Desire, Form, Formlessness, and the Notion of Self: Buddhism as Understanding Myself

Beginning with a question about the three realms

Today is a time for conversation. You can ask whatever you are curious about in Buddhism, or we can discuss a video you have watched or a book you have read. Your practice or the situation you are in can also be the starting point. I call myself an arahant, so you are welcome to challenge me: “What kind of arahant are you? What exactly have you awakened to?” I welcome people who prod me, criticize me, and ask for a conversation. My words are open to questioning too.

To practice Buddhism is to live a life of dependent arising. There is therefore no reason why those of us living in the twenty-first century, in 2026, should not discuss the economy, culture, politics, artificial intelligence, and the affairs of society. I am not proposing a Buddhism detached from our lives. When a question comes in, we can examine it together. When there are no questions, I can bring up something I have been watching with interest and begin a conversation.

While I was waiting for that conversation, someone asked, “What is your understanding of the realms of desire, form, and formlessness, and how should we practice in relation to them?” I first asked where the questioner had encountered this topic and whether they had watched my videos. An explanation for someone hearing about it for the first time should differ from one for someone who has already watched but still does not understand. The questioner said that the videos had not made it clear and that different people explained it differently. Let us begin there.

Why the explanations differ

Explanations of the three realms inevitably differ from person to person. I regard the system of the three realms itself as something established later, rather than as the original teaching of Gautama Siddhartha, whom we commonly call the Buddha. As time passed, explanations grew more elaborate and various additions accumulated. The nine successive meditative attainments discussed in connection with the realm of formlessness were also developed later. Explanations differ according to which system someone accepts, how much of it they accept, and how they define it.

First, let us establish how the three realms are commonly described. Buddhism divides the world into the realms of desire, form, and formlessness. The world in which ordinary worldly people live is called the realm of desire, and the place where a practicing monk begins meditative absorption is called the realm of form. The realm of formlessness is then also presented in terms of meditative absorption. Rather than memorizing these names or counting the levels of invisible worlds, I want to consider what we can understand them to mean in our lives.

What follows, then, is not an attempt to establish authority by saying that this system has always meant exactly this. I am giving a constructive reading of an already existing account of the three realms and holding it up to our lives—an interpretation better than the dream, as the Korean saying goes. Understanding how I live through these names matters more than merely knowing the names.

Where are the heavenly beings and hungry ghosts of the desire realm?

Accounts of rebirth tell us that one becomes an animal, a heavenly being, a human, or a hungry ghost. The realm of desire is explained within that framework of rebirth. But I do not accept the account of rebirth attached to Buddhism. I do not base my explanation on a worldview in which we literally die and are born as animals, hungry ghosts, or heavenly beings.

How, then, might we read it? We can read it as saying that people live like hungry ghosts, animals, or asuras and rakshasas, raging and fuming, according to their desires and pursuits. Someone may be caught in an insatiable desire to swallow everything, like a hungry ghost. Someone may live like a human, or like a heavenly being. Living like a heavenly being still belongs to the realm of desire. How are heavenly beings described? As long-lived, beautiful, and enjoying good things. That too is a life of enjoying what one wants.

Although heavenly beings do not actually exist, we can consider what this story contains if we read it like a fable or a fairy tale. Suppose someone lives a long, healthy, beautiful, happy life and can eat whatever they please. Let us call that living in heaven. By contrast, someone who is always angry because things do not go their way lives like an asura. Someone who remains hungry no matter how much they obtain lives like a hungry ghost. Someone who does not even know what they do not know lives like an animal.

Ultimately, we are talking about human beings. The point is not to believe that such beings exist somewhere out there, but to recognize that aspects of each of our lives resemble these descriptions. When what I want happens, I am happy; when it does not, I suffer. The realm of desire is therefore the world in which I live bound by my wishes. This is one way to portray our worldly lives, grounded in wanting and pursuing.

A good wish is still a wish

Can human beings, then, get free of wanting? We have all kinds of wishes. We want to be richer and happier, and to meet a good woman or a good man. We want delicious food, sex, and a nice car. When our desire for recognition is satisfied and other people flatter and applaud us, we feel good and think, “I am the best.” All of these are desires and wishes in the mind.

A wish can also be socially beneficial. Wanting to end a war is a good pursuit. We may wish everyone could be happy and politics could be conducted properly. We try to avoid what we dislike and obtain what we like according to our standards of right and wrong, good and bad. We want to live a long time, avoid illness, and not grow old. The story of Qin Shi Huang seeking a plant of immortality because he wanted to live forever illustrates the same desire.

All these wishes are reflected in the idea of the desire realm. Even a heavenly being ultimately lives within desire. So when we discuss desire, we must not limit it to the few things that readily come to mind, such as money or sex. We must also examine the society we consider good, the politics we consider right, the wish to be recognized, and the wish not to disappear.

We usually want what we do not have

There is the actual world, and there is what I want. For the most part, I want something I do not have. Do I keep wanting what I already possess? When I am completely full, do I want more food? However delicious the food beside me may be, I do not want to eat when I am full. Being forced to eat then is painful. Once a particular need is satisfied, I no longer want more of that thing.

The same applies to wishes about society. Seeing a reality in which the poor struggle while the rich alone prosper ever more, I may think, “This filthy world, this Hell Joseon, has to change.” I want to change it because that reality exists. If society were already a happy place for everyone, there would be no reason to take up that particular problem and insist on changing it.

A child wants a toy. Once that toy is placed in the child’s hands, the wish to possess that same toy is satisfied. Something that was absent has been supplied. Our emotions change according to whether our pursuit is satisfied or frustrated. We group those emotions under the terms joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. Desire underlies a life that appears as happiness, rage, grief, yearning, and enjoyment.

A life tossed back and forth by worldly wishes, emotionally confused, suffering, grieving, feeling wronged, and getting angry: these varied experiences are gathered under the name of the desire realm. If we practice Buddhism, we first need to see this as the story of our own lives, rather than someone else’s.

The wish for the sun to rise in the west

What, then, does Buddhism do? It examines what your desires are. Some desires are misguided in themselves. Suppose I dislike the sun rising and setting every day. The sun is too bright, so I wish it would never rise and only the moon would appear, leaving an endless night. Can holding that wish make the sun disappear? I could go into a dark cave, but the sun does not cease to exist because I want it to.

Now suppose I dislike the sun rising in the east and wish it would rise in the west. You might think, “Who would want such a thing?” But we do not understand our own desires very well. We do not examine how many of our desires are actually like that. As long as I wish the sun would rise in the west, the wish will remain unfulfilled and I will suffer.

The questioner said that the thinking and the pace of society that generate human desires move too quickly, and that desire has no end. That is true. Rather than rejoicing in what has already been given, we easily turn toward what we lack. Once something is satisfied, we no longer wish for it, so our attention keeps moving to what is missing. The problem is that empty dreams are mixed into those wishes.

Suppose my son asks me to buy a toy he saw on television because he wants it. Must he go on suffering for as long as he does not have it? The toy is not the only thing to examine. We need to investigate human desire, our wishes, and the standards in our heads. Buddhism is a religion that undertakes precisely that investigation.

Needs to be met and pursuits that torment me

This does not mean eliminating every need. Some needs are perfectly natural. When you need to shit, can you decide that your desire will be never to shit? When you need sleep, can you simply never sleep? We have biological needs, including sexual desire. Some of them must be satisfied. We must not call the indiscriminate suppression and elimination of those needs Buddhism.

If society, our neighbors, and the world we inhabit fail to provide what is needed at a basic level, we must change society. We can wish for everyone to have food, a place to sleep, clothes, warmth, and a reasonably happy life. These are things we should improve together.

Then there are other desires. “I want to go into space.” Suppose doing that requires hundreds of billions of won. We can dream such a dream. But must we live in despair because it does not come true? We may want to become an actor on television, or suffer because someone else was born handsome while we find our own face ugly. Some standards, wishes, and pursuits may be as futile as wishing for the sun to rise in the west.

That is why we need to take our desires apart, think about our standards, and observe and understand ourselves. We ask why we are caught in joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. Does this mean joy is bad? What is wrong with being happy? And are sadness, rage, resentment, depression, and despair simply to be declared bad? Before ordering those emotions to disappear, we need to understand why we fell into them.

As we understand ourselves and the world more deeply, we may see that we have been tormenting ourselves through a misconception or a futile pursuit. We are trying to get free of a life that follows worldly desires without even knowing what is wrong, what is mistaken, or what the problem is. This is what I mean first by getting free of ora when I explain Buddhism through the phrase “Get free of ora and param.” I will return to param later.

Ordination does not automatically unravel desire

After living as though turning a wheel within worldly desires, a person begins Buddhism. In the past, people entered Buddhism by leaving home and practicing as monastics, but today there is no need to become a monastic. Studying what a life free of worldly desire means, and what my own wishes are, is already an actual entry into Buddhism.

Buddhism means taking apart my worldly desires one by one, understanding them properly, and becoming free of them. This takes considerable time and effort. It requires deep reflection and observation. Becoming a monk does not suddenly produce that understanding. A monk can still flounder in desire just like any worldly person.

That is why meditative absorption is introduced at the beginning. Here we arrive at the realm of form. Thoughts arise incessantly: I want this and that; I must do this and that; this is right, this is good, and that is unpleasant. Underlying those desires is an activity that I generate. Left to itself, the mind thinks about all kinds of things.

Seeing a beautiful woman, I may want to marry her and wonder what having sex with her would be like. I may wonder what it would be like if a particular man protected me, if I were as accomplished as someone else, if I were rich, or if I gained recognition and people liked and applauded me. A way of temporarily stopping these countless desires has been handed down from ancient times. It is meditative absorption, commonly explained under the name of the four absorptions of the form realm.

Walking into a comic-book shop the day before an exam

People in the past also had some understanding and experience of human beings. They realized that when a person becomes absorbed in something, other thoughts do not readily arise. Consider my university days. I have an exam tomorrow. I need to do well and get a good score, so I am worried and need to study. Yet I decide to stop at a comic-book reading shop for just ten minutes or an hour. I used to like those shops.

Once inside, I find the comic immensely entertaining. I am reading it with my full attention. At that moment, will I be thinking that I need to do well on the exam or that I ought to study? Imagine I am reading a martial-arts story. The hero confronts a villain, gets hurt, and lies wounded and in pain. Eventually, he masters a powerful martial art, strengthens his inner power, and sets off for revenge. I am eagerly following the story.

At that moment, will thoughts arise about what score I will get, whether I should be studying instead, what my mother was nagging me about, or whether I need to meet my girlfriend? Or will I be so immersed in the world of the martial-arts story and the comic that those thoughts do not arise at all? We already have experiences like this in everyday life.

Left to itself, the human brain produces one thought after another and moves back and forth even within a short time. But when we are completely absorbed in one thing, it seems difficult to process something else simultaneously. When attention is directed at one thing, other thoughts do not come up. Before treating meditative absorption as something utterly mysterious, we can look back at this ordinary experience.

What absorption brings to a stop

Suppose I have just broken up with my girlfriend. My heart aches, I feel as though I am burning inside, and I am sad and aggrieved. I am caught in suffering and self-reproach: Why did I do that? Why is my family like this? Why did my girlfriend act that way? Then someone suddenly comes over, hits me, and stamps on me. I am in terrible pain. Will I keep thinking about what happened with my girlfriend and how I felt? When the immediate situation takes up all my attention, my previous thoughts stop.

The same happens when I become engrossed in a very entertaining television drama. A moment earlier, I may have wished I had been born into a wealthy family, but while I am immersed in the drama, that thought does not arise. Have you played Go? Korean chess? Do you like basketball or other sports? Have you played table tennis or become absorbed in a hobby? Look at what happens when you are absorbed in any one thing.

Left to itself, the brain judges, guesses, wants to do things, and produces various thoughts. We call these distracting thoughts. But when I become absorbed in one thing, my mind grows calm and all those thoughts stop arising. Through absorption, it rests and quiets down for a while. This is why I describe the settled state of meditation as resting.

Samatha and samadhi: gathering attention in one place

Let us discuss the core of meditative absorption through the word samatha. I explain the element sam here as meaning to gather, or together. In English, it corresponds to together. Samatha is the act of gathering. Absorption means gathering our mental energy and attention on one thing. The act of concentrating on one thing is samatha, and the gathered state is called samadhi. We practice samatha, arrive at samadhi, and call that state meditative absorption.

The object of attention can be breathing. You might keep watching only the sensation of breath coming out through the nose and touching the area above the lips, or observe the chest rising and falling as you breathe. You can watch the breath going out and coming in. What Buddhism calls anapana sati concerns this too. The question is where to gather our attention into one focus.

Instead of attention wandering from one thought to another, we gather it on Korean chess, Go, a contest of moves, or a sport. That is why there are practices called Buddha-recitation meditation, meditation through chanting mantras, bowing, attending to the breath, or concentrating on a hwadu. People also speak of meditation while drinking tea or washing dishes. Why is the word meditation attached to all of them? We can understand this by noticing their shared feature of absorption in one thing.

We can also ask about nimitta. I describe this as seeing an object, a representation. But I am wary of calling the viewing of some mental apparition meditative absorption. We must not lose the original object of attention and fall into a misguided illusion. People are not accustomed to sustained absorption in one thing, so other thoughts and sensations sometimes arise. We should not seize on those stray thoughts as something extraordinary.

Someone accustomed to the chatter of countless distracting thoughts concentrates on one thing, and a quiet moment arrives. They can experience ease in the present moment without thoughts of desires, wishes, what would be good to do, or what they want to do. It is a very simple practice. It understands and makes use of a human characteristic. When we become absorbed in one thing, other thoughts temporarily stop, and the mind that was being shaken by them grows quiet.

Reading the name “form realm” through name and form

Why, then, was it called the realm of form? Buddhism speaks of the world we see in terms of name and form, nama-rupa. The world is there, and we assign meaning to it. The character for name means just that: a name. It has the same meaning as nama in Pali or Sanskrit and name in English, and I explain them as having a shared origin. Translating it with the character for name is a proper translation.

The world consists of phenomena and material things as they appear, as they are, and we assign meaning to them. We distinguish between wanting to do this and having to do that, between this being right and that being wrong. What moves through our minds consists of concepts to which meaning has been assigned. Following those concepts, thoughts arise that this is good, that is unpleasant, and there is something we want to do.

But with absorption, that name—the attribution of meaning—temporarily stops. We can explain this by saying that only form remains. To judge something as dirty or clean, pleasant or unpleasant, right or wrong, handsome or ugly, that activity has to occur in the mind. The name “form realm” refers to a temporary absence of such judgments, with things simply being seen and heard.

When discussing the four absorptions of the form realm, I mean an experience in which much of our mental activity temporarily stops and, in a state of complete absorption, things simply appear. If a monk is first encouraged to practice absorption, he can physically experience a state different from being driven by wants and desires. “Quiet is possible. This state feels good.” It is a different experience from a life shaken by thoughts of wanting and having to do so many things.

In fact, this is no different from why we become engrossed in hobbies. Anyone can practice absorption. It is not difficult and can be approached as simply as everyday concentration. Make time to become absorbed. There is no need to cling to every classification of the four absorptions and their depths. People in the past worked hard at classifying them. It is enough to understand that as absorption deepens, thoughts grow fainter and a quieter moment arrives.

Will life remain the same after absorption ends?

What, then, is the realm of formlessness? Although it has been given that name, I think the term itself is wrong. Instead of letting a name lead us into imagining a transcendent world, we should look at what needs to be done. Earlier, I said that when we become absorbed in one thing, we are quiet while in that state. During intense concentration on a sequence of moves in Go, thoughts about a girlfriend, studying, earning money, or a mother’s nagging do not arise.

But the game ends, and absorption stops. We return to everyday life. Once again, we are shaken by thoughts of needing to earn money, wanting things, finding something attractive, disliking this, and having to do that. We felt calm and good during absorption, but outside it we are no different from anyone else. Are we then supposed to spend our whole lives in absorption?

Many people think Buddhism is a religion of never being shaken by anything. They imagine being entirely free of sexual attraction, almost as though becoming an arahant meant becoming impotent. They construct a fantasy of a Buddha whose greed, hatred, and delusion have vanished and who is absolutely unshakable, then regard that as Buddhism. But that is not Buddhism. Buddhism is not about forcing human beings toward such a fantasy.

I said that Buddhism means understanding myself: my desires, standards, and concepts, and both myself and the world. The work actually needed in the discussion of formlessness is to break through the concepts in my head that say “this is this kind of thing and that is that kind of thing” about the world we call name and form. An experience of thoughts temporarily stopping differs from understanding and unraveling concepts.

Dismantling names means asking questions about life

What is ownership? What am I? What are space and matter? We speak of arising and ceasing, but what does being born mean? Why do I like that? Why did I want to do it? Is what I considered correct actually correct? Is it truly right? Asking such questions is the actual dismantling of names, the dismantling of meaning.

Through absorption, we can feel how joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure arise according to our thoughts and standards. Should we stop there? Should we shut ourselves away in the mountains and meditate forever, talking about maintaining the same state awake and asleep or never being shaken? Should we observe our breathing for the rest of our lives? What would we use that for? We cannot spend our entire lives playing Go or basketball.

The question now is what I was bound to. The sun naturally rises in the east and sets in the west, but was I wishing for it to rise in the west? For observation of myself to emerge as wisdom, I must actually examine the content of the standards and desires I have been holding onto. Struggling to preserve an experience of temporary quiet forever cannot substitute for that understanding.

Can everyone be a leading star and everyone rank first?

Everyone wants success. But can everyone succeed? Who would call it success if everyone achieved it? “I want to be a leading star.” If every actor could be a leading star, why call anyone a leading star? They would simply be actors. There are stars, established actors, and beneath them countless unknown actors and supporting players.

Someone who has spent a lifetime in supporting roles can make themselves feel deficient by thinking, “I wanted to become a star someday, so why have I only ever played supporting roles?” Most people who wanted to become actors probably dreamed of stardom. But does just anyone become a star? Can everyone occupy that position? We first need to examine the nature of what we want.

Consider the wish to rank first in school. There is only one first-place student. When many people compete, the rest do not come first. Must everyone who fails to rank first then live tormenting themselves? Before that, we should ask, “Why did I want to be first?” Understanding myself is necessary before dismantling desire. Why did I want it, and what exactly is the thing I want?

When hungry, we eat. When our stomach rumbles and we need to shit, we go to the toilet. What are we supposed to do about those needs? We have to meet them. But we can ask different questions about things we do not have to do. “I want a 100-pyeong home. I want to live in a beautiful high-rise overlooking the Han River and sit there with a cup of coffee.” If not everyone can enjoy that, what am I doing when I torment myself by wanting it?

The task here is to understand my standards of pursuit, my existing concepts, and my desires. Where did that desire come from? Is it a foolish idea? Rather than merely attaching the label “desire” and declaring it bad, I need to understand specifically what I have been chasing.

Trying to change the world and tormenting myself

We can wish to make society a happy place. Go ahead and wish for it. Work hard toward it. But what if, because I have not changed the world, I think, “I am suffering like hell because I couldn’t change this fucking Hell Joseon”? We need to distinguish between working to change the world and tormenting ourselves. It is fine to make an effort. But am I holding onto that wish in a way that torments me?

Understanding our wishes and pursuits and properly dismantling our concepts is what I am trying to convey through the discussion of formlessness. This is, in fact, real Buddhism. In conversation with someone, I may discover that I was chasing things without even knowing what I wished for, pursued, or set as my goal. I come to see that I was living bound to ora.

What am I bound to? What did I consider good? Is it really good? I grow wiser through thinking deeply about concepts, observing, and asking questions. That is a real understanding of myself. Without it, if I come out of absorption no different from anyone else, all I have had is a quiet moment. Understanding myself must apply to my life.

When I realize I have been holding something hot

Suppose that until yesterday, living in a 100-pyeong home or a Gangnam apartment was the goal of my life. What happens when I realize that this was an empty idea tormenting me? Someone may hold a hot object without knowing that it is hot. Once they realize it, they cry, “Ouch, hot!” and let go. Why would they keep holding it?

In Buddhism, people often say, “Let go.” But does hearing “let go of attachment” make us let go? Someone might ask whether we could simply stop being attached. If we can stop attachment, that is enough. In absorption, the thoughts to which we were attached also stop for a while. If we can say, “Enough, I’ll drop this attachment,” and actually drop it, that is fine too. But usually we cannot.

That is why I need to understand what I was attached to. That understanding changes me and changes my life. It is not about memorizing an order and suppressing myself, but knowing what I was holding. This is where the discussion of desire, form, and formlessness leads: seeing myself driven by wishes, experiencing temporary quiet, and understanding the concepts that bound me so that I can unravel them in actual life.

Get free not only of ora, but also of param

Let us look more closely at the statement, “Get free of both ora and param.” You may have heard, “Leave both this shore and the other shore behind, as a snake sheds its skin.” Or you may have heard, “Leave both this world and the other world behind, as a snake sheds its skin.” I say these translations are wrong. Here, ora refers to the worldly, the lower, and param to what has gone beyond it, the transcendent.

We seek transcendence while claiming to practice Buddhism. Even if param is unfamiliar, you have probably heard of the six paramitas or the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra. Para is present in those names. The six paramitas are six ways of going beyond, transcending, or crossing over. Prajnaparamita is one of the six paramitas discussed in Mahayana Buddhism, and the Mahaprajnaparamita Heart Sutra is what we call the Heart Sutra. It speaks of crossing over through wisdom.

But as people practice Buddhism, they try to transcend in earnest. They wish not to be human. Why, then, would an old verse tell us to get free of both ora and param? Because while claiming to give up worldly desires, we seize another desire: the desire for transcendence. We need to see that desire too.

People tell the story of the Buddha practicing austerities for six years. Picture the image of his emaciated body. Why did he practice such austerities? He was trying to abandon even bodily desire and get beyond being human. He was trying to transcend. I identify that way of thinking with Jainism: to become a god through dying, to extinguish all karma and become something completely pure. Such concepts have entered Buddhism, but they are not Buddhism.

Buddhism means recognizing, “I was foolish. I was trying to get beyond being human. I was trying to be permanent in an impermanent world.” It means realizing that I wished for something misguided because I did not see the world through dependent arising and did not understand myself properly. Rather than making the move from ora to param the final destination, it tells us to get free of that pursuit of transcendence as well.

Is there a permanent mind separate from the body?

This is why I say that wishing for an unchanging state through ideas such as sameness in waking and sleeping, sameness in movement and stillness, or single-characteristic samadhi comes from not understanding Buddhism. This is a world of dependent arising. If you wish a rock to remain permanent, can it stay a rock forever? In a world that changes according to conditions, what can you hold onto and call permanent?

Your mind is connected to your body. However much you want to remain clear-headed, what will you do if you develop dementia? You may fail to remember, not recognize your son, husband, or daughter-in-law, and say things that make no sense. What will you then rely on to judge clearly and claim that you are always unshakable? We must not imagine a mind unrelated to bodily conditions.

Do not abandon being human in an attempt to become something perfect. Do not try to transcend. Get free of both ora and param. This means giving up the will to transcend, the will to be permanent, and wishes of that kind. Do not bind yourself again by pursuing the best, the highest, or something perfect. Why? Because the world is dependently arisen.

When you understand yourself and the world and see dependent arising, you get free of the idea of becoming an eternal, perfect god or becoming perfect in every respect. You also get free of thinking you are exceptional or the best. You let go of the fantasy that Buddhism is a religion that turns human beings into perfect transcendent beings.

Waking up from the world of concepts

We live without properly understanding what we like, what we consider right, or why we like it or think it right. A Mercedes is good, that car is better, that house is better. This is correct and absolutely right. “Capitalism is right. That bastard is a communist.” From the other side comes, “Those evil capitalists.” Each side is steeped in concepts.

Imaginary concepts and the actual world are disconnected, yet people sink into that imaginary world. They accept a concept without thinking critically about it because others say it is so. They live shaken by countless standards of right and wrong, liking and disliking, learned through experience. We can call this the world of ora, the realm of desire.

Then a person decides that everything worldly is futile. Since humans will eventually die, they wish not to die, to transcend, to be permanent, perfect, and complete. That is the wish directed toward param. But we need to recognize that this too was an empty idea. The instruction is to get free of transcendent pursuits as well as worldly ones.

A person bound in a cave, covered by countless things and hardened into rigidity, is caught in delusion. Buddhism is a religion of getting free of that delusion. What delusion am I caught in? We can consider the Heart Sutra’s phrase about leaving inverted dreamlike thinking far behind in this light. What dreamlike, empty idea has captured me? By understanding myself and my concepts, thinking critically, questioning, observing, and reflecting, I come to realize, “It was an empty idea.” A life changed through that understanding is Buddhism.

I have discussed ora and param alongside the three realms. People often imagine something transcendent when speaking of formlessness: that the self disappears in the attainment of cessation, that absorption has some special depth, or that the nine successive attainments mean this or that. I criticize explanations in which people do not actually understand what they are saying, but imagine whatever they like from what they have read and spout it off. The nine successive attainments were developed later, and pursuing transcendence in that way merely creates another religion of transcendence.

A Buddha is not someone who has transcended, and Buddhism is not a religion of trying to transcend. It is a religion of thinking, questioning, and observing. Otherwise, would we not have to spend our entire lives immersed in meditative absorption? Buddhism is about understanding myself and thereby changing my life. It means being grateful for what is given today, not becoming too bound to what I pursue, and not tormenting myself and those around me by insisting it must come true. The question is whether I can see the world through dependent arising.

Does the practice of stopping and observing eliminate the notion of self?

The explanation of desire, form, and formlessness must apply to my life. In that spirit, I recommend trying meditative absorption. It is good. I am simply saying not to turn it into some grand technology of transcendence. If anything has not been explained sufficiently, ask again. You can leave a question in a comment later, and we can return to it in another conversation.

A further question came: “Can the practice of stopping and observing be understood as getting free of the notion of self?” My answer is no. First, in the Korean term jigwan, ji is the character meaning to stop. What did I say caused things to stop? They stop because we become absorbed. Stopping is a result. We call the quiet that follows the stopping of mental afflictions concentration. Practicing stopping and observing together is the same discussion as cultivating concentration and wisdom together.

But how would becoming absorbed eliminate the notion of self? Absorption is absorption; it does not automatically mean the extinction of some self. Moreover, translating asang simply as “the thought of me” and saying we must get free of the thought of me is a mistranslation. What I mean by asang is the idea of atman. It means giving up the idea that there is an immortal self.

Asang and insang should not be understood respectively as the notion of me and the notion of someone else. People say Buddhism means abandoning asang, abandoning the thought of being me, but this comes from not understanding Buddhism well. We do need a deep understanding of what we call ourselves. But if we vaguely define observation’s goal as eliminating the notion of self, even what we are observing becomes unclear.

Observation concerns myself and the whole of daily life

Observation begins with observing the self I take myself to be and extends to everything in my daily life. Observation gives rise to questions, those questions guide further observation, and reflection gives rise to wisdom. This differs from memorizing and trying to fulfill the instruction “Give up the thought of me and the thought of others.” I regard that instruction as an empty idea arising from a mistranslation.

Of course, many misconceptions about myself break down as I practice Buddhism. My conceit also breaks down. What I thought was right, wrong, or good breaks apart one thing at a time. Concepts are repeatedly challenged and dismantled. But this does not mean that every thought of myself simply vanishes.

An ant moving by itself is still an ant. Humans too have limits inherent in being human. At an abstract level, a notion may break down when I recognize that what I took to be myself was not actually myself. But trying to become something transcendent that has discarded every thought of itself is not Buddhism. We must distinguish a change in understanding from the fantasy of transcending the human condition.

How I read the four notions in the Diamond Sutra

When discussing asang, people often bring up the Diamond Sutra’s four notions: self, person, sentient being, and lifespan. I do not read these as separate everyday distinctions such as the notion of me, the notion of someone else, and the notion of a living being. I read all four as telling us to abandon the notion of a self that will continue after death, the thought that an immortal self exists. Asang is the notion of atman.

Insang is the notion of pudgala. I explain this too as based on a self that continues after death, like atman. The notion of a sentient being is the same: it is the notion of sattva. Think of sattva in bodhisattva, the element corresponding to the final syllable of the Korean word bosal. I describe bodhisattva as a sattva that pursues wisdom.

In explaining sattva simply, I also use the term jeong. Think of words for mind, spirit, or a spiritual being. When we speak of things with or without jeong, we distinguish between those that have it and those that do not. Things without it generally mean things that are not alive. Living things are said to possess it. We need to ask what this sattva, expressed through various such terms, actually is.

People think that even when the body dies, sattva remains and goes on to the next existence. I say there is no such sattva. This is how I explain the absence of what is called the notion of a sentient being. It means not imagining and clinging to some subject that survives independently of the body.

In discussing the notion of lifespan, I refer to the Jain concept of jiva. The character for su means lifespan. Jainism describes the world as consisting of jiva and ajiva. Humans are said to possess jiva, something like a soul that continues even after the body dies. The various material things other than jiva are called ajiva. These may disappear or cease to exist, while jiva is thought to continue by changing bodies.

Jainism therefore establishes the idea that if jiva sheds all its karma and achieves complete purity, it becomes a god. When hearing about liberation, people easily think Buddhism means the same thing, but I say it does not. In Jain liberation and rebirth, the soul-like subject of rebirth is jiva. I explain Kumarajiva’s translation into the Chinese expression rendered in Korean as sujasang in connection with this account.

Ultimately, these four notions are not a set of commands telling us to stop distinguishing ourselves from others. They refer to the thought that an immortal, unchanging self exists, separate from the body, and continues after death through rebirth. It is that thought we are told to abandon. There are many other names for something believed to be the subject of rebirth. We should read asang as saying that these are empty ideas and that we must abandon the notion of atman.

The fantasy of making no distinction between myself and others

Yet people misunderstand asang and say, “I must give up the thought of myself. I must discard every distinction and discrimination between myself and others.” Try your damnedest. Can you really get free of those thoughts? That is another attempt to transcend. If you attained such a state, what would you be? A god? I do not know what people imagine they are becoming.

Our parents are precious to us. But can we see the parents of someone living in Israel without any distinction from our own? If that is how we understand abandoning the notions of self and person, we would have no need to distinguish our siblings, neighbors, sisters, or fellow citizens. We would have to discard even ourselves and see everyone in the world exactly alike. Is that possible?

Someone who would scream and raise hell if a single finger of their own were cut off talks like that. They hold such ideas and spout bullshit, and that is why real Buddhism does not happen. I criticize the way people ignore what human beings actually are under the authority of impressive-sounding words. If we decide to become something other than human without understanding humans, we lose the very ground from which to observe ourselves.

Think deeply: “I value my child more than a child in Africa on the other side of the planet. Is that right?” In doing so, we can understand that another child is as precious as our own and gain wisdom. That is different from saying, “My child is not my child, I am not me, and there is no distinction at all between me and others.” Do not turn talk of non-discrimination into fucking nonsense. Trying to transcend is what prevents Buddhism from happening.

Opposing war while understanding human weakness

Buddhism is not a religion for producing transcendent beings. It is about seeing where I was bound. We need to be able to ask, “Aren’t you applying a double standard? Bombing in Israel is acceptable, but bombing your country is not?” We may watch Russians kill one another with drone-delivered bombs without feeling the pain as our own. Then we need to ask why our hearts do not ache.

We can recognize, “This is what humans are like,” and understand human weakness. That does not mean justifying the weakness as it stands. We can understand it while opposing war. People elsewhere regard one another as outsiders and enemies and kill one another with guns, blades, missiles, drones, and bombs. People like our neighbors and siblings are dying that way.

What if that were my child? My neighbor? What if I were that person? Thinking in this way helps us understand that war is not good. Wisdom requires reflection and observation. We do not have to become transcendent beings incapable of distinguishing ourselves from others before we can consider another person’s suffering.

Nonself is something to understand, not something to become

Without even knowing what asang means, people follow a mistranslation, insist they must destroy the notion of self, and speak as though they must become nonself. This is why they fail to practice Buddhism. Nonself is something to understand, not something to become. The word nonself means anatman. We need to understand what that means. It should not be made into a goal of reaching some state and erasing ourselves.

My explanation may feel difficult. There are many things commonly heard in Buddhism that are easy to misunderstand, and I criticize and reject them. Hearing something different from what others have said can feel unfamiliar. But the discussion itself is not especially difficult. I am asking us to observe and question what we want, what we believe is right, why we suffer, and what concepts bind us.

Today, one question led to another. Those questions carried the conversation from the three realms to stopping and observing, the notion of self, human limitations, and war. Questions call forth further explanation and deepen observation. If something is unclear, ask again. Understanding myself through such conversations, and having that understanding change my life: that is the Buddhism I am talking about.