In Buddhist circles, we repeatedly hear the instruction, “Do not create images or notions.” The phrase is so familiar that many people stop questioning it. They assume that if practice goes well enough, they will eventually arrive at a condition in which every mental image has disappeared. I think we must challenge that premise itself. Can a human being really live without forming mental images? Is it possible to have no thoughts, no judgments about good and bad or right and wrong, and to see the world exactly as it is without any conceptual or perceptual construction?
This talk began with a question asked in a video by Venerable Pomnyun. The questioner observed that we must first form the notion that someone is suffering and needs help before compassion moves us to act. Likewise, we must regard someone as worthy of respect before we feel inclined to learn from that person. How could such responses arise if we formed no notions at all? I consider this question more important than the answer that followed. It identifies something fundamental: mental constructions are not merely impurities to be discarded. They are conditions through which human judgment and action become possible.
The command not to form notions is wrong from the outset
Let me begin with my conclusion. The instruction “Do not form notions” is wrong. Human beings cannot avoid forming them. We are animals that construct images, distinctions, and expectations. We are not unique in this respect. Dogs and cats distinguish their guardians from strangers, home territory from foreign territory, food from danger, and companions from enemies. Human intelligence may be more elaborate, but it does not remove us from this basic mode of operation.
We constantly judge one person likable and another unpleasant, one person admirable and another untrustworthy. We call things beautiful or dirty, complete or deficient, right or wrong, permissible or forbidden. These judgments depend on patterns and concepts we have learned. Socialization itself can be understood as the process of learning the notions shared by a society: wear clothes in public, do not relieve yourself anywhere you please, and observe certain forms of etiquette. Without such standards, ordinary social life would be impossible.
Buddhist wisdom therefore cannot consist in erasing every notion. It begins by recognizing that I live amid innumerable notions, that none of them is perfect, and that I nevertheless tend to seize them as reality itself. I should not claim, “I have escaped all mental constructions.” I should acknowledge, “I am bound by them, and my judgments arise through what I have learned.” Only then can I reexamine my judgments and genuinely converse with another person.
The questioner identified the decisive point
As the questioner noted, helping a person in distress requires a prior judgment that the person is suffering. The suffering must become visible and affect us before we give up our money or extend a hand. Learning from someone also requires the judgment that the person has something worth learning. The claim that we can eliminate all such judgments while leaving pure compassion intact does not describe actual human beings. If a murderer and a victim are viewed only as identical human beings and no distinction is made, from where would the compassionate duty to protect the victim and stop the violence arise?
Of course, a person I pity is not essentially and eternally “a pitiful person,” and someone I admire does not always act admirably. Words such as “the people” or “the nation” can also conceal countless differences and conflicts when treated as solid entities. That is precisely why we should not be told to stop forming notions. We should understand that they vary by circumstance and may be mistaken. Erasing a notion and refusing to cling to it are entirely different matters.
Without thought there can be neither dialogue nor awakening
In the video, Venerable Pomnyun divided the teaching into no-thought, no-form, and non-abiding, and described the best condition as one in which not a single thought arises. I cannot agree. If the Buddha actually spoke with people, he must have thought. One cannot listen to a question, understand its meaning, decide how to respond, and speak without thought. Language operates through thought and concepts. If a glance or smile could communicate everything, there would have been no need for extended conversations or the vast bodies of scripture attributed to the Buddha.
If there were literally no thought, one could not decide to eat, find a restroom, use chopsticks, or ride a bicycle. The fact that we do not formulate a complete sentence before every familiar action does not mean cognition has vanished. Even when speech flows quickly, the mind continuously evaluates context and selects words. Calling automated cognition “the absence of thought” prevents us from observing what is actually occurring.
Awakening itself cannot occur without thought. If Gautama Siddhartha abandoned ascetic practice, he must have seen and judged something: perhaps “I cannot continue because this is too painful,” or more profoundly, “This path is futile.” To recognize that one has pursued the wrong path is thought, and it is also an awakening. Where no thought occurs, no error can be discovered, no question can be raised, and no wiser direction can be chosen.
If that is what it means to be a Buddha, do not become one. If awakening means turning into a stone with no thought, emotion, or judgment, there is no reason to seek it.
This does not make meditation or concentration useless. Focusing on one object can settle scattered thoughts and quiet the mind. A stable mind resembling still water can be beneficial, and I encourage Buddhist practitioners to experience concentration practice. The mistake lies in expanding temporary quiet into the ideal of absolute no-thought. When meditation ends, thoughts arise again because that is the ordinary operation of a human mind. If no-thought is treated as the goal, practitioners blame themselves for continuing to think and endlessly pursue a state that never existed.
Can human beings live without evaluative concepts?
The “form” discussed in the video referred not to impermanence but to mental images and judgments: liking and disliking, right and wrong, respect and aversion. We must therefore ask whether a human being can live even one day without evaluation. How could we tell whether food is spoiled, whether something a child picks up is dangerous, or which actions are permitted in public?
Language itself is a system of concepts. Birth and disappearance, increase and decrease, purity and impurity are distinctions we make. The Heart Sutra deconstructs such concepts through phrases like “neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing.” This does not erase the practical difference between clean water and contaminated water. Understanding emptiness does not mean allowing a child to eat anything from the ground. The fact that concepts are conditionally constructed does not mean they have no practical use.
Laws, etiquette, and promises are also constructed forms. Their content changes across societies and eras, yet this does not mean we can live with no standards. We live through notions while recognizing that they are neither absolute entities nor eternal truths. This is the movement of neither form nor non-form. If we stop after negating concepts, we become trapped in a new concept that declares everything meaningless. We must return to the reality in which conditioned notions remain necessary.
Conditioning and advertising: how notions color the mind
Conditioned reflex provides a familiar example of how mental patterns are formed. In Pavlov’s experiment, a dog connected the sound of an assistant’s footsteps with the arrival of food. Later, the footsteps alone caused salivation even when no food was visible. The two events had become linked as a condition. This is what it means for the mind to be colored and for a notion to operate. The dog does not need to formulate the sentence, “Food follows these footsteps,” for the pattern to work.
Human beings operate similarly. Advertising repeatedly places an attractive person beside an expensive car, happy people beside a beverage, or a corporation’s name beside beautiful scenery. Repetition is intended to create conditioning: a car becomes associated with success, a brand with happiness, and national slogans with the image of a good country regardless of the actual lives of citizens. People may be hungry and their rights violated, yet the repeated phrase “one of the world’s ten largest economies” can still generate the image of a successful nation.
After enjoying apples several times, the sight of one may cause salivation. The smell of fermented soybean paste evokes rice; an old song revives memories and emotions. We cannot simply wipe these responses from the mind. Standards of beauty are likewise shaped by period, culture, and repeated exposure. The beauties of the past differ from those of the present, and the global spread of K-pop has changed how many foreigners perceive East Asian faces. Notions are not fixed, but neither do they vanish.
Seeing itself is already a constructed image
At a deeper level, the very shape we see before any explicit value judgment is already an image. The external world is not copied directly into the eye. Light reaches the sense organ, and the brain distinguishes and organizes it into visible forms. We must therefore be cautious with claims that someone “sees things exactly as they are.” The instant we see or hear, sensory processes, neural activity, past learning, and distinction have already participated.
To imagine perception without any construction is to imagine transcendence beyond the human condition. I do not regard such transcendence as Buddhism. Dependent arising means that when conditions are present, corresponding processes occur. The five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness—are not independent and immutable substances but conditioned activities. Seeing, feeling, forming an image, and responding arise dependently. To claim that practice can permanently prevent these processes from arising is therefore anti-dependent-origination.
Wind and waves gradually change even a rock. A remembered taste produces a response when an apple appears again. Anger arises because an event conflicts with standards and experiences I regard as right. The task is not to announce, “I will never form another notion.” It is to investigate why anger arose, whether what I regard as right is actually right, and when the object of my desire became established as good. Buddhism cannot proceed without observation and understanding.
Non-abiding: reflecting without sticking to a notion
Of the three terms—no-thought, no-form, and non-abiding—the direction I can accept is closest to non-abiding. A notion may arise, but we need not adhere to it so rigidly that movement becomes impossible. When I think something is dirty, I can recognize that this judgment arose from learned experience and culture. When I admire someone, I need not freeze that person into an eternally admirable essence.
Critical thinking begins when I recognize that I am bound by constructions. I am not someone who has escaped the well; I am someone gradually learning that I live inside one. Acknowledging that my notion may be wrong allows me to listen and revise my thinking. During the livestream, a viewer described feeling angry when a former partner left, then realizing that the change might have been good for her. This does not abolish promises or moral standards. It shows that loosening one fixed interpretation can widen the possibility of forgiveness and compassion.
Buddhism is a process of understanding, not transcendence
A slight error in direction turns Buddhist practice into a project of transcending humanity. People imagine a state with no thought, no image, no disturbance, and perfect purity. Yet setting an impossible condition as the goal is itself delusion. Practitioners then either spend their lives blaming themselves for falling short or, while continuing to think and judge like everyone else, claim that they have attained no-thought and no-form. The result is deception or self-deception.
A sentence is not necessarily true because it appears in a scripture. We should not accept a claim merely because patriarchs, Venerable Pomnyun, the Diamond Sutra, or the Platform Sutra said it. We must ask whether it is possible, whether it conflicts with other teachings, and whether it can be observed in human life. Almost no sentence can be established with certainty as the Buddha’s literal speech. Our task is not to depend on authority but to compare texts, examine contradictions, and critically seek wisdom useful to life.
Buddhism is a process of understanding and reflection. It does not erase constructions; it investigates how they arise and move us. I continuously form notions. They are incomplete and change with time, place, and experience, yet I easily grasp them as truth itself. Practice is to remember this, turn back toward oneself, ask questions, compare perspectives, and correct mistakes when they become visible.
Do not struggle to stop forming notions. You cannot. Instead, look at the notions holding you. Ask where they came from, why they now make you angry, and why they lead you to call something good or right. Do not imagine that you have completely escaped them. Recognize that you are bound by them. Wisdom begins with that recognition and with the willingness to look again.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.