If There Are No Questions, There Is Nothing One Is Curious About
On Friday night, April 24, 2026, I said I would conduct the broadcast around viewers’ questions. The previous day I had spoken at length about artificial intelligence, but today was a day to bring up anything—Buddhism, social problems, personal practice, or difficulties in daily life—and ask together. I also said that if no one had a question, I would question the viewers. The world is overflowing with questions, so having nothing to wonder about is stranger.
Before the main broadcast, I shared my thoughts about channel support and memberships. Members are identified in the chat, but those who quietly send support to the account remain unseen. I considered whether to read their names in gratitude, post a monthly notice, and disclose how the money is used if the amount grows. The channel does not operate by my strength alone but through viewers’ participation and support, so transparency and gratitude are necessary.
The center of the broadcast, however, was still the question. When someone brings an interpretation of scripture, a social or religious issue, or a personal difficulty, we should not stop at answering but find what must be asked again within it. I opened the conversation by hoping this would be a time to question one another and cultivate wisdom.
If you do not ask me, I will ask you. In a world overflowing with questions, having nothing to wonder about is stranger.
Are All Buddhist Scriptures Lies?
The first question was very direct: “Are all Buddhist scriptures lies? Is there any truth among them?” I said we should confront it decisively. My usual message is “Do not believe,” but if we conclude that everything is false, there is no reason to use the name Buddhism or open a scripture. If nothing can be recovered, there is no reason to practice Buddhism.
This is not a problem unique to scripture. It is the same problem as how to receive the words of politicians, news, YouTube, books, textbooks, and answers from artificial intelligence. Instead of sanctifying one side as a whole or discarding the whole thing as a lie, we need an attitude that asks what is factual and what makes life wiser.
The question therefore goes beyond the binary of “all true or all false.” “Do not believe” does not mean “read nothing.” It means making everything we read and hear an object of question, observation, and criticism.
If all of it is false, there is no reason to practice Buddhism. The issue is not what to believe but what to discern and how.
We Cannot Even Be Certain of Gautama Siddhartha’s Historicity
Many Buddhists believe scripture consists of the Buddha’s words memorized, transmitted, and later written down. I first pointed out that we cannot be certain what kind of person Gautama Siddhartha actually was, or even whether he existed exactly as we know him.
The biography in which a prince renounces home, learns from teachers, practices austerities, realizes that path was mistaken, becomes Buddha, gathers disciples, and dies was not a complete unit from the beginning. Over time, the story from birth to nirvana gradually became richer and longer. Most of what expanded later was added by later people.
When neither historicity nor the factual parts of the biography are clear, we cannot declare, “These are undoubtedly the Buddha’s words.” Even if Gautama Siddhartha existed, most scriptures were written after his death by different people and schools and contain the arguments and views of their authors and periods.
We cannot be certain that the Buddha existed or which words in scripture came from his mouth.
Scripture Is an Object of Observation, Question, and Criticism, Not Faith
The core conclusion I drew is simple. Buddhist scripture is not an object of faith but of observation, question, and criticism. That raises a counterquestion: if I am uncertain of the Buddha’s historicity and authentic words, why call the channel Barobul, or Buddhism Seen Directly?
Buddhism is full of superstition, nonsense, and lies, but it also contains words that lead people toward wisdom. Those words directly affected my life, kept me from throwing my life entirely into suffering, and gave me a philosophy for thinking critically and living. That is why I do not abandon the name Buddhism.
Studying Buddhism means finding a needle-sized core of wisdom in a mountain and flood of lies. When scriptures contradict one another and even upper and lower passages in a single scripture collide, we must read critically and ask what in that mass of contradiction leads life toward wisdom.
I do not sanctify scripture. Study is finding one needle that makes life wiser in a mountain of lies.
Politicians, Textbooks, Wikis, and AI Must Also Be Read Like Scripture
The attitude used to read scripture is no different from the attitude used to hear a politician, read a published book or textbook, and receive words handed down by parents and earlier generations. The explanations of professors and teachers, newspapers and television news, Wikipedia and Namuwiki, YouTube, and artificial intelligence are the same.
We must not believe and follow their words as they stand because they contain lies, mistaken concepts, illusions, and premature guesses. We must ask what is factual, raise doubts, and think for ourselves. Someone who declares “all scripture is a lie” also assumes that they know what is not a lie, yet they did not stand beside the Buddha and hear him.
I do not know either. How could I, who do not know whether a person 2,500 years ago existed, know every authentic saying and fabrication? One may argue that something was the Buddha’s word, but the moment one demands belief because all of it is the Buddha’s word, it becomes fraud.
I do not know which words are authentic. The moment someone claims to know the unknown and demands belief, it becomes fraud.
The Axis of Leaving Both Ora and Pāra
I regard the teaching to leave both ora and pāra as Buddhism’s central axis. Like a snake shedding its skin, leaving this bank and the other bank, the worldly and the transcendent, runs through Buddhism from beginning to end.
I do not know whether this came from the historical Buddha’s mouth. I did not see the past through supernatural vision. I judge, however, that among the many claims mixed into Buddhist literature, this teaching helps our lives and identifies the core of leaving illusion and living wisely. It is my claim, not an absolute ruling on authenticity.
That is why I ask what can be recovered rather than fixing what the truth is. If, under the name of expedient means, one calls mountain spirits, Avalokiteshvara, rebirth, and afterlife false on one side and teaches them as real after turning around, eventually even the speaker loses track of what is false and true.
I argue that Buddhism’s core is leaving both ora and pāra. This too is a claim to test in life, not an authority.
The Second Question: Sexual Desire and Rebirth in the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment
The second question asked how I viewed the claim in the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment that lust, or sexual desire, is the root of rebirth when it is so difficult for humans to endure. I first said that rebirth does not exist and the claim is nonsense. This is a consistent position I have explained many times on the channel.
I will not pretend to know the sutra in detail, but the passage that presupposes rebirth and makes sexual desire its root already shows that the text was created in a period deeply penetrated by the concept of rebirth. Once liberation is defined as escape from rebirth, Buddhism has already turned in a strange direction.
The remaining question is sexual desire itself. If liberation means completely escaping sexual desire, humanity would disappear within a few generations if everyone became liberated. Such a religion is a religion of human extinction. Sexual desire is not to be eliminated but resolved and handled wisely.
If liberation requires sexual desire to vanish, humanity disappears after universal liberation. That is a religion of extinction, not wisdom.
Sexual Desire Is a Condition of Living Beings and Varies by Person
It is true that sexual desire is hard to endure. Its degree, however, differs according to age, sex, genetic conditions, environment, and experience. If we ignore these differences and make desire itself a sin or contamination, we fail to see humans as they are.
Just as we do not try to eliminate appetite and sleep, sexual desire should be seen as a condition necessary to human life. Humans are animals, mammals, and primates. If they cannot produce later generations, the human species disappears. A future without sexual intercourse may come, but for humans now, sexual desire is one condition of survival and reproduction.
Sexual desire combines inborn instinct with meanings, fantasies, and preferences learned afterward. What is considered beautiful and what creates arousal are affected by experience and culture, but the fact that desire arises cannot all be reduced to learning.
Humans are living beings. Before dreaming of transcending sexual desire, we must see how it arises and differs among people.
Why Are Seongcheol’s Seated Vigil and Jaseung’s Austerities Called Great?
Past and present Buddhism has displayed not eating, not sleeping, and cutting off sexual desire as great practice. People admire emaciated statues of austerity and worship monks who practice hardship. I criticized Jaseung’s displayed austerities together with Seongcheol’s jangjwa-burwa, the refusal to lie down. Many dislike putting them together, but the issue is not their names; it is the structure that turns austerity into evidence of authority.
The claim that Seongcheol did not lie down for years remained in the form “he did not lie down,” because it would be difficult to say he never slept. Stories were added about people checking whether he actually slept. But a person’s body breaks down without sleep. Dozing while seated and enduring discomfort are not evidence of wisdom.
If Jaseung presented austerity to advertise himself, the structure is more blatant. Ascetic suppression of sleep, appetite, and sexuality becomes a performance of appearing beyond human. That is pāra—the desire for transcendence—that Buddhism warned against.
Not lying down, not eating, and suppressing desire do not prove wisdom. When austerity becomes authority, practice becomes advertising.
Fleeing from Ora to Pāra Is Not Liberation
Ora is living immersed in worldly desire without examining right and wrong. But the opposite dream of discarding every desire and becoming a perfectly pure, godlike being is not wisdom either. That is pāra, the desire to transcend.
When pāramitā is read as transcendence and one seeks the other shore through giving, discipline, effort, and wisdom, Buddhism itself can be reversed into a religion of transcendence. The original problem was leaving both ora and pāra. A life soaked in the world and a life worshiping renunciation and spiritual power must both be criticized.
Jain ascetics sought to avoid all karma, become perfectly pure, and turn into a transcendent being after death, even choosing death by fasting. Buddhism sprouted in that soil by saying, “That too is foolish illusion.” Turning Buddhism, which discouraged austerity, back into a religion of austerity moves backward.
Fleeing worldly desire only to bind oneself to transcendent desire is attachment with a changed direction. Buddhism leaves both ora and pāra.
Eliminating Desire Differs from Regulating It to Live Together
Calling sexual desire natural does not mean acting however one wants. Human society includes agreements, endurance, and socialization. Hunger does not permit taking another’s property, drowsiness does not permit sleeping anywhere, and desire does not permit acting on anyone.
Regulating desire to live together is entirely different from transcending desire itself. Laws, customs, and agreements change with time and place, and agreements that no longer work can be revised through discussion. But declaring a condition of life sinful and trying to erase it entirely denies being human.
People who want not to resemble animals regard not eating, not sleeping, and losing sexuality as great. Yet humans are animals too. To my eyes, calling ascetic suppression of the most basic human desires enlightenment is foolish.
Social agreements that regulate desire wisely are not the same as asceticism that seeks to transcend desire itself.
Buddhist Faith Turned into Superstition and Anti-Intellectualism
Hearing that everyone must eliminate sexual desire and enter nirvana, I said roughly that Buddhism seemed insane. Although I use the name Barobul, I cannot ignore the reality that many called Buddhists discard reason, sink into superstition, and stop critical thought.
This is not unique to Buddhists. Christians, Catholics, adherents of other religions, and even the nonreligious easily believe and follow. Religion, however, can intensify superstition and anti-intellectualism because authority is joined to a promise of salvation.
I criticize Buddhism not to eliminate it. A system that sells rebirth, asceticism, and transcendence as wisdom and stops people from thinking cannot properly be called Buddhism.
The name Buddhist does not replace critical thought. When reason stops and superstition takes over, Buddhism also becomes anti-intellectual.
Chan Buddhism Did Not Suddenly Appear in China
The third question asked whether Chan was Buddhism transformed in China and how one should practice Chan properly. Buddhism changed continually from the beginning, and Chan did not arise suddenly in complete separation from the past.
I see the central current of Chan as beginning in Yogācāra. Chan is inseparable from dhyāna, meditation, and ideas such as samādhi and an unmoving mind belong to this genealogy. Yogācāra joins yoga and vijñāna and moves toward explaining everything through consciousness.
Calling Chan merely a Chinese transformation therefore misses its roots. Its form changed in China, but the thought that puts meditation and consciousness at the center continued from earlier traditions.
Chan did not emerge from nothing in China. We must see the Yogācāra current that placed meditation and consciousness at the center.
The Distance Between Yogācāra and the Yoga Sutra and Bhagavad Gita
I do not see Yogācāra as Buddhism’s core. I placed its roots beside Hindu thought such as the Yoga Sutra and Bhagavad Gita. Even if Yogācāra wears Buddhist clothing, reducing everything to a product of consciousness conflicts with dependent arising.
The world does not arise because of consciousness but appears dependently through countless causes and conditions. Our mind and consciousness also arise within those conditions. If consciousness is centered and what is not cognized is called illusion, the world becomes fantasy and only my cognition remains.
That resembles attachment to existence expressed as “I think, therefore I am.” When I become the center and my consciousness makes the world, a solid self is rebuilt while no-self is being recited.
Consciousness also arises dependently. Making it the source of the world recenters the self while speaking of no-self.
From Yogācāra to True Self, and from Chan to Authority
Once consciousness is centered, one eventually searches for a true self. One imagines a real self remaining behind thought and all cognition, and Chan drifts toward a religion seeking that self. Buddhism should instead see that the very cognition called “I” arises dependently.
Understanding the world dependently requires using the mind and asking questions. We must keep examining what I am, what cognition is, and from what conditions my idea of right arose. If this work stops and a vacant state is called depth, wisdom disappears.
Devices of authority such as “not relying on words,” single-lineage transmission, certification, and mind-seal teaching enter that vacancy. When scholastic language and a teacher’s approval replace questions, Chan practice makes people foolish rather than awakening them.
If true self and a teacher’s authority are built where thought stops, Chan does not deepen; it loses the question.
There Is No Buddha-Nature Outside the Body or Perfect Awakening for All
To the question “Do you think Buddha-nature exists apart from the body?” I answered that no such thing exists. Buddhism is a process of trying to live wisely, not a declaration that everyone possesses the same state and perfect wisdom.
In a dependently arisen world there is no absolute highest point, perfectly unmoving mind, eternal purity, or perfection. Wisdom too is relative and differs with conditions. Saying that a fixed Buddha-nature allowing everyone to awaken identically lies within all beings is a later dream.
If a one-year-old child, a person with dementia, a disabled person unable to reason deeply, and even an ant all possess the same nature for becoming Buddha, one must explain what that nature is. Inventing an inexplicable concept and declaring it present in everyone is nonsense.
No fixed seed called Buddha-nature exists outside the body. Wisdom is possible through conditions and differs with conditions.
Why I Dismissed The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Asked to explain The Tibetan Book of the Dead briefly, I scoffed, “We do not even understand the living, so why talk about the dead?” and dismissed it as a collection of nonsense. The dead did not write the book, and we cannot know who observed and transmitted a postmortem process.
Later I admitted that this answer was a short dismissal rather than persuasion. The questioner may have considered the possibility of consciousness and an afterlife, but I threw out a conclusion without fully explaining why I did not believe it.
That deficiency itself creates room for another question. One should ask why I scoff, and why I exclude an afterlife. My rough one-line answer should also be treated not as an answer to believe but as something to challenge and investigate.
I dismissed The Tibetan Book of the Dead as nonsense, but dismissal itself is not an argument. So ask again.
What Matters More Than Whether Dependent Arising, Impermanence, and No-Self Are Authentic Sayings
When asked whether dependent arising, impermanence, and no-self were the Buddha’s words, I again said I did not know. Having established that we do not know whether the Buddha existed or which parts of scripture were his, I cannot suddenly claim certainty here.
What matters is not who said them but what leads us toward wisdom. I argue that dependent arising, impermanence, and no-self are Buddhism’s core. Leaving both ora and pāra is possible because world and human arise dependently and contain no eternal substance.
The period was full of metaphysical pursuits of gods, Brahman, supernatural power, perfect purity, and eternal liberation. Seeing through question, observation, and reflection that these transcendent desires are also conditioned illusions is dependent-arising thought.
Who spoke the words matters less than how dependent arising, impermanence, and no-self lead us into question and observation.
What It Means to Leave Both This Shore and the Other Shore
The translation “leave this shore and the other shore” is difficult to grasp by itself. Its direction becomes visible when placed in an era of Jain ascetics and yogis fasting, refusing sleep, suppressing breath, holding up arms, and dreaming of transcendence.
Immersion in worldly desire is foolish, but pursuing spiritual and metaphysical transcendence on the opposite side is foolish too. One must ask where the thought of transcendence came from and what it began by believing. The mind that imagines perfect purity and absolute truth is also an object of observation.
“See things as they are” is not a slogan telling us to stare without thought. It means questioning where my concepts came from, observing and reflecting, and seeing the conditions that made them.
Leaving both shores means making the two desires called worldliness and transcendence objects of question.
Buddhism Is a Religion of Dialogue, and the Questioner Is the Teacher
To see dependently also means not stopping dialogue. If shouting, impressive recitation, and blocked questions replace thought, Buddhism makes people ignorant. Chan study should not stop the mind but question what leads toward wisdom and turn back toward one’s life.
If viewers merely believe and memorize my answer, they will believe the next speaker too. To avoid parroting a conclusion without explaining why it arose, one must hold doubt deeply within and practice thinking for oneself.
The real teacher is therefore the questioner. When you question me, you become my teacher; when I question you, I become yours. Questions break open both sides.
A teacher is not simply the one with an answer. The person who asks a question that breaks a fixed frame is the teacher.
Why the Same Question Cannot Be Asked of Everyone
Each person carries different concepts, thinking habits, environments, and traits. Asking the same question of a crowd does not make it reach every individual with equal depth. The question needed by Kim Bok-jin cannot be identical to the one needed by Urgi.
When I hear someone’s question and question them in return, I must understand their context and difficulty. A question that lands precisely on an individual makes that person think deeply and can become a condition—an encounter—for awakening.
Short exchanges in a live broadcast are useful as public Q&A, but they are limited in actually freeing one person from a frame. How the question connects to that person’s life matters more than the amount of answer.
A good question does not repeat one sentence to everyone; it also sees the conditions from which one person asks.
A Short Answer Is Not an Irrefutable Truth
I said that today I had mostly blurted out my views in short answers. Calling The Tibetan Book of the Dead nonsense was not fully explained through debate and argument, so anyone can challenge me: “Why do you think so?”
I invited viewers to state what felt incomplete, what doubts remained, and what new questions and objections appeared. Speaking confidently does not make my claim irrefutable. Conversation means searching for omitted connections and grounds.
If my words are copied into another authority, that is no different from sanctifying scripture. When I say “do not believe,” my own words are included among the objects of that warning.
Speaking roughly and confidently does not make me correct. Ask what grounds my answer omitted and challenge it.
Confirmation Bias Is a Human Condition, Not a Defect to Erase
Investigating after fixing a conclusion differs greatly from trying to think without a preconception. Yet humans continually carry assumptions that something exists and old beliefs, and confirmation bias itself is one human trait.
Social life would become extremely difficult if everything had to be doubted from the beginning at every moment. Familiar judgments and trust let us act quickly and maintain agreements. Some bias is built into the way humans live.
Making the complete disappearance of confirmation bias the goal of practice is therefore another transcendent desire. The important thing is not declaring that bias is gone but noticing that I too judge from within bias.
Dreaming of total freedom from cognitive bias is also pāra. First know that I too am a biased human.
The Child Who Stopped for the National Charter and Anthem
As a child, I memorized the National Charter of Education and learned loyalty to nation and people. I recited the sentence about being born on this land with a historic mission for national revival, and when the national anthem played on the street in the evening, I stopped and placed a hand on my chest.
I did not do this after deeply judging it right or wrong. I had embodied the habit of following what state and school instructed. People acquire frames of thought through education and socialization and live while feeling those frames are their own judgments.
Remembering military-drill classes, I said it takes a long time to see the world critically and question concepts. We cannot merely mock a biased person because all of us were made through such conditions.
I stopped when the anthem played, not because I judged it right, but because I had been raised to do so.
If Buddha Was Human, He Carried Illusions and Biases
If Buddha was not a being beyond humanity, he was not free of confirmation bias and cognitive bias. When equal line segments are given opposing arrowheads, knowing the illusion does not automatically make both lines look equal.
A Buddha’s visual and nervous systems are not reset, nor do upbringing, language, and memory disappear. Humans carry tens, hundreds, and thousands of biases, and there may be even more that have not yet been named.
Saying “I escaped bias” is therefore nonsense and a claim to transcendence. The Buddha’s words must also be chewed over; they cannot all be right. Awakening is not becoming a bias-free god but knowing that one’s judgment arose from biased conditions.
If Buddha was human, he saw the same illusions and had the same cognitive limits. The Buddha’s words cannot all be right merely because they are his.
We See the World from Our Own Well and Class Position
If someone raised in poverty has long thought that the property of the rich causes social problems, that judgment contains personal experience and political position. Conversely, a person raised in the well of wealth has difficulty imagining how a poor person sees the world.
I used the example that many legislators come from wealthy or intellectual backgrounds. Can people far from the hungry, disabled, young, and actual laborers truly represent them? They claim to represent the people but may represent only their own group and position.
We should ask whether people born into severe poverty and people who actually worked blue- and white-collar jobs enter the legislature in proportion to the population. If lawmakers’ experience is narrow, that bias enters institutions. I too cannot completely leave my position.
People see the world from their own well. When representatives’ wells are narrow, unrepresented lives disappear from law and institutions.
We Cannot Blank the Mind or Become Perfectly Neutral
I was born in Korea in 1974 and lived within a particular family, school, circle of friends, and society. What I learned and enjoyed, the work I did, the people I met, my preferences, and genetic conditions all made the present me.
The idea that I can erase every input and judge from perfect neutrality belongs to transcendence and supernatural power. Perfect purity, an utterly unmoving mind, and a blank head are impossible for a dependently arisen human. Buddha could not reset his mind either.
Only one path remains. I must understand that my conclusion is not the answer but an output from my experience and what has colored my mind. Only then can I avoid dogmatism and receive other positions and new evidence.
Because the mind cannot be blanked, I cannot label my conclusion one hundred percent correct.
Scientific and Philosophical Thought Does Not Attach One Hundred Percent to Its Own Conclusion
Skeptical, dependent-arising, scientific, and philosophical thought refuses to call one’s conclusion perfect. It recognizes that human judgment follows inputs and asks again whether that judgment is right.
If a religious leader says there is no afterlife, rebirth, or soul, followers may leave. Some therefore remain silent while others sell the belief more aggressively. Whether negligent deception or blatant fraud, authority must be criticized when it spreads unverified belief and makes education and society anti-intellectual.
We need not force a red pill on someone happy with the blue one. But no one has the right to bring superstition into education and institutions and make others flounder in it. Through critical thought, we need social liberation and a movement beyond superstition as well as personal liberation.
Not attaching one hundred percent to my conclusion begins skepticism and science; keeping superstition from ruling society is social liberation.
Criticism That Prods One Another and the Question That Returns
Seeing the world critically is difficult. Nor can we merely mock someone’s foolishness, because I too have not escaped every bias. But when mistaken claims are spread with authority, we must prod and criticize one another. Without criticism, we do not even feel what is wrong.
Closing the broadcast, I said today’s questions were good. Next time, I wanted not only to answer but to return more questions. I hoped viewers would receive those questions openly and think about them deeply within their own lives.
I am not a frog outside the well. I am a frog inside it, not free of the human condition or cognitive bias. Unless this is admitted, dialogue, study, and liberation cannot begin.
I am not perfect, and Buddha was not perfect. Questioning, criticizing, and correcting one another is living Buddhism.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.