What I Ask in This Third Critique
While preparing this broadcast, I watched Beopsang’s lecture three or four times. Sorting out which passages to show and how to explain them delayed the start, and I apologize to those who waited. This is my third critique of the monk Beopsang, and I intend to finish the series here. I addressed the central problems in the first two installments. Today I want to examine more calmly where that mistaken direction leads people.
Viewers who like Beopsang may find this uncomfortable. They may think that someone who has not practiced is merely arguing intellectually, or that I do nothing but criticize. I will listen to those criticisms too. But first I ask them to hear what I am saying. My concern is the tendency in Seon Buddhism to have an experience, name it “this very place,” and stop there. When stopping midway is mistaken for Buddhism’s ultimate aim, the subsequent course of study and life takes a different direction.
When questions stop, we drift away from reality.
We will look at lecture 24 of Beopsang’s series on the Bloodstream Treatise. Its title says that the Way is already accomplished and cannot be attained through cultivation. The full lecture is about an hour and twenty-eight minutes long. I prepared five portions, though I do not know whether we will get through all of them. The book’s explanations are familiar within Seon Buddhism. My criticism therefore addresses not only Beopsang personally but also the text and tradition he accepts and transmits. I hear similar explanations from the Dharma teacher Kim Tae-wan. The presence of useful teachings does not establish that the ultimate goal they present is correct.
If Everything Is Already Complete, What Changes?
The lecture begins with the phrase “The Way is originally complete; cultivation and attainment are unnecessary.” It is explained as saying that the Way is already perfectly accomplished, so nothing needs to be cultivated or attained. I go through the characters one by one: originally so, already accomplished, with no use for cultivation or realization. From the outset, this conflicts with the direction of Buddhism as I explain it.
The claim Beopsang introduces: the Way is already perfectly accomplished, so there is nothing to cultivate or attain.
He says that the Way cannot be explained in words, just as only the person who drinks water knows whether it is cold or hot. He then connects the Way with the original face, the true self, the essence of the world, mind, liberation, and nirvana. He also explains that self and world are not two. I stop here. We should not freely lump different terms together. We need to examine what each refers to and the context in which it is used. Does listing several names make them the same thing?
If we are perfect and lack nothing exactly as we are, is a murderer a Buddha too? Does that mean Yoon Suk Yeol, who provoked North Korea and is in prison, is already a Buddha as he is? Would there be nothing to correct or change? Then why listen to this teaching and study? Even when the story of Shenxiu polishing the mirror and Huineng saying there is nothing to polish is introduced, I do not simply nod. I ask what the problem actually is and what needs to change.
The Buddhism I discuss involves getting out of what confines, hardens, and deludes us. We need to see what we are attached to, examine which mistaken ideas make us suffer, and undergo a change that frees us from them. The world changes, and so do I. Yet after saying everything is already complete, he says we “only need to confirm it.” Is the move from not having confirmed something to having confirmed it not a change? Perception changes and something happens in the brain, yet the process and its conditions are left unexplained. Unless we question whether the statements fit together, we simply repeat them like parrots.
The Lecture’s Argument That Discrimination Cannot Convey It
Let us listen carefully to the explanation that follows. According to Beopsang, the very idea of acquiring a new awakening through practice has things backward. We are accustomed to learning what we do not know and creating causes that produce results. But the Way, he says, is not an object to acquire in that manner. Just as the eye cannot see itself, what is original cannot be grasped through discriminating knowledge.
He explains that if I were alone in the world, I could not know whether I was male or female, human or animal. Knowing whether I am tall or short, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly requires something to compare myself with. He therefore speaks of truth dividing itself into two, three, and four so that recognition becomes possible. Our familiar movement from not knowing to knowing, poverty to wealth, smallness to greatness, and badness to goodness is described as entirely belonging to the world of discrimination.
In Beopsang’s explanation, what matters is not the words themselves but where those words “land.”
He says that conveying wisdom beyond discrimination in words inevitably requires expedient means, describing this even as “covering oneself in filthy water.” The moment one speaks, one goes wrong; kindly offering detailed everyday examples can actually encourage the listener’s discrimination. He therefore advises listening without becoming caught in words by underlining or taking notes. His explanation is to attend to where the words land rather than to their verbal meaning.
Calling something a cup distinguishes it from a clock; naming it already divides things, he says. The argument then favors silence like Vimalakirti’s, striking a staff, or raising a finger and saying, “This is it. Do you understand?” as cleaner ways of teaching. We need to hear this reasoning fully to understand why I object. The crucial issue is that it goes beyond pointing out language’s limitations and treats detailed explanation, questioning, and attempts to understand as things that take us away from awakening.
Am I Addicted to Criticism?
A viewer asks whether I should check if I have become addicted to criticism. Fair enough: I need to examine myself too. But I hope people will not imagine that Buddhism is possible without criticism. If we do not look critically at our thoughts, other people’s words, books, and scriptures, how can we discover what we are mistakenly attached to? The moment I experience something and decide, “Ah, this is that very place; now I am finished,” there is nothing left to investigate.
We have to ask questions to look for answers.
Whether the problem is mathematical or social, looking for an answer begins with a question. Asking why beans have different colors leads us to learn about heredity and DNA. If a striped cat and a black cat produce a gray kitten, we ask why. Something has to strike us as puzzling before we investigate and learn. How can wisdom develop without questions? Observing our own minds is no different. Unless we notice something puzzling and ask about its causes, we cover it with an explanation we already possess.
If confidence that one has “confirmed this very place” ends self-observation and prevents further liberation, that is not the completion of study. Dismissing questioners and critics as merely intellectual also blocks opportunities to reflect on oneself. My criticism can itself be criticized. But criticism as an activity must not be treated as the opposite of Buddhism.
A Buddha Can Admit Not Knowing
I call myself an arahant and a Buddha. Does that mean I know absolutely everything? No. Can I determine with absolute certainty whether Yoon Suk Yeol should receive the death penalty, life imprisonment, ten years, or be released? Do I know how large the universe is? I do not. A Buddha is not someone who is certain of the answer to every problem.
Being certain does not make someone a Buddha.
What matters is that an elementary school pupil knows they are an elementary school pupil, or that a frog in a well knows it is in a well. Someone aware of their limits still has to judge, choose, and make commitments. They live while asking how to live, what kind of person they are, and whether their judgments are sound. Uncertainty does not mean doing nothing, and being a Buddha does not make everything certain.
I am criticizing Beopsang as someone who has not awakened. Yet a counterargument might make me say, “That makes sense,” and shatter a mistaken idea of my own. Is it wisdom to protect certainty by ruling out even that possibility? A Buddha too must carry questions within: what do I think I know, what do I not know, and what mistake am I making now? Those questions have to continue.
Recognizing What Is Useful Does Not End Criticism
I am not rejecting everything Beopsang says. Nor am I indiscriminately calling him a fraud. I do not know whether he is one, and he does not look like one to me. He appears to study Seon Buddhism diligently, read various books and teachings, and try to help people. There are things to learn from him, and people may receive real help from his explanations.
There are things to learn from Beopsang. But if we stop there, Buddhism dies.
Helping someone let go of distinctions that cause distress can be useful. Some parts may even resemble my explanations about breaking through concepts. The problem is making that Buddhism’s endpoint. If saying everything is one erases even the difference between life and death, or between having cancer and not having it, how are we to judge what comes next?
I ask how we should judge Lee Jae-myung and Yoon Suk Yeol, whether to buy a house, whether it is acceptable to urinate in the street or walk around naked, and whether to stop a child from eating something dirty. Someone may object that this misunderstands nonduality. But what kind of person actually results when one is told that everything is already perfect and confirming this place makes one a Buddha, while concrete judgment and observation are pushed aside? My concern is the production of people who know nothing about politics or economics and have no interest in the world.
Mind Too Arises from the Body and Its Conditions
Approaching everything as a matter of putting the mind right misses something important. Remembering, judging, and feeling are phenomena occurring in the body. They require eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and a brain. We should not explain things as if there were a separate thinking and knowing self apart from our sensory organs and brain. Mind itself arises and changes through causes and conditions, yet people seize on mind and turn the world into its product.
Mind too is a phenomenon occurring in the body.
Alcohol or nicotine addiction is not something that can simply be finished by correcting the mind alone. The body, environment, habits, and conditions are involved. How can a person get free if these conditions are ignored and they are merely told to empty their thoughts? This speaks of nonduality while removing the path of thinking in terms of dependent arising. The claim that we are originally awakened but must confirm it likewise fails to ask what bodily and cognitive changes confirmation involves.
In the end, we are told to confirm something that cannot be known, seen, or spoken of. I first ask what that something is. Having heard a description of a state and later felt something similar, how can we know it is genuinely the same as what the earlier person meant? Asking this question takes the discussion back to “It cannot be known through words.”
Can We Identify the Same Taste Without Knowing the Fruit?
Suppose someone in the past experienced the disappearance of discrimination along with joy and peace. They described it as inexpressible. Later, another person has an experience and says, “This must be the very place that person spoke of.” But if the earlier experience cannot be checked, how was sameness established? We are told that words, thought, and knowledge cannot reach it, yet the judgment that one’s own experience is that very thing is treated as certain.
How do you know that what you experienced is that same thing?
Imagine someone who has eaten a Korean melon describes its taste without naming the fruit. If a listener later eats some fruit and says, “Ah, this is what that person ate,” how can that be checked? Directly experiencing a taste and judging that it belongs to the very fruit the earlier person ate are not the same act. If explanation and comparison are ruled out, the goal is unclear. The claim to have reached it cannot be clear either.
That is why I criticize this as chasing a dream or delusion. If it is so impossible to convey, why write books and give long Dharma talks? If we speak, we should at least explain the direction we are pointing toward. I cannot accept the claim that detailed explanations go wrong while raising a finger conveys it well. This is the point at which I bluntly called it “bullshit” in the broadcast. I am asking us to examine what is actually being communicated.
Even a Staff or a Shout Needs Context
If I began every broadcast by striking a staff, asking “Do you understand?” and ending it there, what would you learn? How could you understand when nothing had been explained? Of course, a single word or gesture can communicate in some situations. If I have repeatedly discussed something with a younger sibling and warned them about it, one “Hey!” when they do it again may be enough. That works because of our earlier conversations, relationship, and situation.
Without distinctions, information cannot be transmitted.
We read meaning in expressions, looks, and tone of voice. Even using the example of a slap, we can imagine a situation in which the other person understands what prompted it. But the action itself does not contain a mysterious meaning that communicates universally. Without the preceding context, the recipient does not know what it means. Does striking a staff before a crowd convey the same awakening to everyone there?
Information is transmitted through differences. Zero and one must differ; sounds must differ. The same “Hey!” means different things depending on pitch and expression. Raising a finger or flower, or striking a staff, becomes a signal because it differs from other actions. We cannot divide communication into unacceptable words because they involve discrimination and acceptable gestures because they supposedly do not. Recognizing a gesture involves discrimination too.
Pointing to “this” and “that” and distinguishing one, two, and three are also part of communication. Such pointing gives us a way to think about how language might have developed. Language is a useful tool humans have developed. Where it has limitations, we should recognize them and use it accordingly. Adopting the appearance of not using that tool does not transcend those limits. If someone imitates the appearance of raising a lotus or reciting a poem to look awakened, I criticize that as dressing up as a Buddha.
Caught in the Words “Words Cannot Convey It”
It is true that a single statement cannot contain all of reality. That does not mean it cannot point in any direction. We should be able to explain what the Way is, what wisdom is, and which delusion we are trying to leave behind. If one explanation does not suffice, we can offer another example and answer questions. Putting shoes on one’s head, making a face, or gesturing after declaring that words cannot convey it is still communication in another form.
They are bound by the words “It cannot be conveyed in words.”
If the purpose is to help people leave ignorance behind and live somewhat better, there is much to explain. But absolutizing the sentence “This cannot be conveyed in words” abandons the effort to explain. Someone claiming to understand language’s limits becomes caught in that very sentence. I see this as a major problem in Seon Buddhism. What needs to be understood is made vague, and then the ladder for approaching it is kicked away.
As with something spoken of in terms of atman, yoga, or consciousness-only thought, we are told that confirming an unknowable something makes us a Buddha. One person calls it seeing one’s nature, another confirmation, another experience. I think here again of Kim Tae-wan’s explanations. Does changing the name make clear what was confirmed? With the place itself undefined and avenues of checking blocked, people cling to an ambiguous experience and become increasingly certain.
Disappointment After Seeing One’s Nature, and the Notion of Self
In the next passage, Beopsang says that seeing one’s nature brings joy but also disappointment: “Was this all it was?” After working so hard to confirm it, one discovers that everyone else is the same, leaving nothing to boast about and breaking the notion of self. Here I also question his use of that term. I think it is a mistake to explain the Diamond Sutra’s notion of self as though it simply meant pride. Still, meanings can change, so let us grant his usage and ask whether the argument works even then.
I do not accept the explanation that thinking everyone is a Buddha removes the notion of self.
Breaking an attachment or changing one’s thinking can bring joy and peace. I understand that much. But having such an experience does not establish that everyone is a Buddha. Saying that no one can boast because everyone is the same also fails to explain what I previously misunderstood or what changed. I may simply have attached the name “Buddha” to my experience and then attached it to everyone else.
Beopsang says that habitual tendencies remain, so one must not boast. He says he too is deficient and is studying alongside others, rather than confidently claiming awakening. He adds that twenty or thirty years of study may follow seeing one’s nature. I ask again: what is studied afterward? If the goal of original perfection was mistaken from the beginning, what changes by studying for a long time while retaining it? Acknowledging deficiency does not by itself resolve the earlier contradiction.
When a Student Says Nothing Has Changed After Years
Beopsang says that even after confirmation, a person may retain the feeling of being superior to others. He also explains dissatisfaction as resulting from expectations that awakening will bring constant peace, eliminate anger, and even cure bodily illness. Someone may still be angry, greedy, and helpless three or five years later and ask, “Does this mean I have not awakened?” He answers that they are holding on to an idea they have made.
The student’s question may be a clue for examining one’s own delusion.
I first ask whether the person has mistaken temporary quiet and the suspension of discrimination for awakening. Awakening means a delusion breaking. If someone was supposedly already a Buddha, then confirmed it, but says they have not changed, both teacher and student should reconsider what they thought had been confirmed. But the moment the student raises a doubt, answering “That too is your thought” blocks examination.
Of course the student may have mistaken expectations. The expectation that awakening should prevent every instance of anger deserves examination. But that is not the only possible explanation. Self-observation may have been inadequate, or an experience may have been misinterpreted. We should examine causes and conditions to determine which explanation applies. If the answer is fixed in advance and every question is turned away with the same phrase, both the questioner and teacher come to a halt.
My harsh description in the broadcast of a group of fools refers to this structure: people certify one another’s unclear experiences while leaving no room for questions. Once certain, they fail to see a clue placed directly before them. Rather than recognizing that it is in a well, the frog acts as though it knows everything. Eliminating uncomfortable questions cannot be the same as acquiring wisdom.
Must a Buddha Have Neither Anger Nor Thought?
The mere fact of anger does not establish that something is wrong. We need to examine why it arose, whether it is appropriate in the situation, and whether we are unnecessarily intensifying it. Understanding what is happening and learning its causes matters. We do not need to cling to an image of someone who never becomes angry, but dropping that image does not automatically make us wise.
If having no thoughts makes one a Buddha, is a stone a Buddha?
If the response is always “That too is a thought,” thought and understanding themselves come to appear problematic. Would a thoughtless stone then be the finest Buddha? The living human process of understanding oneself and the world and correcting mistakes disappears, leaving only a state without thought. A quiet, comfortable state may be helpful; calling it the completion of Buddhism is another matter.
Our questions here must become concrete again. What did I expect? What did I experience? What did I learn afterward? In which situations do I still react the same way? Examining ourselves through these questions may reveal the conditions for change. But certainty that confirmation has already settled the matter turns all those questions into needless extras. This is what I keep criticizing.
What Is Established by Saying Only a Tathagata Knows?
The next passage says that only a tathagata knows this; other humans and heavenly beings do not. Beopsang explains that this does not mean others can never awaken, but that someone who confirms it is called a Buddha. He speaks of ordinary people grasping appearances because they lack wisdom, and of the empty, still, luminously knowing mind knowing itself. Hearing this, I ask the same question again: what has been confirmed?
You say you have confirmed it—but what have you confirmed?
Defining a Buddha as “someone who has confirmed it” does not supply the content of that confirmation. What supports the judgment that my feeling is the same as an earlier person’s? I identify the same problem when criticizing consciousness-only explanations. A chain of metaphysical and learned-sounding terms may appear profound while leaving entirely unclear what is actually known. Ask how they know it is the same thing, and the explanation blurs again.
When the content becomes this absurd, so does the mode of communication. If mysterious significance is attributed to striking a staff or raising a finger, how would we distinguish it, at the extreme, from baring one’s backside or defecating and asking, “Do you understand?” I use a crude example to ask what is being conveyed. Without examining what has been understood, bizarre behavior itself is consumed as evidence of awakening.
A person repeating a book’s words may fail to understand their contradictions or the workings of the body and brain. Confirmation too uses the brain and involves a difference between before and after. Skipping this ordinary question and merely claiming to have confirmed an unknowable something is not what I call wisdom.
What Remains When Effort and Thought Are Pushed Aside?
In another passage, Beopsang says it cannot be known through thought and mentions Dahui and hwadu practice. Thinking supposedly divides this side, inhabited by ordinary people, from an ideal world on the other side, and produces contrived effort to get there. The world values hard practice and effort, he says, but within nonduality, orthodoxy and heresy, monastic and lay life, are not two.
How can wisdom arise without observing, questioning, and thinking?
Pushing thought and understanding aside in this way is anti-intellectual. Within that setting, a fraud—or someone who does not properly understand their own experience—can pass as a master of the Way. Deliberate deception is not the only problem. Someone who misunderstands their own experience while believing it profound can lead others into the same delusion. Without observing, questioning, and thinking, how can they understand their experience or communicate with another person?
I too cannot guarantee that someone else will feel exactly what I felt. Would a one-year-old understand everything I know simply because I explained it? Does explaining menstrual pain to a man give him the same experience? Experiences can differ among women as well. Would a human explanation work for an ant? Bodies, brains, DNA, experiences, and circumstances differ. We should not project what happened to us unchanged onto another person.
Suppose an alien had no ears or could not hear sound carried through air. Speaking Korean aloud would not work. We need to know the recipient’s conditions to find a way to communicate. Yet people define their own mental experience as universal and say that all seven billion people possess Buddha-nature. Have they checked every one of them? I say there is no Buddha-nature. We should not turn a personal experience into a universal entity.
Awakening Without Intellect Turns Away from Reality
Buddhism requires intellect. Wisdom develops through using the brain, thinking critically, questioning, and observing. But when raising fingers, striking staffs, drawing circles, and shouting become repeated forms, the very inability to interpret them becomes their mystique. People feel they have received profound teaching even though it remains unclear what they learned.
Buddhism requires intellect.
If someone educated this way becomes indifferent to the world and does not know what judgments to make, I question the direction of that education. What matters is not how mysteriously one describes a brief cessation of discrimination. What matters is whether one develops the capacity to understand people and the world and discover one’s own mistakes. Treating questioners as ignorant and making them stop removes the very opportunity to learn.
Understanding Not-Two Through Neither-One-Nor-Two
As I explain it, “not-two” is a shortened expression of “neither one nor two.” Both sides must be considered together. I examine “neither perception nor non-perception” in the same direction. If we seize only on not-two and erase every difference, we become newly attached to the concept of nonduality. A statement intended to loosen someone’s attachment to distinctions becomes an absolute command imposed on every situation.
Not-two is a shortened way of saying neither one nor two.
The earlier question about free will connects here. If asked whether I have a pure, independent will untouched by any conditions, I say no. Bodily states, other people, past experiences, moods, and physical conditions all play a role. But must the absence of free will lead to the conclusion that my judgments and choices are meaningless? Being conditioned is not the same as having no need to do anything.
When someone suffers unnecessarily because of concepts of good, bad, right, and wrong, we should ask whether those concepts really apply as imagined. If “Do not kill” makes someone think they must never kill even a mosquito, let us reconsider the situation. Must a mosquito never be killed? We need to examine the conditions and the problem the statement is meant to address. Skipping those questions and prescribing nondiscrimination everywhere and always is another attachment.
Life’s Conditions Remain When the Concept of Self Breaks
It matters to break the illusion of an eternal self and recognize that I too am finite. But that should not become a reason to regard life and death, cleanliness and dirt, health and illness as entirely the same. Is smiling at a cancer diagnosis and declaring liberation from birth and death enough? Understanding the breaking of concepts that way prevents us from seeing what needs to be done in actual life.
Even if I recognize the self as a constructed concept, I must keep asking how to live.
Even if the concept of self is constructed, I live as a human with this body. I am an animal with senses and a brain, and the feeling of being me also arises within conditions. From the perspective of matter, things may be one, but the differences involved in living do not disappear. Clinging to not-two and concluding that my actions are meaningless merely fixes me in another one-sided thought.
If someone regards sexuality as dirty, we can ask why they learned to think so. But breaking that concept does not authorize “Nothing is dirty, so I will do whatever I please.” Living with others involves agreements, manners, and culture. People have different limits and circumstances. Questioning an inherited notion is not the same as abandoning the judgments needed to live together. Even after freeing ourselves from one notion, we must continue examining both sides and asking questions.
Stopping at Emptiness Erases Relationships and Suffering
Discovering that meanings we valued all our lives were constructed can produce a sense of emptiness. Understanding myself as matter and thought as a product of conditions can slide into “Nothing means anything.” We must not stop there by saying to think no further and live lightly. Are the sufferings of people stabbed, bombed, starved, or abused merely matter? Do we no longer need to see what happens in their lives?
Mind and self too are results arising from causes and conditions.
Yet the perceiving, feeling “I” is quietly retained while the world is dismissed as something mind creates. Relationships with the world disappear, and the view turns into extreme individualism. Were the books one studied not written and transmitted by people in the past? One learns through others’ words and books while ignoring those relationships, history, and society. That is not seeing in terms of dependent arising.
I sharply criticize this direction as a shortcut toward psychopathy. My target is the attitude that loses interest in suffering people and events in the world as long as one’s own mind feels comfortable. When illegal martial law is declared and the National Assembly is attacked, should religious people not demand that it stop and that those responsible step down? I do not recognize as wisdom a claim to profound awakening that neither understands nor can judge such realities.
When Questions Stop, We Drift Away from Reality
We have run out of time to view all five prepared portions. But returning to the words on today’s thumbnail makes the central point clear: when questions stop, we drift away from reality. If students’ doubts receive only the answer to drop their thoughts, and teachers remain certain they have confirmed that place, the path to seeing themselves and the world anew is blocked.
When questions stop, we drift away from reality.
When war occurs, people lose jobs because of AI, and problems arise involving Israel, is someone who merely repeats “Do not discriminate; just live” a Buddha? I acknowledge that explanations of nonduality can help. But making them the sole goal and ending inquiry lets people regard themselves as complete while knowing nothing of the world. They treat mind as though it caused everything, overlooking that mind itself is also a result.
A Buddha should observe, converse, judge through dependent arising, and act. Self and mind arise within conditions, so those conditions need examination. A dog or fish engaging in critical self-reflection and study is not the same as a human doing so. Abandoning human intellect should not be called Buddhism. Wisdom develops by asking about what I did not know and changing what I misunderstood.
To the Viewer Who Separates Dependent Arising from Causality
A viewer called Daein suggests that I am confusing causality with dependent arising. I reply that I am not. As I explain it, dependent arising is another name for causality. Does awakening happen without causes and conditions? Consider the very act of watching this broadcast. Something led to an interest in Buddhism; the title mentioning criticism may have prompted a click; encounters and experiences have led to listening now. This happens through causes and connections.
The law of causes and conditions is dependent arising, and dependent arising is the law of causes and conditions.
I say that restricting dependent arising to relationships between concepts throws away ninety percent of it. I have pointed out this problem in the monk Gogwang’s explanations too. We need to examine what depends on what in arising and changing. Defining it narrowly and then separating it from causality misses the conditions actually at work. I do not divide the law of causes and conditions from dependent arising.
If there is an objection, I invite a detailed comment. Explain what differs and how, and we can discuss it. I am not asking for unquestioning acceptance merely because I call them different names for the same thing. Dialogue requires reasons and clarity about where our views differ. Simply calling something a confusion leaves unclear which part is being challenged.
My Own Assessment of This Explanation
I intend to bring this three-part critique of Beopsang to a close here. But when I ask whether I conveyed what I meant effectively enough, I feel today’s broadcast may have failed. Showing and discussing several portions of a long lecture introduced many points and made concentration difficult. Even after speaking for more than an hour and a half, I am not confident that I made the central issue sufficiently clear.
I do not think I conveyed what I intended well enough.
I began intending to explain things more calmly and logically. I spent a long time preparing, but having more material does not necessarily improve an explanation. Next time I need to find a shorter, clearer way to speak. I apologize to those listening. I will use the remaining time to look at a few more questions and comments. While criticizing another person’s explanation, I too have to examine what mine actually communicated.
Why Do Deluded Masters Keep Appearing?
The question follows: why do so many deluded masters appear in Seon Buddhism? Because its goal has been made impossible to check. If what someone awakened to cannot be verified or examined verbally, there is no criterion for assessing anyone’s claim to awakening. Taking the example of Daewon, the senior master at Haeinsa, holding up a staff and asking “Do you understand?”, I ask what that method establishes.
If the goal cannot be checked, neither can the claim to have awakened.
I strongly criticize this as a structure that cultivates frauds. Regardless of deliberate deception, it allows people to acquire authority when what they claim to know cannot be checked. Buddhism should lead toward questioning, observing, and reflecting to get free of delusion. Moving in the opposite direction, in my view, mistakes something like yoga, consciousness-only thought, or Hindu yoga for Buddhism’s endpoint.
I repeat that the problem is not Beopsang alone but a longstanding tradition. Even without directly announcing “I am awakened,” describing that place in detail and speaking from the standpoint of someone who confirmed it sounds like a claim to experience. That is the implication I hear in his explanation. Apart from saying one is deficient and studying together, we must examine whether the direction being offered is wise.
University Education and Knowledge Do Not Guarantee Wisdom
Another question asks what monastic colleges teach for this to happen. Four years of study do not automatically produce wisdom. Possessing a great deal of information differs from being wise. I give Yoon Suk Yeol as an example: he studied law, passed the examination after nine attempts, and became prosecutor general and president, yet in my view makes ignorant judgments. Educational credentials and positions do not guarantee the ability to examine one’s thinking properly.
Knowing a great deal does not make a person wise.
I also mention the physicist Kim Sung-koo, describing him as someone who studied physics at Seoul National University and taught at Ewha Womans University, while saying I am not certain whether he is now an emeritus professor. I have criticized his claims to explain an afterlife or rebirth scientifically. In my judgment, those explanations fail to understand either science or Buddhism properly. Specialized knowledge or a professorial title does not make everything a person says wise.
If schooling has developed only memorization and examination skills, the capacity to question what was learned and scrutinize one’s thinking may not have grown. Inquiry matters in both Buddhism and science. More important than what one memorized is the ability to ask whether it is right, compare explanations, and examine whether one’s own statements fit together. Repeating unwise statements for a long time does not turn repetition into wisdom.
Question Together, Including by Criticizing Me
Please criticize what I have said across these three broadcasts too. If you explain in a comment where I am wrong or what you see differently, I will read it and respond. If necessary, I can discuss it again in another video. Being the person offering criticism does not exempt me from receiving it. My words too must be open to having mistakes exposed and being changed through questions.
Please criticize what I say too.
Today’s critique is not meant to bring questions to an end. It asks us not to close our study with certainty about an experience, but to keep examining what holds us. Thank you for listening for so long. I hope those who spent this Monday evening with me have a good week. May you become Buddhas.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.