Preparing a Broader Conversation Beyond the Name of Buddhism
From now on, I intend to run Barobul Buddhism mainly through live broadcasts. If a subject clearly calls for a separate lecture, I may make one, but the channel will basically be a place where I converse with viewers by exchanging questions. At the same time, I am preparing a new channel with my younger brother, Byeoru. As far as possible, I do not intend to put the word “Buddhism” in its name. The foundation of what we discuss will not be very different from this channel: thinking critically, reasoning in terms of dependent arising, questioning what we take for granted, and reexamining common sense, beliefs, and superstitions. Society, economics, culture, religion, philosophy, and science will all be discussed within that framework.
We plan to keep most videos on the new channel within fifteen minutes. I may appear as the speaker, but my brother will take the lead in planning and editing. We will think together about each topic and the axis of each story, while he takes primary responsibility. The aim is to convey what I have said on this channel in a shorter and denser form without confining it to the name of Buddhism.
Barobul Buddhism was directed from the beginning toward Buddhists and practitioners. It asked how one becomes a Buddha, what a Buddha is, how one escapes suffering in life, and how one thinks wisely. Yet many people who came because the channel carried the name “Buddhism” expected familiar devotional beliefs and superstitions, only to leave after hearing something entirely different. I assumed that a Buddhist was someone trying to become a Buddha, but in reality neither monastics nor lay Buddhists necessarily seek to become one. Part of my assumption was wrong, and it was also true that few people began with that aspiration.
Critical thinking and reasoning through dependent arising are not needed only by people trying to become Buddhas. They are skills for life needed by everyone who wants to escape their own delusions and live more wisely.
The new channel will therefore aim to reach a much broader audience. The goal is not simply to make a successful Buddhist channel. The question is how to spread critical thinking and create opportunities for people to look back at their own delusions. We intend to build a channel with real reach, aiming for more than a million subscribers by making every video worth recommending, memorable enough to bring a viewer back after a single episode, and never produced carelessly.
Questions Stop at the Words “I Know”
The first question was what is wrong with thoughts such as “I know,” “I saw it,” and “Of course.” To answer, we must first recall what I have called the attitude of Buddhist practice: observation, questions and doubt, curiosity, reflection, and reasoning through dependent arising. This is a wise attitude toward life that must continue both before and after one becomes a Buddha. To live as a Buddhist means that this attitude has become part of everyday life.
In my view, Buddhism rests on skepticism and materialism. It took humanity a very long time to reach this point in its effort to escape delusion. The especially important principle here is not to say, “I know the correct answer.” Even I sometimes use a categorical video title such as “Rebirth does not exist.” Yet this is not a truth I proclaimed after dying and personally verifying rebirth. It is a position I reached through thought experiments: Is there really a continuous “me”? Can the claim that only karma continues make sense? Are the six realms of rebirth and retributive rebirth depicted in scriptures consistent with Buddhism’s other claims? I present the reasons for my judgment and invite other people to think through them with me.
By contrast, someone who declares, merely because a scripture says so, that “the Buddha taught this” speaks as though they know what they do not know. If I am asked whether the person named Gautama Siddhartha actually existed, my honest answer is, “I do not know.” I do not possess decisive evidence establishing exactly when he was born, how he lived, and when he died. If someone nevertheless declares exactly what the Buddha said and what it meant from beginning to end, they are speaking without even recognizing that they do not know.
The heart of skepticism is not an answer but questions and doubt. We may say that something appears a certain way on the basis of our observations and experience so far, but we cannot declare it an unchanging truth or a final answer.
Buddhist thought does not extract a single answer and then stop. It keeps questioning and recognizes that even the conclusion reached from those questions is only a prediction or a present position. Only when we refuse to harden it into truth, prophecy, or an eternal answer can we begin to think in terms of dependent arising.
The Moment an Experience Is Declared Enlightenment
Suppose someone has an experience in which thoughts disappear and the mind becomes very peaceful. If that person teaches, on the basis of that experience, that “Buddhist awakening is a state without thought, and this is what the Buddha taught,” something decisive is missing: the question, “Is this really true?” Before turning one state I experienced into enlightenment for everyone, I must clearly recognize that I may be a frog in a well.
Only with that recognition can I listen to someone whose experience differs from mine. When I encounter a different account, I can notice, “This person is speaking about something I failed to consider,” or “The standards and circumstances I took for granted were my own worldview.” For that to happen, my eyes must remain bright with curiosity. If instead I become fixed on “I have seen completely,” “My experience is supreme,” and “This is the Buddha and the correct answer,” I move not toward Buddhism but toward dogmatism, attachment to my own view, conceit, and arrogance.
Recognizing that I am a frog in a well—knowing the condition described by the old phrase “a frog at the bottom of a well”—is the beginning of a Buddhist life. Without this foundation, the longer one studies Buddhism, the more deeply one may become trapped in one’s own experience and doctrine.
The moment someone becomes certain that “I saw Jesus,” “I saw an angel,” “I saw the true self and pure nature,” or “I saw God and the soul,” that person can easily become deaf and mute. Other people’s words no longer enter their ears, and discussion becomes impossible. All that remains is the conviction that I am supreme and only my experience is right. Most of what I have repeated on Barobul Buddhism gathers into one sentence: “We are frogs in a well.” When someone claims to predict the future, or says that living without thought is Buddhism, I ask whether that is really so.
A teaching that tells people not to judge and to live without thought is useless in reality as well. Faced with war and diplomacy, tariffs and the economy, a noisy neighbor and everyday conflict, we must constantly judge, choose, and act. If Buddhism leaves us unable to judge anything about the world or express a social opinion, why practice such Buddhism? If a teaching makes people foolish rather than wise, we have no reason to accept it merely because it carries the name of Buddhism.
Is the Desire to Become Rich Wrong in Itself?
The second question came from a viewer who had lost money after using high leverage in cryptocurrency futures. The viewer asked whether the desire to become rich was also a delusion and a pursuit of something empty. I answered that we must first distinguish several questions: What is a rich person? Will becoming rich make me happy? Is pursuing something itself wrong?
Human action inherently contains a future dimension. We farm, hunt, and earn money in advance because we will need food and fuel in winter. The result of what we do now usually appears later. Nor are humans alone in this. Ants and bees act in relation to future conditions, and salmon swim from the sea back up the river where they were born in order to lay eggs. If purpose, pursuit, and movement toward the future are themselves declared wrong, then we cannot explain why people build walls, cities, and hospitals, engage in trade, wash dishes, or cook meals.
The pursuit of becoming rich cannot immediately be labeled right or wrong. The problem begins when I believe that I can be happy only after achieving that goal and define my entire present life as unhappiness.
Because we are likely to be alive tomorrow, we cannot live for today alone. Yet it is also foolish to stake everything on success ten years from now and torment oneself for nine years without feeling any happiness in the present. I might die in a year, so discarding the whole present for a point ten years away is foolish. Conversely, if something is plainly coming in a year and I make no preparation, that too is foolish. Understanding impermanence does not mean erasing the future. It means looking at time and planning more wisely.
I also pursue a goal when I run Barobul Buddhism and try to spread information and critical thinking. This too is desire and pursuit. If pursuit itself were the problem, I would have no reason to make videos. The problem arises if I believe that after four years I must have become a major figure with a million subscribers and that my life is a failure if I have not. If I think I can be happy only after the goal is achieved, the conclusion follows that I am unhappy now.
We Must Also Examine the Structure That Produces Wealth
When discussing individual desire, we must also examine the structure through which today’s “rich” are produced. If only ten chairs of wealth are placed before a thousand people, 990 cannot sit while ten do. The present system produces a small number of the extremely rich alongside a large number of poor people and pushes the wealth gap toward an extreme. Within that structure, becoming rich is often connected to competition in which one takes other people’s share and labor cheaply.
Consider a cheap cup of coffee. If the coffee is very inexpensive, the beans must also have entered the market cheaply. Many conditions are involved, but an imbalance in currency values and power between countries is one important factor. Currency value is not merely a number assigned to money; it also affects the value placed on the labor of a country’s people. When the Korean currency was weak in the past, Korean labor was evaluated as extremely cheap abroad, and goods made with that cheap labor could be exported. The structure through which we now buy beans produced in a poor country for very little is likewise connected to paying its people absurdly little for their labor.
There is no need to turn the wish to become rich into a sin in itself, but we must ask what inequality and whose cheap labor support the chair of wealth on which we hope to sit.
Within a country, people say that the market determines the value of labor. Yet in a system where money produces more money, those who hold great wealth have the power to decide how cheaply they will use labor. An individual may therefore pursue the goal of becoming rich, but must also observe what wealth means and the social structure that produces it. Nor does everything happen simply because I work for it. My own goal of sharing information so that people can prepare for the age of AI with less suffering may also fail. I must ask whether I will collapse merely because the world did not move according to my intention.
If I take everything I currently enjoy for granted and believe that I can be satisfied only by possessing and earning more, it may help to look for what I can appreciate among the conditions already given to me. This does not mean abandoning goals. It means preparing for the future without denying the whole of one’s present life. The same applies to stocks and investment. As long as capitalism and a monetary system remain, a long-term investment in sound fields may be a possible choice, but it must be distinguished from highly leveraged speculation.
Do We Try to Become Buddhas Without Knowing What a Buddha Is?
The third question was, “How does one become a Buddha?” Before speaking of Buddhahood, we must first ask what a Buddha is. Many people want to become Buddhas but do not know what a Buddha is. It is like running toward a destination without knowing what the destination is. They therefore fall into mysticism and run in circles, treating a state in which thought disappears or nothing disturbs them as Buddhahood.
In my present definition, a Buddha is someone for whom questioning, observation, and reasoning through dependent arising have become everyday life. A person in whom such reasoning has become embodied and who therefore lives wisely—that is a Buddha. This is only my definition as it stands now. It is the definition I have currently reached after continuing to question and think while running Barobul Buddhism, not an immutable final answer.
The Buddha as I describe one is not a completed person who has reached some mystical terminal point. A Buddha observes the inner and outer worlds, critically reexamines personal speech and judgment, and cultivates questions and dependent-arising reasoning as an attitude toward life.
I therefore do not certify anyone by saying, “Now you are a Buddha.” I cannot enter a person’s mind from beginning to end, so how could I claim to know that person completely? Nor do I want someone else to certify me by saying, “You are a Buddha” or “You are an arahant.” That can easily lead toward conceit and arrogance. The important question is whether I can continue to observe and question while speaking with my wife, son, mother, and brother; while judging worldly affairs; and while looking back at what I said today and the video I recorded.
I too once tried to become a Buddha without knowing what a Buddha was. I kept searching for something higher and asking what more I had to do to awaken. When I finally recognized the delusion of trying to become a Buddha without even knowing what one was, I could paradoxically say that I had at last become a Buddha. I did not mean that I had arrived at a completed state. I meant that I had escaped that particular delusion.
Seeing Goals and the Present Together in an Impermanent Life
Because life is impermanent, we must beware of letting the pursuit of becoming something settle so deeply that we lose the life present before us. Becoming a Buddha is no exception. If we chase a future image called “Buddha” and lose the life of questioning and observing now, the goal and the process have been reversed. The Buddhahood I describe is not a distant qualification to obtain but the work of cultivating a Buddhist attitude toward life right now.
Nor does this mean that anyone should memorize my answer as correct. My definition of a Buddha may be wrong. Each person must place definitions found in scriptures and books, other people’s descriptions of awakening, and personal experience under the question of whether they truly constitute wisdom. If one has a judgment or thought of one’s own, it should be discussed with others. The answer I give to a question must become material for the other person to think with, not an authority that closes the question.
Buddhahood is not an event in which questions end. It is the process through which questioning, observing, and looking back even at one’s own conclusions become embodied in life.
I also revisit old videos and critically examine what I said, whether it was persuasive, and whether it answered the other person’s real question. Some videos are long but densely argued. Some are short yet seem unhelpful, while others convey the core point well in a brief time. That is only my impression; viewers may see them differently. I therefore have to keep examining whether today’s answers and the questions I returned to viewers were actually effective.
Even the Command Not to Get Angry Must Be Questioned
The final conversation began with a viewer’s recollection of an earlier video titled “I Want to Let Go of Anger.” The viewer expected a method for eliminating anger but was shocked by the question, “Why are you trying not to get angry?” In a culture where Buddhism, Christianity, and Confucianism have influenced one another, there is a strong tendency to condemn anger and value solemnity. Before following the command “Do not get angry,” however, we should ask whether anger is always bad, why it arises, and why people told us not to express it.
Buddhism is questioning. An order that merely says “Do not” without a question is not Buddhism. Just as it makes no sense to try to become a Buddha without knowing what a Buddha is, it makes no sense to eliminate anger unconditionally without knowing what anger is. It can also be strange not to become angry at something that merits anger. At times we must be indignant, critical, and capable of expressing anger when anger is called for. A life that always dismisses conflict by saying, “Let us keep things pleasant,” is not a wise life either.
If we try to abandon desire, become Buddhas, and eliminate anger without questions and observation, we enter another delusion. Before asking what to do, we must ask what the thing is and why we should act that way.
Should a mother dog remain free of anger when another animal is about to carry off her young? When a foreign power invades, should people offer no resistance while saying, “You are me and I am you”? Faced with such examples, the blanket prohibition of anger must be reexamined. From the opening question about saying “I know,” through the desire to become rich, the path to Buddhahood, and our attitude toward anger, we return to the same conclusion. What we need in life is not to repeat the answers we already possess, but to question and observe, then reexamine even our own conclusions through dependent arising.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.