A Visitor Who Will Praise Me
The second planet the Little Prince visits is inhabited by a vain man. The moment he sees the Little Prince, he cries, “At last, a visitor who will admire me!” That single sentence reveals his entire world. Other people are not beings with lives and thoughts of their own. To him, they exist only to praise, applaud, and admire him.
When the Little Prince asks about his unusual hat, the man explains that it is for acknowledging cheers. Yet nobody ever passes through his planet. When the Little Prince claps, the man raises his hat with feigned modesty. He repeats the same gesture each time the child claps, and the Little Prince soon tires of the monotonous game. But the vain man cannot hear anything except praise. Words that do not satisfy his desire do not register at all.
He asks whether the Little Prince admires him. When asked what admiration means, he says it means acknowledging that he is the best-looking, best-dressed, richest, and most intelligent man on the planet. The Little Prince points out that he is the only person there, but the man still begs for admiration. The child reluctantly complies and then asks, “But why is that so important?” The man has no answer.
Conceit Requires Other People
In Buddhist language, this vanity is conceit, arrogance, and pride. The center of conceit is clearly the “I.” I want to think that I am higher, better, and more admirable. Yet there is a strange dependency built into it. I cannot satisfy it by myself. I need another person for comparison, and that person must recognize my superiority.
Conceit therefore requires three things: myself, another person, and recognition produced through comparison. The desire is fulfilled only when someone says, “You are the best,” “You are greater,” or “I respect you.” Recognition brings happiness, and its absence brings misery. The self appears to occupy the center, but the power to determine happiness and misery has actually been given to other people.
Words such as honor, respect, and esteem can make this desire sound noble. Everyone enjoys praise to some extent, and I do not pretend to be free of that pleasure. The problem begins when I fail to see its illusory nature and become dependent on it. Once the judgment of others becomes the standard of life, who I really am matters less than how I appear.
The Embellished Self Replaces the Real Self
When appearances become decisive, people try to look better than they are. A small achievement is inflated into a major contribution. Appearance is polished, and good deeds are announced with a trumpet. This is the structure of the hypocrite—the person who decorates the outside—criticized in the Sermon on the Mount.
Fasting with a deliberately miserable face or publicizing every good deed makes the public image more important than the act itself. I connected this structure to former Jogye Order president Jaseung’s Sangwol Association and pilgrimage. Camping in winter to advertise a harsher practice, walking while flowers were scattered, and mobilizing crowds upon returning to Korea looked to me less like practice than a desire to appear as a great practitioner.
I also recalled a scene at Dongguk University in which he sat in the highest place and received bows from many people. The posture itself declared, “I am higher than you and deserve your reverence.” No pilgrimage or Buddhist image can change the fact that someone who still elevates himself through comparison has not entered the beginning of Buddhism.
Collapse When the Real Person Is Exposed
The larger the gap between the desired image and the real person, the greater the pain when reality is exposed. An action remains the same before and after it becomes public; what changes is the judgment of others. A person whose center lies in those judgments may collapse when the image he wished to preserve is destroyed.
I referred to politicians and celebrities who made extreme choices after their conduct became known. Their conduct already existed before disclosure. What suddenly changed was the public image. Such moments reveal that their happiness had not been centered in themselves but in the eyes of others. Religious leaders, politicians, and entertainers are all vulnerable to this structure.
Acorns Comparing Their Height
People declare themselves higher through comparison. Seen from the scale of the universe, however, human beings are closer to dust. We are like acorns boasting that one of us is the largest acorn, or frogs in a well believing their small world to be the whole. We should remember that, across cosmic time, we are temporary gatherings of elements that soon disperse.
When that fact is understood deeply, ornaments such as “I am sacred,” “I have accumulated merit,” and “I was specially chosen” begin to fall away. This does not make human life worthless. It releases us from the delusion of absolutizing ourselves merely because one acorn happens to be slightly larger than another.
The problem with comparison is not a denial that one person may in fact study or work better than another. Differences can be real. The problem begins when a difference is no longer left as a fact but is converted into my superiority and another person’s inferiority. Knowing a little more becomes proof that I am a higher kind of human being, and that claim is then turned into a right to receive bows and obedience.
The same structure operates when I feel that I have lost the comparison. Conceit is not limited to superiority; inferiority that defines the self through someone else’s judgment is also bound to comparison and recognition. One person cries, “I am the greatest,” while another collapses into “I am nothing,” but both measure themselves through other people’s eyes. Freedom from conceit is therefore not forced self-abasement. It is seeing the framework of higher and lower produced by comparison.
Religious Figures Who Decorate Themselves with Mystery
In the discussion after the lecture, I applied this structure directly to religious leaders. Cheongong fashions his hair, beard, clothes, and background to look mysterious and speaks as if he knows the world. I warned that we should be suspicious of anyone who presents himself as having reached an extraordinary realm. Self-mystification and the demand for followers’ reverence reproduce the planet of the vain man.
I criticized former Jogye Order patriarch Jinje and former president Jaseung for the same reason. Someone who claims awakening should display the conduct of an awakened person. If he instead uses office and authority to elevate himself and demand obedience, he moves in the opposite direction from Buddhism. A person who has not awakened but sells himself as awakened sends countless people away from Buddhism; I therefore called it one of the worst forms of fraud within Buddhism.
I also criticized the meditative absolutism associated with Rajneesh and Seongcheol. Treating samadhi or a mysterious experience as awakening, and demanding an unchanging state such as “one and the same in sleep and wakefulness,” contradicts impermanence. Observing and reducing agitation can be valuable, but the moment an unchanging mental state becomes the criterion of completion, the teaching of impermanence has been abandoned.
I did not say that meditation and samadhi are simply bad. Recognizing that the mind is agitated and observing that agitation are important. The problem is using the experience as a mystical decoration and saying, “I have entered a special realm.” When meditation becomes a badge that separates me from others rather than a means of observing myself, practice does not weaken vanity; it becomes a more sophisticated way of decorating it.
We should therefore look beyond a religious figure’s words to the way he actually lives. Does he constantly announce his awakening? Does he permit questions? Does he use rank to receive bows and obedience? Does he dismiss different interpretations as ignorance? Mysterious clothes, difficult terms, and scripture titles can all be used as ornaments. Just as the vain man’s hat rises whenever applause begins, religious decoration can move in rhythm with followers’ cheers.
Observing the Mind That Loves Praise
I said honestly that I enjoy praise and have a desire for respect. The task is not to pretend that this mind does not exist. It is to observe how it arises, what it demands, and where it relocates the center of my life. When I thirst for praise and respect, I inflate my accomplishments and live for the person seen by others rather than the person I am.
I also do not deny that praise can move people. Being recognized may encourage further effort, and affirmation can help someone stand again. But when praise becomes the only source of movement, action stops the moment the praise disappears. A person who does not admire me becomes useless, and criticism becomes inaudible. Like the vain man who could not hear the Little Prince’s other questions, I begin to hear only what I want to hear.
What needs observation, then, is not merely whether praise is present. I should ask what I become when praised, why criticism immediately angers me, and whether work that receives no recognition is truly worthless. If an act was necessary and right, the absence of applause does not change it. Conversely, universal applause does not turn a wrong act into a right one.
The Little Prince’s question therefore remains: “Why is that so important?” If I can be happy only after hearing that I am the best, my happiness belongs to someone else’s mouth. Wisdom does not begin by becoming a person who hates every compliment. It begins by seeing the mind that dances to praise and recognizing the illusion in its hunger for admiration.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.