The Little Prince Encounters Five Thousand Roses
After walking for a long time across sand, rocks, and snow, the Little Prince discovers a path. All paths, as the story says, lead to where people live. Following it, he reaches a garden filled with roses. The roses look remarkably like the rose that bloomed on his own planet.
Surprised, he asks, “Who are you?” They answer, “We are roses.” The moment he hears those words, the Little Prince feels extremely unhappy. His rose had told him that she was unique in the universe, yet five thousand roses just like her were blooming in this one garden.
He imagines that his flower would become angry if she saw them, cough violently, and pretend to die to escape her embarrassment. He would then have to pretend to care for her devotedly. It resembles a childhood fantasy I once had when my mother did not understand me: if I died, would she finally understand my heart and regret it? It was less an urge to die than a wish to be recognized and to make the other person regret not recognizing me.
Learning that five thousand roses exist does not immediately erase the Little Prince’s relationship with his rose. He has already watered her, protected her with a screen, and spent time with her. Yet in this scene, what collapses first is not their relationship but his image of himself as a prince who owns a unique flower. He therefore feels that the value of his own existence has fallen together with the flower’s status.
The discovery that his rose’s claim was false is shocking, but the deeper shock is the collapse of the judgment through which he regarded himself as a special owner. He had been looking less at the rose herself than at the status she seemed to confer on him. We must see this distinction to understand the later encounter with the fox, when he relearns relationship and taming.
The Judgment That He Was Rich Collapses
The Little Prince believed he was rich because he possessed the only flower of her kind in the world. After seeing new facts, however, he judges that he has only one ordinary rose and three volcanoes no higher than his knees. One of them may be permanently extinct. He concludes that these possessions do not make him much of a prince, and he lies down in the grass and cries.
The rose and the volcanoes have not changed. What changed is his judgment. As the judgment changes, his emotion toward himself changes instantly. A moment ago he was rich and important; suddenly he has become insignificant and miserable. The five thousand roses did not steal his property. The appearance of a comparison changed his standard of wealth and uniqueness.
This brief scene compresses an event that occurs throughout our lives. A change in judgment and emotion is a gateway on the journey toward oneself and inward. Between the Little Prince’s sigh and his tears lies a crucial process that we easily miss.
Personal Liberation and Social Liberation
At the beginning of the lecture, I also recommended a talk by Professor Kim Nuri about the ills of Korean society and possible alternatives. His reflections on Korean history and reality, informed by experience of German and European educational, social, cultural, and political systems, resonated deeply with me. If we call ourselves a major economy, it is time to pursue the happiness of the people as well.
My broadcasts pursue both personal and social liberation. I speak mostly about individual thoughts and emotions, but my liberation alone cannot be sufficient while everyone around me suffers. We must also consider, in a Buddhist way, how to make a society in which we can live well together.
An argument is not non-Buddhist simply because it does not contain the word “Buddhism.” Seeking institutions and cultures that reduce suffering and help us live better together is thoroughly Buddhist. We should not become so attached to words and labels that we miss their substance.
People explain their emotions afterward, but the explanation they offer is not always the actual cause. We sometimes deceive ourselves and attach a plausible reason later. Therefore, instead of treating the first explanation as the answer, we should look more slowly at the words and scenes we encountered and what became connected in the mind.
The Little Prince’s brief exclamation “Ah!” contains the discovery of a fact, the collapse of an old belief, a reevaluation of his possessions, a judgment of his status, and the emotion of misery passing almost simultaneously. It feels like one emotion only because the sequence moves so quickly; close observation reveals several stages.
Emotion Arrives Suddenly After a Single Sentence
“We are roses.” The Little Prince hears this short sentence and immediately feels miserable. We have such moments too. While talking with someone, watching television or YouTube, hearing a spouse, parent, child, or friend, or experiencing something at work, resentment, envy, jealousy, anger, sorrow, or depression suddenly rises.
Emotion comes so abruptly that we easily experience it as a fact attached directly to an external event. Yet if we slow down the Little Prince’s experience, a judgment stands between the roses’ words and his misery: “My flower is not unique,” “I am not rich because I possess a special flower,” and “I am not an important prince.”
It is vital to observe that brief instant. Emotion may appear and vanish like a momentary flash, but it may also return later and replay repeatedly. Then we feel the emotion while missing the judgment that generated it.
My Wife Becomes Depressed After Visiting Her Sister
My wife is the eldest of four daughters and one son. In the past, the demand for a son to continue the family line was powerful, and her family came to consist of four daughters followed by one son. As the eldest daughter, my wife lived for years with responsibility for her siblings and a sense of debt toward her parents.
The husband of her youngest sister achieved a measure of success in business, and that family is relatively affluent. Her sister has three sons and can spend considerable money on lessons and education. Our son and her eldest son are the same age and get along well, so my wife sometimes takes our son to visit them.
She goes happily to meet her sister and let the cousins play. Yet while listening to discussions of children’s education, academy fees, husbands, and financial circumstances, her emotion changes. On the way home, she thinks about being unable to provide the same education, begins to resent her husband, reproaches herself, and becomes depressed.
Our finances did not suddenly deteriorate between her departure and return. Her sister did not take anything from us. But comparison generated judgments such as “I should provide at least this much for my child” and “We should be able to live at that level,” and emotion changed sharply in accordance with those judgments.
The amount my wife hears her sister spends on education remains in her mind after she returns home. A number does not remain mere information; it joins a meaning such as “A good parent should provide this much.” When that meaning becomes a mirror reflecting her present circumstances, she sees her sister’s life and simultaneously judges her own life deficient.
Nor does comparison stop merely because a husband says, “Do not compare.” If I condemn an emotion already present, she may judge not only her financial limitations but herself as wrong for having the emotion. It is better to observe together what comparison and standard moved than to command the feeling to disappear.
Emotion Replays in the Mind
If envy or depression appeared briefly and ended at the gathering, it might not become a large problem. But the mind chews on the scene and replays it. During the trip home from Haeundae to Buk-gu, the thoughts continue, and when she tells me the story again at home, her expression hardens.
Emotion recalls the thought that created it, and the thought strengthens the emotion. Why am I capable of only this much? Why can my husband not earn more? Why can I not provide this for my child? As the thoughts repeat, the first brief comparison develops into sustained depression, resentment, and self-blame.
This is not confined to money or wealth. People want and pursue different things. One compares romance and marriage, another occupation, appearance, education, children, honor, recognition, or spiritual attainment. We compare what we want with what we presently have, make a judgment, and emotion emerges according to it.
Observing emotion does not mean distancing ourselves and analyzing it coldly. It means not turning our immersion in emotion into another fault. We notice, “I am depressed now,” or “Jealousy has risen,” but instead of remaining there and replaying the same scene, we search for the judgment that preceded it.
The same external stimulus produces different emotions in different people because the standards stored within them differ. Seeing another person’s success, one feels envy, another threat, and another nothing at all. If the event alone determined emotion, everyone would have to feel the same way.
Emotion Is a Door into Judgment
Emotion can be painful, but conversely it is a door through which we can identify the judgment we have just made. When an external stimulus arrives, what is stored within us echoes. Emotion is the hardest of these echoes to miss because we directly feel it in body and mind and easily fall into it.
When depressed, we plunge into depression and repeat, “Why did I become like this?” When in despair, we flounder in despair. Yet we do not need to condemn depression or despair as bad. We may grieve, cry, or feel self-pity. If we could always remain joyful and wise, why would we need Buddhism in the first place?
The first task is to notice the emotional change. Then we ask: Why did I feel this? What judgment did I make immediately before this emotion? What standard informed that judgment? Instead of rushing to eliminate emotion, we follow it toward the judgment lying before it.
Observe Sukha as Well as Dukkha
Buddhism gives great attention to suffering and dissatisfaction, dukkha, because living with less suffering and greater wisdom requires reflection on suffering’s causes. Yet joy and satisfaction, sukha, arise within the same structure on the opposite side.
When the standard I desire is fulfilled, I rejoice; when it is not, I suffer. People want to understand a painful emotion, but when happy they say, “I am happy—what is the problem?” By examining the judgment and standard behind joy as well, however, I can see what has colored me and what I pursue.
The goal is not to divide emotions themselves into good and bad. Some aspects of emotion are innate and others are learned while growing up. The issue is whether a standard and its emotions drag me through a life of suffering I do not want. Emotional change is the point from which I can observe that operation.
Hearing that my father was critically ill did more than announce the possibility of death. It transformed my plans for success and filial devotion, which I had postponed into the future, into things that might end at once. “When I earn more,” “when I succeed,” and “when I finally send him traveling” were no longer guaranteed promises.
My tears therefore held more than fear of losing my father. They included a judgment that I had failed, blame for not being a good son, and resentment that the world might not give me more time. Multiple judgments and images overlapped within what appeared to be one emotion of grief.
My Tears over Failing to Take My Father Around the World
I too experienced a powerful emotional change. In 2020, while operating a YouTube channel called “Used Car King,” I received word that my father had suddenly been taken to the emergency room. Fluid had filled his lungs, he could not breathe, and he was in critical condition. The possibility of his death rushed into me at once.
I had wanted to earn money, succeed, and take my parents around the world. When I thought he might die just as I was approaching the possibility of earning money, I burst into tears. I was overwhelmed by regret that I had never shown him the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, Egypt’s pyramids, Europe’s cities, and its landscapes.
My father died less than a month later. His death became a major condition in my awakening. Here, however, rather than rushing to the conclusions that came after his death, I want to go one step further into the judgment and emotion that operated when I first heard he was critically ill.
Why Did I Believe One Must See the Eiffel Tower to Be Happy?
I felt like an unfilial son because I had not taken my father traveling. But then I asked again: Does seeing the Eiffel Tower necessarily make a person happy? Must everyone see it before dying? Is a life well lived only if one travels through America, Britain, France, India, China, and Japan?
I am not saying that travel is bad. If we wish to go, we can go. The important matter is why I judged it indispensable and where the standard came from. I had encountered the Eiffel Tower through television, movies, books, and photographs as a beautiful place one ought to see, and that image entered me.
It became a standard that “taking one’s parents around the world proves success and filial devotion.” When I compared that standard with reality, I became a failed son and sank into regret and self-pity. Only by moving from emotion to judgment and from judgment to the origin of its standard can I see how my mind was made.
When a place is named sacred, its soil, trees, and stones do not become different substances. Stories, history, photographs, and rituals gather to create a special meaning. One may learn that meaning and visit, but the moment we turn the specialness produced by a name into a transcendent fact, we fail to see the operation of name-and-form.
Placing my longing for foreign landmarks beside a foreigner’s longing for an ordinary Korean street reveals the relativity of standards. A path I cross daily without notice may be a place someone else has dreamed of for years. Is specialness fixed inside the location, or is it a judgment jointly produced by experience, story, and rarity?
Pilgrimage and Korean Cultural Content Create Standards
When a Buddhist hears the expression “pilgrimage to Buddhist sacred sites in India,” they may decide that they must visit the places where the Buddha was born and lived. I am not saying that desire is wrong. But we should be able to ask whether a place became special because someone named it sacred, and why the place where I stand cannot be sacred.
A foreigner who comes to love K-pop, Korean dramas, or other Korean cultural content may long to visit Korea. They see Namsan Tower, walk through Seoul, and find places shown in dramas because their experience has produced an image of Korea as good and special.
Conversely, while living in Korea I may consider Paris and London more special. But where did I learn that the path by the Nakdong River where I sit, Busan, or a small bench outside my apartment is less beautiful than the Eiffel Tower? As indirect experience, advertising, and other people’s admiration increase, countless standards of happiness, success, and beauty enter us.
The Golden Robot That Makes the Red Robot Obsolete
A child’s toy shows the same structure. Last year, a red robot appeared impressively in an animated series, and a child asked for it. After receiving it, the child played happily. The next year, however, the same robot appeared newly painted gold.
When the golden robot is presented as even more magnificent, the child says, “Mom, buy me that one.” Its form is identical and only the color has changed, but because a new image now looks better, the red robot already in the child’s hands loses importance.
It is the same as the Little Prince seeing five thousand roses and judging his rose ordinary. We may look at what we possess, but when a new comparison appears, we become dissatisfied. An image and standard entering from outside changes the value of the present and generates desire and dissatisfaction.
A name is not merely a label. Names such as “sacred site,” “rich,” “success,” “filial devotion,” and “ordinary rose” already carry evaluation and emotion. The moment a name is attached, it may help determine what we consider important, what we envy, and what makes us ashamed.
Observing name-and-form therefore does not mean discarding every name. It means knowing that the names and concepts we use are not exact copies of reality. We must not turn distinctions created for practical needs into absolute substances; we should remain able to reexamine them as circumstances and experience change.
Name-and-Form Gives Names and Meaning to the World
The inward journey of seeing by what standards my thoughts, mind, and emotions operate is the door to awakening. Our minds contain countless images and concepts of right and wrong, like and dislike, beauty and ugliness, cleanliness and impurity, what we want and what we avoid.
Buddhism calls this name-and-form, using the character for name and the character for material form. We look at the world, assign meaning, and attach names. We distinguish trees and flowers, red and golden robots, the Eiffel Tower and a sacred site, rich and poor people.
Distinction itself is not wrong. Human beings must distinguish poisonous mushrooms from edible ones and recognize time and place. Telling us to make no distinctions at all is absurd. The problem is believing rough distinctions and concepts absorbed without deep examination to be reality itself.
Hearing an Idea and Asking Whether It Is True
We cannot be certain that Gautama Siddhartha was a historical person or that the transmitted biography is factual. Consider it as a story. Seeing aging, illness, and death, he asks why humans must age, become sick, and die, and whether liberation from these conditions is possible. He leaves home to search.
Many philosophies already existed in ancient India. Some claimed purification would free one from karma and rebirth; some promised that discovering the eternal atman would reveal an unchanging being; skeptics argued that truth could not be known with certainty. Siddhartha would have heard and experienced such claims rather than inventing every idea alone.
But hearing does not make an idea one’s own. Does purification truly release anyone from rebirth? Is there an eternal self apart from the changing body and mind? Is omniscience possible? The reflection expressed in the question “Is that really so?” makes him a Buddha. To cling to atman while speaking of Buddhism is merely to repeat another philosophy that preceded the Buddha.
Questioning is not a single “Why?” followed by an ending. It moves from emotion to judgment, from judgment to a standard, and from the standard to the experiences and society that produced it. If the emotion is envy of a sister’s educational spending, we can follow it into standards of good parenting, the meaning of education, and experiences that connect money with a child’s happiness.
If it is regret over not sending my father traveling, I can examine standards of filial devotion, the image of a successful child, and the belief that travel gives happiness. As questioning continues, emotion changes from a wave that swallows me into material through which I understand myself. Even if the emotion remains, I begin to know what pulls and moves me.
Wisdom Begins with a Question
Do not miss a change in emotion. Observe why it arose, what judgment immediately preceded it, and what standard informed the judgment. When, where, and through what did that standard arise? Is it valid? What is this image or concept to which I cling?
Buddhism begins and ends here. Wisdom is not becoming like a rock that feels no emotion and is shaken by nothing. If the goal were to become a mysterious being who never cries and makes no distinctions, what would that have to do with understanding humanity and living wisely?
I possess the body of a man who has lived more than fifty years, but a child resembling an elementary school student still lives within me. What does that child like, and what shakes him? What images and standards has he absorbed, what does he presume and judge as he pleases, and what emotions does he produce? Traveling deeply within and calmly reconsidering those concepts is the road to becoming a Buddha and the Buddhist path that pursues wisdom.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.