Why Noh Sang-won’s Belief in Saju Is a Question of Liberation
Today I want to observe Noh Sang-won, who acted behind the scenes in the martial-law plot, and the saju he believed in, and use them to discuss how we awaken. You may ask what Noh Sang-won’s belief in saju has to do with our liberation and becoming buddhas. To answer, we must first ask what it means to become a buddha and to be liberated.
Each of you will have some image of a buddha and liberation. The Buddhism I describe is the act of escaping empty delusions. But if something I know and believe to be factual is not reality but a delusion born from my own mistaken perception, how can I recognize it as a delusion? That is precisely the question of how liberation is possible.
Unfortunately, until a person recognizes a delusion as a delusion, that person cannot know that they are deluded. It may sound like wordplay, but this is the problem. It is difficult to know what I have been immersed in and how that immersion made me act until I step outside it and look back.
What Travel Teaches and the Three Stages of Liberation
People say that the young should travel widely. The reason is that travel lets us see what is different. When I encounter ways of living unlike what I took for granted inside the well of my own time and place, I can view what I had absorbed from another angle. That experience helps me escape the familiar and becomes a foundation for seeing and thinking more broadly. Liberation and becoming a buddha in Buddhism are not very different.
Am I tormenting myself while wrapped in strange imaginings, thoughts, and images? Am I wasting my life in false belief and superstition or living foolishly through them? How do I escape? I repeatedly describe the path in three stages.
First comes observation. I must observe my thoughts and mind, emotions, standards, and body. But I must not observe only myself. The person I call “me” was built through outside influences and experience. I must also see society, culture, reality, and the people around me to see where my thoughts came from. I must therefore observe myself and the world together.
Second comes questioning. Does staring blankly make me awakened? No. While observing, I must ask, “Are this thought, emotion, and judgment right? Where did they come from? Am I bound to something foolish or immersed in something without knowing it?”
Third comes reasoning through dependent arising. If I merely pose a question and stop, I cannot find an answer. Everything takes place within relationships between causes and results. My judgments, standards, and images, my emotions and bodily reactions, are interconnected and have causes. I must reason about what I observe within those relationships. Human beings are machines that make inferences without ceasing, yet without inference and reasoning we cannot awaken. A buddha is a person who uses their own reasoning to keep escaping what has conditioned them. Observing what I have absorbed, asking how and why I absorbed it, and examining whether it is right or wrong—these three stages are essential to awakening.
Using a Publicly Shared Event as Material for Practice
I bring up saju and Noh Sang-won, a covert actor in the martial-law plot, because they are subjects that you and I can commonly know and observe. Rather than speak abstractly about escaping delusion, I want to place a concrete case before us and examine it together. The cases of Myung Tae-kyun and Kim Keon-hee can be approached in the same way after saju and Noh Sang-won.
Noh Sang-won reportedly entered the Korea Military Academy at the top of his class in 1981. Yoon Suk Yeol, whom I discussed previously, had entered Seoul National University’s law college in 1979, and Noh entered the military academy two years later. A person who entered at the top was presumably not deficient in the conventional intellectual abilities of memorizing, selecting correct answers, and reproducing learned material. He became a general and rose to command the Defense Intelligence Command, a core organization that gathers information and makes judgments.
Yet he was dishonorably discharged after a sexual scandal involving conduct toward a female subordinate that was described as close to sexual assault. He later lived as a civilian in Ansan and reportedly stayed with a woman who ran a fortune-telling shop under the name Agibosal, helping operate the shop. There is also a story that he read the saju of his military driver, decided that their compatibility was poor, dismissed him, and brought in another driver. It is also said that he regarded Gyeryongsan as spiritually potent and tried to cultivate himself there. These judgments and actions mean that he believed saju at least to some degree.
Two Kinds of People Who Sell Superstition and Noh Sang-won’s Question
People who use saju to disturb society can be divided into two groups. Some do not believe it themselves but deceive others for profit, while others believe it and are themselves swayed by it. I regard Kim Keon-hee and Yoon Suk Yeol, at least in part, as foolish people in the second group. Yoon’s appearance with the Chinese character for “king” written on his palm displayed belief in shamanic meaning. Some believe and are shaken; others disbelieve but defraud those they mislead.
Saju is a blatant lie. Do not be deceived.
While living as a civilian, Noh Sang-won reportedly acted as a designer of the internal martial-law operation with former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun. At that time, he took Kim’s birth information to Bidan Agassi, a fortune-teller in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, whom he regularly visited. He asked whether Kim, who had drawn him into the dangerous undertaking of martial law, might use him and then discard him, or betray him. He likely compared his own saju with Kim’s and asked about Kim’s character and their compatibility. He may even have taken Yoon Suk Yeol’s saju.
The problem is that saju is not factual. A believer cannot entertain even the smallest doubt because the image “saju is right” is already lodged in the mind. Let us reason through several points and ask whether that image is truly right.
Saju Is Only an Example; Every Sacred Image Is at Issue
There is a caution to keep in mind. I do not question saju because it alone is my target. Saju is an example. Someone immersed in Korean Seon culture may have an image that an awakened person must answer any question instantly. Such a person may consider themselves awakened while never escaping their own image of what “an awakened person” must be.
Someone else selects passages from scriptures, rearranges the material, and calls the result the Buddha’s words. They freely offer their own guesses about why the Buddha spoke as he did, imagine those guesses to be the Buddha’s intent, and regard themselves as awakened. Another person mistakenly treats a personal experience as proof of something. If that person is a scholar or psychiatrist, professional authority may mislead other people too. A monk skilled in saju, myeongri, and the I Ching may predict Korea’s future and become celebrated as a famous monk.
Some call on Amitabha Buddha and hope for the Pure Land or Maitreya Buddha; others invoke heaven, hell, gods, and bodhisattvas and treat relics as sacred. From my position, all are objects of criticism. Yet it is extremely difficult for people immersed in such beliefs and images to recognize that immersion. That is precisely why they move farther from liberation. We can remain in liberation only by observing the images in our minds, doubting and questioning them, and reasoning through causes and relationships.
The Four Pillars Claimed by Saju and the Method of Falsification
Saju takes the year, month, day, and hour of a person’s birth as four pillars and claims that these four pieces of information decisively shape destiny, tendencies, personality, and character. People therefore compare the saju of two prospective spouses, examine their compatibility, and claim to determine whether the pair suit each other and will have a successful marriage.
I will state my conclusion first and plainly. Saju is a blatant lie and has not even 0.01 percent significance. Let us examine the critical thinking by which I reach that conclusion. Critical examination does not follow only the stories offered in support of a claim. It looks for counterexamples and contrary evidence, then conducts thought experiments. We cannot experience everything directly, but a thought experiment can uncover cases in which a claim cannot be true.
The Real Conditions of a Birth Year Are Not a Sixty-Year Cycle
Begin with the year. The year in which I was born can actually affect me. Imagine being born in 1950, as the Korean War began, or in 1951, in the middle of the war. While I was in my mother’s womb, was she secure and happy, or did she live painfully amid fear and danger? The environment of war can affect the child through the mother’s body and mind. Examining the era and environment into which a person was born and the life that followed can greatly help us understand that person. This is reasoning through dependent arising, which looks at causes, results, and environment.
In saju, however, what matters is not the actual historical moment called 1950 or 2024. What matters is where the year falls among the sixty combinations of the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. The ten stems and twelve branches combine into sixty units, beginning with gapja; the cycle’s return is called hwangap.
Within this scheme, 2024 and years sixty, 120, 180, 240, and 360 years earlier belong to the same kind. By extension, 600 years and six thousand years ago bear the same astrological significance. Actual conditions differ utterly between being born during a war and being born in 2024, yet the scheme says that years with the same cyclical name have the same meaning. It is comedy and utter nonsense.
Who Decided That a Particular Year Was Gapja?
One step deeper exposes the problem with the standard itself. Why was the first gapja year gapja? If gapja, eulchuk, and the other sixty combinations possess different meanings, there must be a basis for labeling one particular year gapja. Who discovered sixty properties in the years and verified that a specific year had the property of gapja?
As I see it, somebody arbitrarily named one year gapja and began assigning meaning to it. Someone freely decided whether a year was the year of the rat or ox, tiger or dragon. With not even 0.001 percent basis, someone constructing the saju system declared, “Let this be a gapja year.” There was no basis for that year to be gapja. Yet an arbitrary standard repeated through time came to be treated as if it were a law discovered in nature.
The Actual Environment of a Birth Month Versus Astrology’s Month
A month is similar. The month of birth can exert influence through real conditions. Imagine an agricultural society with distinct seasons and a harsh winter. People must live through winter and the spring hunger season on food stored after autumn’s harvest while waiting for new crops. When food is scarce, it can affect a mother’s body and mind, the child’s body and mind, nutrition after birth, and even the dispositions and mental states of surrounding people. Looking at such conditions, we can consider how a birth month might influence body and mind.
That is completely different from the fixed properties that saju or Western astrology attaches to a month. Suppose the experience of one region—January is hard, February difficult, and food starts to appear in March—is turned into a month’s fixed yin-yang and five-phases property. When Korea is in winter, Okinawa in Japan is warmer, while the seasons are reversed on the other side of the planet. Some places have abundant food. Korea, other regions, and New York in the eastern United States have different climates and landscapes. Can the same month exert an identical influence on everyone? No. A fixed monthly meaning that erases region and conditions cannot be applied.
The Gap in the Lunar Calendar and the Comedy of a One-Second Boundary
Consider also the lunar months used by saju. A lunar calendar estimates a year through the shape and cycle of the moon. People in the past inferred from experience that a new year began after roughly twelve cycles of waxing and waning. But if that exactly matched the solar year, there would be no need to insert a leap month. In the video, I say that a leap month is inserted once every four years to compensate for the difference. The point is that twelve lunar cycles do not exactly determine a year. Is this approximate calendar system supposed to determine a person’s character?
A month is a unit to which human beings assigned meaning by watching the moon. Yet in saju, the instant just before midnight on January 31 and the instant just after February begins are separated by perhaps 0.001 seconds, while the month and day—and supposedly destiny—change. At the boundary of December 31, year, month, day, and hour all change together. Even the zodiac animal changes. Does that one second divide every aspect of a person’s character?
The day is also divided into two-hour units, and people born in one block are said to have an entirely different nature from people born in the next. Two people on opposite sides of a boundary inhabit virtually the same real conditions, yet only their classification differs. It is foolish to mechanically arrange year, month, day, and hour within yin-yang and the five phases and claim that the resulting combination explains me.
The Many Causes and Conditions That Actually Make a Person
Someone may observe the world through yin-yang and the five phases and draw out a principle. But when that principle is reversed into a framework explaining everything, then forced onto year, month, day, and hour, it cannot explain me. The underlying standard was arbitrary from the beginning.
To explain me, we must ask whether I was born in 2023 or amid the turmoil caused by Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial-law declaration on December 3, 2024. We must look at who my parents are, which bodily traits I inherited, and how they affected my character, memory, capacity for calm reflection, and manner of speaking. Such real causes and conditions influence me far more than the labels assigned to the four pillars.
We must ask whether I was born in an ice age or a warm period, during the Industrial or Agricultural Revolution, amid war or epidemic, within which civilization, world, and family, as whose son or daughter, and among what people and surroundings. Saju throws out all these conditions and retains four arbitrary markers. Saju is therefore a blatant lie. This is the conclusion of my thought experiment using standards and counterexamples.
The Fact That the Future Is Unknown and the Harm Caused by Superstition
There was another reason I could not tell this story lightly. After the Jeju Air accident at Muan Airport in late December, the country was living through a devastating and sorrowful period, and I delayed recording this video. That accident also shows that not even an inch of a person’s future can be known. No reader of saju can know the future. Saju cannot tell us who will betray me or whether two people will have a successful marriage.
Unless we grasp that fact, we are deceived by a lie somebody made up, oppose a son’s marriage, visit fortune-tellers, write talismans, stage rituals, and do foolish things. I must therefore ask whether I am trapped in superstition and error, whether my thought is right, when and how I acquired an image of saju, and why I came to believe it. An impression of being impressive, scientific, systematic, and meaningful does not make something factual.
Looking Back From Saju to Rebirth, Gods, and Political Images
I always end by telling viewers to become buddhas. To become a buddha is to be liberated, and the buddha I describe is a person who is being liberated. Yet many minds have been imprinted through repetition with the image that liberation means escaping rebirth. I say that escaping rebirth is not liberation. Escaping delusion and fantasy is liberation. We must first look back at the belief that rebirth exists while we seek to escape it.
A person may reject saju yet partly believe physiognomy, or reject physiognomy yet trust blood types or classifications that label someone a T or an F. Some are certain; others vaguely assume that there must be something to it. The problem is that anything can enter my mind as an image and standard and begin moving me.
Why do I think this is good, right, and correct? Why do I think gods, bodhisattvas, Maitreya, rebirth, previous lives, and souls exist? What images do I hold of communism, capitalism, socialism, women, nations and groups, buddhas, awakening, and gods? Am I clinging to images formed merely from what other people said? Saju is only the beginning. I must return to every image in my mind and ask, “Is it really so?”
Observe, Question, and Reason Through Relationships
Repeating “observe” is not the end. I must see my reactions—mental, bodily, and emotional—and ask why I reached a conclusion. What is my standard, where did it come from, and why did it arise? Is it truly right? I must reason through its causes and relationships by means of dependent arising.
I can then recognize how foolish standards and conditioning shake my life and make me suffer over foolish things. Becoming a buddha and being liberated mean looking back at the fantasies in my own mind. This is Buddhism’s most important content.
Do not simply believe and follow anyone’s words or any belief inside your own mind. Practice reasoning and observation, and practice raising doubts and questions. That is the path to awakening, and it leads us toward liberation.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.