The Falsehood That the Dharma Was Transmitted Without Words
With the Buddha’s Birthday approaching, I continue examining the problems of Korean Buddhism, stories mistaken for the Buddha’s words, and falsehoods wearing a Buddhist shell. Today’s center is the Flower Sermon and the “transmission of mind in three places.” I regard this as one source of the damage caused by Korean Seon Buddhism. The tale that the Buddha held up a flower and Mahākāśyapa smiled, transmitting the Dharma silently from mind to mind, is still used as the foundation of “mind-to-mind transmission,” the mind-seal, and Dharma lineage.
This falsehood does not remain an old story. It continues in 2025 when the head of the Jogye Order and the head of a monastic center claim before an audience that the Dharma has already been spoken through eyebrows and glances, or strike the floor three times with a staff, hold it up, and declare the sermon finished. Those who fail to understand assume they are deficient, while the monk who explained nothing appears to have transmitted awakening beyond words. It is a perfect stage device that removes every means of distinguishing the awakened from the unawakened.
Why I Call a Wrong a Wrong
I often criticize other people. Someone may ask why I do not simply tell my own story instead. Yet calling what is wrong wrong is one of the roles I believe I must perform. Falsehoods overflow under the name of Buddhism, and a person unable to distinguish them can practice for a lifetime while running in the direction opposite to Buddhism. My father also practiced Buddhism diligently but could not separate groundless beliefs and mystical imagination from the Dharma.
Whether one calls a lie “skillful means” or defends it as a story intended to make ordinary people good, a lie remains a lie. The important question is whether we can critically determine what actually happened. Once someone trips over the idea that “there is something mystical” or “something can be transmitted from mind to mind without words,” it becomes difficult to return to the Buddhism of observation and questioning. That is why I speak harshly and say: please do not trip over that stone.
Seongpa and Daewon’s Performance of “Looking Enlightened”
At a ceremony marking Buddhist Television Network’s thirtieth anniversary, Jogye patriarch Seongpa said that a Dharma talk had already been delivered through the eyebrows before words emerged and that blinking eyes were enough for mutual understanding. Following an old master’s claim that the sermon was completed before he climbed the Dharma platform, Seongpa staged the same conclusion. Though he returned to say more after beginning to leave, the central gesture was self-display: “I know a Dharma prior to speech.”
Daewon, head of Haein Monastic Center, likewise struck a staff three times, held it up, and behaved as though he had transmitted the entire Dharma. This imitates the Flower Sermon in which the Buddha supposedly held up a flower and transmitted the Dharma to Mahākāśyapa. The audience thinks, “He transmitted something, but I failed to understand.” The monk gains the authority of an awakened person while escaping criticism that he actually conveyed nothing. I regard this not as Buddhadharma but as a swindler’s performance.
If someone is awakened, he should answer questions; if he does not know, he should say so. Instead, these people say not to question a kōan again or threaten to strike someone for asking. They blame the questioner’s lack of understanding and refuse examination. This is the damage the Flower Sermon myth has produced in modern Korean Buddhism.
Transmission Verses and Lineage as Devices of Authority
Another method by which an unawakened person pretends to be awakened is the transmission verse and Dharma lineage. By claiming that a teacher recognized him and that the Dharma descending from the Buddha was transmitted to him, he obtains authority difficult to verify. Former Jogye patriarch Jinje used this method aggressively. His website calls him the “seventy-ninth Dharma descendant of the Buddha’s mind-seal” and emphasizes that the world’s only remaining strand of lineage survives in Korea.
At Haeunjeongsa, he even erected a statue of himself while still alive alongside statues of his teachers. He endlessly decorates his authority and uses a splendid temple and statues to appear awakened. I see this as the result not of awakening but of conceit and business. An awakened person does not prove himself with a transmission certificate or statue. Clear conduct and life reveal that person.
The Seventy-Nine-Generation Lineage Is Fiction
The lineage chart on Jinje’s website runs from Śākyamuni through Mahākāśyapa and Ānanda, makes Bodhidharma the twenty-eighth Indian patriarch, and then passes through Chinese patriarchs, the Korean Taego Bou, and Gyeongheo to Jinje as the seventy-ninth descendant. I called this genealogy a blatant lie because its first link, Mahākāśyapa’s Flower Sermon, is not historical fact.
The earliest source presented for the Flower Sermon is not a scripture from the Buddha’s era but a record created around the eleventh century. The later text titled the Scripture of Questions by King Brahmā is also known as an apocryphal scripture produced far later. Chinese Seon first established Bodhidharma as its founding patriarch; in order to extend Bodhidharma’s authority back to the Buddha, it turned Mahākāśyapa into the first Indian patriarch and Bodhidharma into the twenty-eighth. Traces of sources assigning different numbers to Bodhidharma show that this was not a transmitted fact but a story manufactured competitively.
Contradictions appear even within the nearer Korean genealogy. A few generations above Jinje’s claimed lineage stands Gyeongheo. Gyeongheo is said to have practiced alone with a hwadu and awakened, later lamenting that he had no teacher to examine his realization. From whom, then, did he receive recognition and lineage? If Jinje’s claim that “awakening without a teacher is a demonic heresy” is true, Gyeongheo was a demonic heretic and Jinje himself belongs to that lineage. He claims seventy-nine generations without examining a figure only a few generations above himself.
The Self-Contradiction of “Awakening Without a Teacher Is Heresy”
Jinje said it is delusion to claim realization of the great way without a teacher because one cannot understand alone the boundless realm of the Buddha’s truth. That statement is a confession that he does not understand Buddhism. Buddhist awakening is not knowledge of eighty-four thousand separate truths. It is understanding in one’s own life and world the simple but deep principle of impermanence, no-self, and dependent origination. These are not different bodies of secret knowledge but expressions arising from one root.
The Buddha himself did not become a Buddha by receiving certification in Buddhadharma from a teacher. To claim that the Buddha said anyone awakening without a teacher is a heretic makes the Buddha spit in his own face. Jinje says on one hand that Dharma is transmitted from the teacher’s mind to the disciple’s and on the other that this unbroken lineage reached him. That produces the ridiculous conclusion that if he dies without transmitting it to a successor, no Buddha can ever appear again.
The Buddha Spoke Through Observable Facts
Buddhism is not a secret object only a teacher can transmit. The Buddha discussed facts that the listener could also observe. Ask whether prayer can make a stone thrown on the ground float, and one can observe directly that it cannot. The Buddha does not inject awakening into another person; he lets that person see reality and understand it.
The first principle of practice is therefore observation, the second is questioning, and the third is reflection. “Be an island and lamp unto yourself; be an island and lamp unto the Dharma” does not mean receiving Dharma mentally from a teacher. It means seeing and awakening for oneself. We can still become Buddhas 2,500 years later not because a secret lineage survives but because anyone can observe self and world.
Awakening Is Revealed in Life, Not a Certificate
Awakening is not proven by a teacher’s recognition or transmission verse. When an arhat reaches the state of no further learning, that person knows directly. An awakened person is revealed through speech, conduct, and a clear life free from worldliness. Conversely, an unawakened person reveals himself through pretense, greed, and dependence on power.
Jinje repeated the falsehood that awakening without a teacher is heresy, decorated his authority with lineage and statues, and praised Jaseung’s group—who displayed ascetic suffering—as arhats. His actions also supported political power and corruption in the Jogye Order. I criticize the fact that such a person sat for years as patriarch as proof that the Buddhist spirit of the order had died. Seongpa and Daewon continue the same gestures today.
A Lion’s Roar Is Understandable Speech, Not a Loud Noise
Striking a staff three times does not make a lion’s roar. A lion’s roar rests on clear reason, understands the other person, and communicates through words and actions that person can understand. Do not decorate incomprehensible gestures as Seon dialogue. If three strikes of a staff genuinely convey something, use them. But making an action that conveys nothing into evidence of awakening is fraud.
We must therefore question until we understand. Ask about our minds and society, about Dharma talks and scriptural words, and distinguish fiction from fact. Consider how to practice and live. Anyone claiming awakening should answer in language the questioner can understand, and if unable to answer should honestly say, “I do not know.” Such a person must not forbid questions or silence them with authority.
The Buddha does not transmit the Dharma from mind to mind. He lets us observe, question, reflect, and awaken for ourselves.
Do not believe something merely because it is written in a book, transmitted for a long time, or spoken by a patriarch, monastic head, or teacher. Keep impermanence, no-self, and dependent origination at the center and examine words and conduct. Unless the lies of the Flower Sermon and the transmission in three places are broken, Korean Buddhism will keep producing ignorant people who claim to transmit Dharma without words. For Korean Buddhism to live again, the staff that forbids questions must be broken first.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.