A Question Raised by Rereading I Am Right and You Are Wrong
Ilhyu said that he was reading for the second time a book I had recommended, I Am Right and You Are Wrong: Hypocrisy in an Age When God Is Dead. It is a short, thin book by a Korean author, but an excellent one. It impressed me so much that I recommended it to several people. I could not buy it, yet I borrowed it again from the library and copied important passages into my notebook, so in effect I read it several times. The book follows the trajectory of empiricism, explains relativism and perspectivism, and finally arrives at Nietzsche in its examination of what produces hypocrisy.
After reading it, Ilhyu said that he seemed to be developing a tendency to put himself at the center and act according to his feelings. The thought behind this was that choosing one course rather than another could not be absolutely wrong. In one respect, that is true. When we reach the realization that no absolute standard exists, we become a little freer than before. But we cannot jump from there to the conclusion that everything is therefore the same. We need to connect the question raised by the book to matters we had discussed earlier: staking the present on the future, impermanence, and attachment.
Realizing that there is no absolute standard is not permission to live carelessly. It is the starting point for reexamining the standards and attachments I have been holding.
The Habit of Staking the Present on the Future
While answering another question a few days earlier, I spoke about the problem of living with life mortgaged to the future. We commonly live in the tight grip of the thought, “There is a future for me.” A future may of course come, but it may not. We cannot know the future of our lives. We do not know when we will die or what change may suddenly strike us. This is impermanence: nothing remains constant.
Knowing this as a sentence and recognizing it deeply enough to be shaken by it are different things. Once we truly accept that the future we had assumed we would naturally reach cannot be guaranteed, the heavy burdens on our shoulders and the thoughts “I absolutely must do this,” “I will accomplish it at all costs,” and “I must have this” begin to loosen. All such thoughts require the premise of a guaranteed future. The words “absolutely” and “must,” erected upon an unsecured future, are closer to empty thoughts than we usually admit. The more clearly we recognize impermanence, the more our attachment to what we want to do and think we have to do releases itself.
If the future cannot be guaranteed, the many commands built upon it—“absolutely” and “must”—cannot be absolute either.
Good and Evil, Right and Wrong Require Standards
The same thing happens with good and evil, right and wrong, and liking and disliking. To say what is good or evil, correct or incorrect, always requires a standard. The phrase “an age when God is dead” in the book’s subtitle points to Nietzsche. Here, the death of God means the death of the absolute standard. It is a departure from the belief that there is one standard that knows everything and provides a final guarantee for every judgment.
The ancient Greek statement “Man is the measure of all things” reveals the same problem. It should not be read as meaning that all things are fitted to a single standard belonging to humanity as a whole. It means, rather, that each person has a measure of his own and sees the world through his own standard. This is relativism and perspectivism. Each of us judges the world from a perspective formed by our experiences and conditions. We therefore arrive at the conclusion that standards such as absolute good, an invariably correct answer, and complete truth do not actually exist.
When this is clearly recognized, a change similar to the recognition of an uncertain future occurs. Attachment to what we want and feel obliged to do weakens. This does not mean that every desire must disappear. If there were nothing at all that we wanted to do, what pleasure would there be in living? The issue is not whether desire exists, but how absolutely we cling to it.
What relativism and perspectivism dismantle is not the pleasure of living, but the insistence that my standard alone is absolutely right.
Even Natural Laws Pass Through Human Concepts
Ilhyu observed that even the laws of nature established through scientific observation and experiment are human constructions formed within human concepts. That is so. This is also why Buddhism speaks of “images” or conceptual forms. An image is a standard and a concept. Though it is never absolute, we become absorbed in it and declare, “This is beautiful,” “This is wonderful,” or “This must be good.” Such judgment is essentially no different from a child considering a toy painted gold to be especially precious.
The same applies to the face or body type we find attractive and to a toy or car we want to possess. These are merely standards that arose in us as inborn conditions, later experiences, society, culture, and bodily responses overlapped. We do not like them because they possess absolute value. We can still like, enjoy, and choose them while knowing this clearly. What changes is the excessive attachment that says we cannot live without the object.
The deeper our understanding of ourselves, human beings, society, and nature becomes, the wiser we become. We waste less energy on pointless stubbornness and suffer less from absurd attachments. We become a little freer, lighter, more spacious, and less attached. The change Buddhism describes is this natural change, not magic that instantly deletes every human desire.
Knowing that a standard was constructed does not eliminate liking. It weakens the power by which we absolutize that liking and bind ourselves with it.
The Difference Between Knowing and Clearly Recognizing
A viewer asked me to explain more deeply what I meant by “after clearly recognizing it.” Consider human finitude. Almost everyone knows the phrase “You live once.” People know that they will die someday. Yet few recognize with enough force to be shaken that this is something that will truly happen to them.
When we realize that it really is so, we begin to see how much we have suffered over things we did not have to do, endured pain we did not need to endure, and spent our lives chasing foolish things. Many people turn their eyes away from this reality. It is like a red pill that exposes reality rather than a sweet blue pill. They therefore imagine an afterlife, rebirth, past lives, heaven, or God and want to believe, “There is no way I will simply disappear.” Attachment to one’s own existence is that intense. We do not want to confront a single life and our own disappearance directly.
Knowing that people die and directly accepting that I am a being who will truly disappear are entirely different things.
Finitude Confronted After My Father’s Death
I came to recognize human finitude clearly after my father died. Remembering his death, I asked myself, “Who are you? What are you?” I then faced the fact that I, too, was a being who would disappear like dust and that the solid “I” I had assumed myself to be was an illusion.
The force of accepting this fact without evasion is powerful. When we witness just as it is that we cannot know when and how life will change and that human beings are finite, our lives change. We may confront directly what fear once made us avoid, and we may stop caring about matters that previously consumed us. Our relationship to what we feel we must or desperately want to do changes as well. The degree differs from person to person. Some change a little, others a great deal. Still, we ought to laugh at and examine the fact that we continue to live as if another ten years were guaranteed.
Facing finitude is not shrinking before the thought of death. It is turning away from a life that sacrificed the present for an unguaranteed future.
Clear Recognition Appears in Conduct More Than Words
I cannot measure for someone else how clearly they have recognized this fact. It is difficult to establish a standard of judgment or explain the depth in words. We can only work backward. By observing how a person’s conduct has changed, we may infer the extent of the recognition.
Ilhyu said that his attachment to what he felt obliged to do had weakened considerably, while his attachment to what he wanted had weakened less. He should therefore examine deeply where those wants and their standards came from. He should not stop at “I still want it,” but observe the movement of that desire. This is the examination of one’s own life and mind, and it is what I call Buddhism.
More decisive evidence than the claim that one has awakened is the conduct and attitude toward life that changed after the realization.
My Thoughts and Emotions Reveal Me Without Concealment
My actions, thoughts, emotions, standards, and judgments reveal me. They display me as I am, and there is no way to hide from oneself. Yet most people say, “I like this” or “I think this is right” without critically examining why or how the underlying standard arose.
A person genuinely practicing Buddhism confronts the self precisely here. One sees the standards ingrained in the body through the combination of society, parents, bodily conditions, and countless experiences. What I like and dislike, what I believe must be done, what I judge to be right, and what I prohibit as wrong are all within me. I act, judge, like, and dislike according to them. Changes in emotion—anger, depression, joy, sorrow, and despair—reveal these standards most vividly.
We can therefore begin examining ourselves when emotion moves. Ask why I became angry, what collapsed and produced despair, or what standard was fulfilled and produced joy. The extent of what I have understood is not something another person can certify. I must observe my own thoughts, emotions, and actions and see it for myself.
Self-observation is not a search for a special true self hidden in the mind. It is tracing the standards of the self already revealed through conduct and emotion.
First Release the Attachment to Becoming Perfect
There is one thing I can tell Ilhyu plainly: do not cling to perfection. Human beings cannot be perfect. We cannot completely reset ourselves or turn ourselves into a blank page. Perfection is also connected to the idea of being unchanging. The pursuit of total purity, perfect cleanliness, or the supreme state is therefore an imagination trying to move in the opposite direction from the fact that change is the way of the world.
We cannot reset our brains or erase every experience and condition accumulated through life. What we need instead is to see, “I am no different from an elementary school student,” “I am a frog in a well,” and “So many desires and standards have piled up within me.” I must examine my own standards, not manufacture a new fantasy in which every standard is erased and I become blank.
The desire to become perfect is a dream that resists impermanence. Wisdom begins not when we become perfect, but when we see our imperfect selves accurately.
The Perfect Buddha I Imagine Is a Dream
We are dreaming whenever we try to become the best. The image we construct when we say, “A Buddha must be like this,” is the same. The first step in becoming a Buddha is clearly recognizing that the Buddha I had imagined was a dream. I may die tomorrow. If I spend my life wandering in search of becoming a Buddha on some future day, when will I become one? I do not even know what a Buddha is.
If we define Buddha as a perfect being, we can pursue it for a lifetime and never become one, because Buddha is not a perfect something. We commonly imagine Buddha as a state of awakening, total purity, the complete absence of desire, freedom from every disturbance, or an inexplicably wise condition. Buddhist scriptures and the things we have heard and learned have implanted this image. Yet we have never deeply considered what such a Buddha actually is. We need to see that it too was an “image,” a conceptual form.
One of the greatest images preventing us from being Buddha is the very idea of a perfect Buddha placed in the mind as a destination to reach someday.
If We Cannot Be Perfect, Why Practice Buddhism?
An objection then arises. If there is no need to be perfect and perfection is impossible, why practice Buddhism? What difference is there from not practicing it? The difference lies in knowing oneself. Wisdom is the process of knowing my mind and standards and coming to know the world.
A person who responds wisely does not simply believe the thoughts “I am unquestionably right,” “I know,” “I am correct,” or “I absolutely have to do this.” Such a person examines the contents of the mind, one’s standards, emotions, and body, observes the world, raises doubts and questions, and thinks. A person who continues this process naturally becomes wiser. Buddhism’s difference is not that it makes a human perfect. It helps us know ourselves and the world more fully and live accordingly.
Wisdom is not a finished product or special state. It is the process of knowing oneself and the world and responding more wisely in each situation.
No Special Act Is Required in Order to Become Buddha
We must first consider what the Buddha we pursue actually is. We should not chase a vague state without asking, “What am I pursuing now?” Nor am I saying that we should do nothing and sit vacantly. We need not add some separate mystical practice. Observe ourselves and the world, sustain doubt and questioning, and think. Above all, engage in dependent-arising thought: see how everything comes to be within particular conditions and relationships.
The person doing this is Buddha; the person doing this is a Buddhist; the person doing this is wise. Understanding relativity and our own limitations shows us that we are frogs in a well, beings no more knowledgeable than elementary school students. Humility then arises naturally. It is not an artificial pose of lowering oneself, but humility born from understanding how little we know and how narrow our vision is.
The life of observing, questioning, and thinking in terms of dependent arising is the life of a Buddhist. There is no reason to postpone it while waiting for a future Buddha.
Human Beings as Cosmic Dust and Religious Self-Centeredness
We are nothing more than cosmic dust. Yet because we consider ourselves important, we imagine that heaven has been prepared for us, that karma and sin are calculated according to our deeds, and that judgment awaits us in heaven or hell. Who would be so concerned with me, a speck of cosmic dust? Such thoughts arise from human-centered thinking in which humanity is important and occupies the center of the universe.
To move beyond this self-centeredness, we must observe ourselves, the world, and other people. Observe our children, spouses, and the people we meet, and think in terms of dependent arising about what comes to be in those relationships. This is the Buddhist life as I understand it. It does not expect special treatment within a religious fantasy; it examines and lives within actual relationships and conditions.
Rather than imagine that the universe has prepared judgment and reward around me, it is far more Buddhist to observe the people and world I encounter now.
Do Not Try to Become Buddha; Live Like Buddha
Living like Buddha rather than trying to become Buddha is what the life of Buddha actually is. I say “May you attain Buddhahood” at the close of every broadcast, but it does not mean that you should become a transcendent being in the future. It means: live like Buddha. What, then, is the Buddha I mean?
Observe the movement of your mind, the response of your body, and the surging of your emotions. Watch how objects around you, society, and the world move. Question and think. If, without this prajna, Buddhism tells us to switch thought off and live without thinking, it moves in the exact opposite direction. How could I understand myself, notice my standards, or discover the tinted glasses and beam in my own eye without thinking? Entering concentration does not automatically remove that beam.
Attaining Buddhahood is not acquiring a perfect state in the future. It is living now by observing, doubting, and thinking about one’s mind and world.
Buddha Is an Attitude Toward Life, Not a State
I have said repeatedly that Buddha is not some ultimate state but an attitude toward life. The life of a person who lives with a Buddha-like attitude is Buddha. Because bodies, temperaments, experiences, and learning all differ, the outward form of that attitude must differ from person to person. Ilhyu and I are different, and my younger sibling and I are different. There is no reason an identical Buddha would emerge from all of us.
We imagine that after awakening everyone will become the same. Yet we cannot help being different, and difference is fine. People who even speak and apologize differently cannot reproduce one fixed outward form. What they can share is not a completed facial expression or behavioral style. It is an attitude of knowing one’s own words and standards, observing the world and relationships, asking about what one does not know, and thinking.
A Buddha-like life does not reproduce an identical personality. It is a life in which different people live wisely within their respective conditions.
The Contradictions of People Who Do Not Examine Their Own Words
The most basic question is this: Do I know what comes out of my mouth when I speak? Do I examine whether my statement is an image and what standard produced it? Many people say something partly correct on one side and then turn around and say something absurd, all without knowing what their own words mean. We often see this among people who appear on YouTube and speak as though they know something.
Because they do not examine themselves, they cannot see what their statements mean or how one connects to another. The problem is not only the amount of knowledge they possess. It is their failure to observe their own concepts and standards. If they speak of Buddhism while telling others to stop thinking, speak of impermanence while establishing a perfect eternal state, and speak of relativity while absolutizing their own words, they cannot even see their own contradiction.
“Know yourself” is not an abstract slogan. It means first knowing what I am saying and the standard from which my statement comes.
How a Question Changes Me
This broadcast began with a question about a small change that followed reading a book. Yet if we follow that question to the end, it leads to impermanence—the impossibility of guaranteeing life’s future—perspectivism—the absence of an absolute standard—self-observation, which reveals our desires and emotions, and the dismantling of the image of a perfect Buddha. A question does not end when it receives one correct answer. It changes me when it shows me what I took for granted and made absolute.
It is fine for desire to remain. The extent and form of change will differ from person to person. What matters is not absolutizing that desire, but examining where it came from. Do not wait for a future self who will one day be perfect. Observe the mind and world moving now, and keep raising questions. This is the process of wisdom through which we know ourselves and the world. It is the Buddhahood I mean and the path of living like Buddha.
Rather than chase the dream of becoming Buddha, observe, question, and think about yourself now. The life that lives like Buddha is itself Buddha.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.