, we can fall into wordplay. People act because they want something. The point is not to become so immersed in a desire that we do not even know we have been colored by it. We should not stop after using the emptiness of person and phenomena to demolish every sign; we must move from “not a sign” to “not not a sign.” Even after seeing that a sign is not an independent reality, we can seize another sign that says no sign may exist.
The viewer clarified that by “seeking” he meant attachment rather than needs required for survival. I accepted that clarification while emphasizing how differently words can reach different people. Even beyond basic survival, it is difficult for a human being to have no wishes at all. The point is not to turn the arising of desire or attachment into a sin. It is to see what it is, why it arose, and how completely I am bound to it.
Practicing How to Leave My Head and See What Is Around Me
External and internal observation must proceed together. A viewer said that after cultivating the habit of observation, he began to notice dogs carefully watching a passing cat and a dandelion seed remaining on a windshield wiper for several days. When the mind is confused and absorbed in its own thought, other people, the shadows of trees, sunlight, and the path of the wind are barely felt. When I believe my life is the hardest in the world, I repeat only the words my mind endlessly produces and continue to suffer.
I, too, once believed that my life was the most painful. Looking back now, however, the fact that my hands and feet move and that my eyes and nose function is itself extraordinary. We take what we have for granted and want to be more handsome, taller, richer, and more powerful. We look only at what is absent and cannot feel gratitude for breathing. If I do not know what I want or why, and become depressed and angry because it has not been obtained, people and things disappear from view while suffering loops inside my head. Some people die by suicide at the end of that loop; others live under such strain that even the body becomes ill.
Buddhist training of the mind is not an esoteric experience. It asks whether I can view my thoughts and feelings critically and observe what has absorbed me. It does not command us never to feel sadness, anger, or depression. It asks whether I have tied my entire life to something to which I need not remain bound. The stronger the demand, the greater the suffering when it is not fulfilled. If we cannot see that structure, we can say that raising a rock-carved Buddha will set a nation upright without recognizing anything wrong in the claim.
A Peaceful Moment Need Not Be Suspected for Its Own Sake
Even while discussing training, desire, and attachment, I admitted candidly that a larger live audience makes me feel proud and happy. I too want the broadcast to reach more people. When a viewer said that a dinner of pork soup with hot green chilies had left him full and happy, I replied that I was glad he was so happy. This ordinary exchange followed directly from my point: the purpose is not to abolish every wish and pleasure, but to know what I want and where my happiness arises.
On the day of the broadcast, I also reflected on the benefit of effective medicine and health insurance. Around that time, several members of my family other than my mother had been severely ill with influenza B for more than ten days; fortunately, I had an ordinary cold rather than influenza. I was grateful that cold medicine stopped my runny nose so that I could speak. Korea’s health-insurance system is not perfect, and in some respects I believe it works against people without jobs or money. Poor people often lack both the time and funds to visit a clinic and endure illness instead. Even so, the social conditions that let me receive treatment and obtain medicine at a relatively low cost should not be taken entirely for granted. We can criticize what is lacking while also seeing the conditions that actually help us now.
Near the end, a viewer who had visited the emergency room before dawn asked whether the profound peace that suddenly came with contentment in the present condition was also an illusion. I answered that if peace was felt, the feeling was first of all a fact of that moment. After sustained noise, quiet is vividly apparent; when quiet becomes ordinary, a small sound stands out more. Peace, too, may be felt relatively as conditions change, but that does not require us immediately to doubt or negate it.
Human life contains many difficult and painful periods. When tranquility and happiness arrive, there is no need to refuse them; they can be enjoyed fully. Quiet and ease are rarer than we think. We should simply avoid turning peace itself into an image that must be held forever. As blossoms open and fall, tranquility comes and goes according to conditions. Knowing that, we can enjoy the peace that is present. I ended the broadcast hoping that the viewer’s health problem was not serious.
The discussion that began with raising a rock-carved Buddha thus returned to the mind of one person. Individuals and institutions lose their way when stone, temples, authority, reputation, and desire are mistaken for the self or for Buddhism itself. Restoring Buddhism does not mean lifting a stone upright. It means seeing suffering lives, speaking before social injustice, observing one’s desires and emotions, and correcting oneself upon recognizing an error. That is what I call a living Buddhist undertaking.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.