Praising One Point Is Not Endorsing the Whole Person
I opened this surprise broadcast to offer praise rather than my usual criticism. Praise and recommendation are rare from me. Yet criticizing someone does not mean rejecting every word and action of that person, just as praising one passage does not mean endorsing the whole person. I strongly criticized Dharma teacher Kim Tae-wan the day before, but I do not know everything about him and cannot criticize every part of him. My praise of Venerable Pomnyun today follows the same rule.
Around three in the morning, YouTube showed me a video titled “Isn’t Awakening Truth?” Its thumbnail mentioned the Buddha’s awakening and absolute truth. I clicked, expecting more nonsense, but the actual answer was the opposite of what I anticipated. Since people say I live with thorns on my tongue, I decided to put candy in my mouth this time and praise the answer until my mouth ran dry.
Praise, however, is not a ritual for withdrawing criticism. A person is not one fixed lump, and speech and conduct vary by time and context. We must acknowledge what is good and still examine what is wrong. Without this distinction, praise becomes worship and criticism becomes a personal attack.
Praising one passage and endorsing every word and action of a person are entirely different things.
Criticism Takes Work, and Earlier Objections Still Stand
Criticism does not end when a problem flashes into mind. I must select the central issue, explain why it matters in language and examples others can follow, and decide which of many objections deserves priority. Building that argument consumes time and emotional energy. After several recent critical broadcasts, I felt that cost and was glad to encounter an answer I could praise without hesitation.
That does not erase my earlier criticism of pilgrimage to India as a holy land. There is nothing wrong with visiting places where the Buddha is said to have lived and studying history. The problem begins when those places are named sacred. If India is sacred, is Korea not? Can someone too poor ever to travel abroad not feel the Buddha’s traces or learn Buddhism?
A name is not a neutral tag; it creates meaning and hierarchy. Calling a place “where the Buddha lived” differs from calling it “holy land,” which grants it special power and value. That illusion was what I criticized. Praising Pomnyun’s present answer and criticizing the exclusion produced by the language of sacred land are not contradictory.
Praise does not delete remaining criticism. Different claims and actions must be judged separately.
The Question Began with a Conflict Between Being Right and Awakening
The questioner said Jeongto Society had taught her not to insist that she was right. She especially remembered a Dharma teacher saying, “If there is one thing I know, it is that what I know may not be true.” This sounds easy, yet it is rare in religious organizations.
Someone who declares certainty, obvious truth, complete knowledge, or final awakening does not revisit his judgment. When he says, “You do not know, but I experienced it, and my word is the path,” the first step toward a cult leader has been taken. By contrast, an organization teaching that one’s knowledge may be wrong keeps a door open to self-criticism. It also connects with Socrates’ skeptical refusal to think he knew what he did not know.
The questioner had understood awakening as gaining absolute truth, completeness, and what is perfectly right. Awakening as possession of truth therefore seemed to collide with the attitude of doubting one’s knowledge. She asked how to understand this apparent contradiction. The most important word here is “attitude.”
“What I know may not be true” is not one piece of information but an attitude that governs an entire life.
If You Possess Absolute Truth, Nothing Remains to Liberate or Debate
If what I know is one hundred percent true, nothing remains to investigate or release. If one awakening made me perfect, I have no reason to criticize myself or debate anyone else. Since every word of mine is truth, all that remains is ordering others to listen.
I have instead urged people to doubt, observe, and question, and have said liberation continues without end. Because none of us knows everything, we expose one another’s blind spots through debate and criticism. Living like a Buddha does not mean owning a perfect conclusion; it means embodying the capacity to look again at one’s conclusion.
Pomnyun answered that when the Buddha awakened, he found that nothing was absolute. I valued that sentence. He did not say awakening acquired absolute truth; he said the idea that sought something absolute collapsed. When even the conclusion that there is no absolute truth remains open to the limits of one’s view, speech and life finally match.
Awakening is not an event that puts absolute truth in one’s hand but a change of direction away from the illusion of possessing the absolute.
Borrowing the Buddha’s Authority to Package One’s Own Thought
Even while praising the answer, I raised one objection. Longtime Buddhists habitually introduce their own ideas by saying, “The Buddha said” or “The Buddha awakened to this.” I did the same in my early videos and now find it embarrassing. We have no evidence confirming exactly what the historical Buddha said, and scriptures contain contradictory statements, yet I presented my preferred interpretation as his word.
That borrows the Buddha’s authority for my claim. No one met him, and no stamp verifies which sentence is authentic. Choosing from conflicting passages and deciding, “This sounds like the Buddha,” remains my inference. It is more honest to say, “This is how I see it,” than “The Buddha realized it.”
The insight that nothing is absolute does not need one saint’s name. Across Eurasia around the centuries before the common era, people questioned gods, souls, afterlives, existence, and knowledge. Similar skepticism and insight flowered within intellectual networks linking Greece, Persia, Central Asia, India, and China. What matters is not authority but whether the statement actually reduces illusion.
Only a statement that can stand without borrowing the Buddha’s name lets us distinguish our thought from the packaging of authority.
Searching for the True Self Until Nothing Called a True Self Remained
Pomnyun said people describe awakening as finding the true self, yet after searching to the end he found nothing that could be called a true self. I strongly oppose teachings that establish a true self, but there is no need to condemn the initial search. When we do not yet know whether truth or a self exists, we may investigate.
If we quit a treasure hunt halfway through, we cannot know whether there was no treasure or whether we simply failed to find it. If we examine everything available to us and still find no independent subject, we may judge, “It appears not to exist.” That differs from memorizing from the start that it does not exist. The concept has collapsed through inquiry.
The historical Gautama Siddhartha can similarly be read as someone who began by seeking absolute truth and escape from death, then discovered that his goal itself was misguided. Whether that figure historically existed matters less than the view we now hold about true self and absolute truth.
Awakening is not finding a true self; what matters is the turn that occurs when sustained inquiry leaves nothing independent to grasp as a true self.
The Dignity Added by the Words “In My Own Way”
Pomnyun said he searched as fully as he could and found nothing, then added, “in my own way.” Those few words matter. They acknowledge that even if I believe I searched everywhere, I may not actually have examined everything.
We are all frogs in a well. We observe, question, and study within our experience, language, memory, era, and environment. No matter how carefully we work within that range, we cannot claim to have checked the entire world. The conclusion “there is none” is therefore a conclusion made in my own way with my current information and ability.
This qualification does not evade responsibility. It makes a clear judgment while promising to reconsider it if new information or objections arise. Human thought changes over ten years. My expression and ideas differ between the launch of this channel in 2021, my arhat declaration in 2024, and today. Not hiding the possibility of change is living wisdom.
“In my own way” does not blur a conclusion; it honestly acknowledges its limits and preserves the possibility of correction.
Dismantle a Car and Action Remains, but No Agent Remains
Pomnyun compared the self to a car. Because the car moves, we imagine an independent entity inside that makes it move. Yet when every part is disassembled and spread out, no car-essence remains. This does not mean there is no action. The parts work together, but no solitary central actor can be found.
The self is the same. When we investigate what we called “me,” we see body, sensation, memory, relationship, and conditions arising and passing through causes. “I” is a name binding those activities together, not an independently permanent commander outside conditions. This is why the absence of true self and dependent arising naturally appear together rather than as separate doctrines.
No independent substance called truth exists among dhammas either. There is no solitary entity that can eternally be grasped as “this is truth.” That is the non-self of phenomena. When someone speaks of non-self but restores a fixed Buddha-nature, true self, final awakening, or reincarnating subject, the self has been rebuilt through the mouth that denied it. This clarity is why I praised the brief car analogy.
The fact that action occurs does not prove an independent actor. Intertwined conditions act together.
If Non-Self Feels Nihilistic, Observe the Conditions of That Feeling
People ask whether the absence of true self and absolute truth feels empty or nihilistic. Pomnyun replied that there is nothing to mourn because it was never there. I added one step: even if it was never there, people can feel emptiness because we have already invested meaning in an eternal self and absolute value.
Emotion and conceptual judgment arise reflexively when we meet an event. The feeling “If I am impermanent, life is meaningless” is not a conditionless truth. We must observe which education, desire, and fear created it. Seeing the conditions that produced thought, rather than being dragged by the thought, is dependent-arising reflection.
Here I criticized the habit of importing arcane Diamond Sutra lines such as “no dhamma was taught.” Buddhism becomes harder to understand when a simple question is decorated with mystery. What I value in that scripture is the point that all marks are not marks and a few passages urging us to see phenomena like dreams, bubbles, and lightning. There is no need to wrap every other line in authority.
Nihilistic feeling is also a conditioned reaction. Study begins by asking where it came from rather than being carried away by it.
Why This Brief Answer Is Rare and Valuable in Korean Buddhism
Among Korean monks, Buddhist YouTubers, and self-proclaimed awakened teachers, it is surprisingly rare to hear anyone clearly say, “There is no absolute truth” and “I searched for the true self and found none.” They speak of non-self, then restore a reincarnating subject, Buddha-nature, true self, or something eternal. Even scholars with decades of study often cannot read their own scriptures and experience critically.
Depth appears in short sentences. “Nothing is absolute,” “there is no true self,” and “that is my conclusion in my own way” follow one another naturally only when the teachings have been organized as one attitude rather than memorized as separate fragments.
I do not know every other video or activity of Pomnyun and think his inclusive public role sometimes leads him to pass over superstition and error. Yet this passage alone deserves praise a hundred or a thousand times. In a Korean Buddhist sphere crowded with uncritical speech, it briefly cleansed the eyes and ears.
My praise rests not on his rank or whole character but on specific words that reject absolute truth and true self while preserving the limits of judgment.
Was Gautama the First to Discover Dependent Arising?
After the clip, a viewer named Totoro asked whether I gave more weight to the possibility that Gautama was not the first to discover dependent arising. I answered yes—or more precisely, that we have no basis for assigning that priority. Dependent arising is not the Buddha’s private property or a secret created from nothing by one extraordinary person.
Śramaṇa philosophy existed before Gautama. These movements saw the world as combinations and dispersals of elements and denied some existing concepts of gods, souls, morality, and rebirth. Jainism spoke of jīva and ajīva, while other currents rejected a soul-like jīva and emphasized matter and conditions. Their views differed, but questions about composition and dissolution were already open.
It is also simplistic to place the Upanishads and the śramaṇas in completely separate camps. Literate and priestly groups overlapped and influenced one another intensely, and some Upanishadic voices reject gods. Buddhism did not suddenly fall from outside this network of debate; it arose within those conditions.
Dependent arising is not one saint’s exclusive revelation but wisdom flowering from human questions that challenged inherited belief and observed composition and dissolution.
Āstika, Nāstika, and Reading the Samaññaphala Sutta Backward
Those who affirmed gods, souls, absolute morality, and rebirth were āstika. Śramaṇas denying such things were condemned as nāstika, people who said “there is no such thing.” To established authority, they became bad people who denied god and soul.
The Samaññaphala Sutta lists and criticizes such teachers. I therefore see it as written from an āstika-like position and of low value as Buddhist doctrine. Its usefulness is historical: it indirectly shows which ideas circulated. When we gather the positions it attacks, we find claims close to Buddhism—that there is no absolute truth, soul, or absolute morality and that the world arises through conditions.
We must not believe a viewpoint merely because it entered a Buddhist canon. We should ask who criticized whom and from what position. A scripture is itself a product of power and debate, carrying voices from different periods. Someone who ridicules other religions’ scriptures as fiction but cannot criticize his own does not embody a Buddha’s attitude.
Once authority yields to the question of who criticized whom from which position, wisdom and power buried in a text become visible together.
Wisdom Is Discovered by Human Networks, Not Lone Geniuses
Before anyone awakens, that person learns language, hears questions, and encounters earlier thought and debate. It is difficult to invent dependent arising alone without speech, writing, philosophy, or conversation. Just as a lotus cannot flower without mud, water, and sunlight, becoming a Buddha occurs dependently.
Telephones, computers, electricity, and evolution were not wholly created by one genius either. Several people reached similar discoveries in similar periods, and the idea of changing species preceded Darwin. Knowledge passed through ancient Greece, the Arab world, medieval thought, and the Enlightenment. We may honor an important discoverer without erasing the conditions that made the discovery possible.
Socrates, Democritus, Chinese schools of names, Legalism and Mohism, and Indian śramaṇa philosophies flowered around comparable questions because human words travel. Rather than imagine completely isolated simultaneous inventions, I see questions moving through broad exchange networks that included Persia. Wisdom is a discovery of the human network.
The awakened content matters more than the awakened individual, and that content arises dependently from language, debate, society, and earlier people.
Lineage and Deification Manufacture the Past to Authorize the Present
Chan Buddhism established Huineng and Bodhidharma, then retroactively manufactured a lineage of dozens of Indian patriarchs. To proclaim my greatness, I magnify my teacher and deify every teacher above him. Eventually I can claim to carry the Buddha’s unique lineage.
This is no different from constructing genealogies in Christianity. Repetition turns unsupported lineages into apparent history, just as repeated advertising creates familiarity. Tales of 1,250 arhats, five hundred arhats, and Dharma succession harden into fact. Stories of the Buddha emerging from his mother’s side, walking seven steps, and declaring himself uniquely honored are human symbolism and deification.
People try to improve “I alone am honored above and below heaven” by saying it means everyone is precious. Yet the wording itself says I alone am uniquely honored. We should ask why it says “alone.” What matters in Buddhist texts is not the deification of the Buddha but traces of wisdom that survived within them, and even that wisdom cannot be claimed as one man’s exclusive speech.
When the past’s teachers and lineages are embellished to deify the present claimant, a lineage of wisdom becomes a genealogy of authority.
We Must Criticize the Buddhism and Scriptures We Inherited First
My father practiced Buddhism throughout his life, and I entered Buddhism in my second year of university through a small Lotus Sutra introduction at home. I did not create that beginning alone; it depended on my father, a book, language, and my era. I therefore cannot claim to have become a Buddha by myself.
Thinking dependently means refusing to believe a printed sentence without questions. We must ask, “Is this true?” and “Could what I heard be wrong?” We should keep open the possibility that birth legends, the declaration to teach, and the first turning of the wheel were later fiction. Even early layers of the Sutta Nipāta have unknown authors, and passages about the true brahmin may reveal a Brahmin standpoint.
It is ugly to attack Christian scripture as contradictory human writing while treating every Buddhist text as the Buddha’s word. Better to criticize our own religion thoroughly before turning to another. Although Buddhist literature is full of later invention, superstition, and contradiction, points of wisdom that say “not that” survived within it. That survival is why I still use the name Barobul—Buddhism Seen Directly.
There is neither self-criticism nor a Buddha’s path when one’s own religion and scripture remain sacred while only other religions are attacked.
A Dependent Life Means Bailing Water Together on Society’s Boat
A viewer asked about the Buddha’s mission to save beings and transmit the Dharma. I answered that the first sermon and declaration to teach were likely later constructions. Yet we do not need those stories to see why we must live responsibly together. Once this life matters and the world is understood as a dependent network, eating, sleeping, and working all reveal exchanges with nature and society.
Imagine meeting a typhoon while traveling on a boat. If nobody lowers the sail or bails water, the boat sinks and I die too. I cannot sit still merely because I call myself a Buddha. I am not separate from the boat’s fate. Acting with others to keep society’s boat afloat follows naturally from dependent self-understanding.
The same insight supports efforts toward a society with less hunger and oppression and toward changing systems that treat some people as slaves. Not everyone who understands dependent arising will participate in society in the same way, but recognizing that self and society are not separate naturally creates reformist and social tendencies. Compassion and real action need no teaching myth to justify them.
We are entangled with the fate of one social boat. Bailing water together when it is sinking is a dependent-arising life.
I Criticize Claims of Completed Awakening, Not People Who Are Practicing
A viewer said I often insult practitioners. I replied that I do not attack people who are still practicing. A practitioner questions, learns, travels, and debates while searching for a path. My targets are those who declare that practice is finished, awakening complete, and their word unquestionably right, then stand above others.
Yoon Hong-sik, Jinje, Dharma teacher Kim Tae-wan, psychiatrist Jeon Hyun-soo, and others I have criticized harshly presented awakening, lineage, perfect realization, or exceptional experience as authority. If someone who has not awakened sells himself as awakened and markets what he does not know as the Buddha’s Dharma, he steals people’s time and money and distracts them from present life. More blatant cults will continue while Buddhism and Christianity sell mysticism.
Ten years in the highest seat of the Jogye Order does not exempt false claims. If someone falsely claims to be the unique heir of Śākyamuni’s lineage, the higher the office, the stronger the necessary criticism. Politeness that cannot call a fraud a fraud lets society rot.
Practice continues through questioning. The moment someone declares “I have completed awakening” and establishes authority, the claim becomes subject to criticism and verification.
Buddhism Without Criticism Is Not Buddhism
Korean culture often suspends criticism before religion, age, and rank. A robe automatically earns the honorific “Venerable,” and a patriarch is indulged. Just as someone who does not respect Jeon Kwang-hoon need not call him “Reverend,” shaving one’s head does not make every monk worthy of an honorific. Words and conduct must be judged.
Buddhism began as critical currents telling inherited gods, souls, and absolute truth, “There is no such thing.” Liberation means revisiting and leaving concepts and knowledge we grasp. Without skepticism and questioning—whether self-criticism or social criticism—liberation is impossible. If science and philosophy are criticized while religion remains sacred, religious authority hardens like fascism.
I must continue asking whether profanity and rough expression are the best method. I do not need to reproduce Pomnyun’s polite public role, but I should change if my tone blocks the central argument. I cannot claim my method is optimal. I continue because, in my own judgment, criticism of religion and superstition in the twenty-first century is my role in personal and social liberation.
Buddhism without criticism is not Buddhism, and wisdom without criticism is not wisdom. That applies to my expression and judgment too.
A Broadcast That Began with Praise and Ended in Self-Reflection
The praise special traveled far—from śramaṇa philosophy and scripture to lineage, social engagement, and the culture of criticism. I laughed that thorns on my tongue had become a habit and that there was more digression than praise. Even so, the self-critical attitude in Pomnyun’s short answer deserves praise to the end.
“I looked for absolute truth and found nothing absolute; I looked for true self and found no true self. That, too, is my conclusion in my own way.” This sequence returns Buddhism from ownership of perfect answers to a life of continued examination. Because everything I know, see, learn, and experience may not be true, we need more information, observation, debate, and questions.
I am no exception to this principle. My criticism, translations, historical interpretations, arhat declaration, and harsh expression may be wrong. Readers should therefore not simply believe even this praise. Ask where it is right and wrong, judge in your own way, and revise together when new conditions become visible.
Do not believe; question. Buddhism remains alive when both the praised statement and my criticism are examined again.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.