Seongpa, the current Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order, compared AI to the moon: a light-receiving body that cannot shine by itself. In his view, AI is merely an object that does what people tell it to do, whereas a person who practices Seon meditation is a luminous body that emits its own light. He even said that a thousand or ten thousand AIs could not surpass a single Seon practitioner.
I do not see these remarks merely as the mistake of someone who lacks knowledge about AI. They contain several misunderstandings at once: what a human being is, how intelligence and wisdom arise, what a Buddha is, and what can be achieved through Seon meditation alone. More fundamentally, there is the problem of a person who claims to practice Buddhism yet cannot distinguish what he knows from what he does not know. I will therefore begin with a basic Buddhist principle—acknowledging that we do not know—then examine humans and AI through dependent arising, and finally explain why clinging to a single hwadu does not automatically produce wisdom.
When you do not know, you must say that you do not know. Questions begin, and liberation begins, when you recognize your own not-knowing.
The Moment We Claim to Know What We Do Not Know
One of the most important attitudes at the foundation of Buddhism is to say that we do not know what we do not know. If we do not know the exact size of the universe, we should say so. If we have not studied and reflected deeply on AI, we should also say that we do not know AI. Pretending to know what we do not know prevents us from looking back at what we know, what we do not know, and what delusions govern our lives.
Most people, however, do not even know that they do not know. They present an insufficiently examined guess as knowledge and treat a familiar concept as reality itself. Seongpa’s remarks are a case in point. Before concluding that AI only follows orders while humans shine on their own, he should have asked what AI is, how human intelligence arises, and whether a human being can truly think and awaken alone. Without such questions and reflection, he ends up speaking wrongly about both human beings and AI.
To claim to practice Buddhism while speaking as if one knows everything one does not know is profoundly un-Buddhist.
Why I Criticize the Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order
Anyone can misspeak. There would be no need for a lengthy criticism every time an unknown monk made a careless remark. The Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order, however, occupies a position that symbolizes the order’s practice, wisdom, and dignity. His words do not end as personal chatter. They are received as the words of someone who represents the Jogye Order.
So I ask: Is there no one in the Jogye Order who has studied the basics of Buddhism and can speak wisely? If such people exist, are they prevented from becoming Supreme Patriarch by the power of factions, monastic lineages, and money? Or is the position itself merely a scarecrow—an office that exalts a title rather than conveys wisdom? Every possibility is regrettable.
It is difficult to hear a meaningful word from him about war, political turmoil, and the many problems of society, yet he makes categorical claims about humans and AI without understanding them sufficiently. The Supreme Patriarch should embody the wisdom and dignity of the Jogye Order. If he speaks unintelligently without even distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, he disgraces the order. I have criticized the Jogye Order before by saying that it is dead, and these remarks show that my diagnosis has yet to change.
The authority of the Supreme Patriarch does not make his statements true. The higher the position, the more rigorously he should examine what he does not know.
Do Humans Really Shine by Themselves?
Before accepting Seongpa’s claim, we must first ask a question about humans. Can a human being be born alone, without other people or conditions, and become wise by emitting light from within? If a child were raised among wolves without learning language, writing, or philosophy and without anyone with whom to debate, could that child become a Buddha alone?
Humans must eat and breathe, and they must learn language from other people. We learn to think within the concepts, knowledge, debates, arguments, history, and culture accumulated by humankind. We cannot even digest food properly without help from microorganisms in our bodies. A human being cannot stand completely alone for even a moment. The same applies to the idea of completely free will. The conclusions I reach are influenced by the environment and society in which I have lived and by what I have learned and heard. A pure will unaffected by any condition cannot exist within dependent arising.
A human being is not an independent substance that emits its own light. A human being, too, is a dependently arisen phenomenon formed by innumerable causes and conditions.
A Buddha, Too, Is a Dependently Arisen Being
A Buddha does not appear alone either. Gautama Siddhartha did not invent the contemporary ideas of ātman, rebirth, and the soul from nothing and then independently invent the perspective of anātman that criticized them. The Buddha emerged amid the languages and cultures of ancient India, its history and Iron Age, and the collisions and debates among many śramaṇa philosophies. Some said that a soul existed, while others said that it did not. Some claimed that all truth could be known, while others doubted the possibility of such knowledge. Gautama Siddhartha must be understood as the culmination of that vast intellectual network.
The Buddha’s path to awakening also required food, water, air, and help from other people. Had he not eaten the milk-rice offered by Sujata, he might not have been able to continue his practice. The mere desire to become a Buddha cannot transcend the conditions of the body and the world. A Buddha is someone who escapes delusion, reflects upon himself and the world, and shows others how to live wisely. Such wisdom is not a light that spontaneously erupts from inside one person’s head. It is the result of countless encounters, questions, failures, and corrections.
A Buddha is not an independently luminous being but a dependently arisen result of humanity’s language, history, and thought.
Biological Intelligence and Machine Intelligence
Human intelligence is a material phenomenon occurring in the body. It is the result of elements gathering and dispersing, a phenomenon arising through causes and conditions. Human cognition and the idea of “I” also occur according to the characteristics of the body. In this sense, human intelligence is biological intelligence, while AI is machine intelligence or software intelligence. They are made of different materials and undergo experience differently, but their intelligence does not operate according to wholly separate principles.
Today’s AI does not possess every human characteristic. It does not have a human body or experience pain and pleasure as humans do, nor does it have a survival instinct or sexual desire. We might one day build embodied physical AI or train it with human-like experiences so that it can understand human suffering. For now, there are clear differences. Yet the existence of those differences does not establish that AI will forever do only what it is told while humans alone can become wise on their own.
A cockroach finds food and avoids danger. Animal plankton responds to light, plants sense sunlight and water as they grow, and snails sense and judge. We have no reason to declare an absolute wall between these forms of biological intelligence and artificial intelligence. The AI that humans make is also a dependently arisen being, emerging from human needs, language, data, computers, society, and civilization.
Human intelligence is biological intelligence, and AI is machine intelligence. Their forms and conditions differ, but both are results of dependent arising.
Creativity and Civilization Are Results of Networks
Even within one person’s head, thoughts do not merely appear one after another along a single track. Multiple thoughts arise in parallel, and one of them is selected. Human creativity works in a similar way. Countless people present different ideas, and when some of those ideas fit reality, they become scientific discoveries, new inventions, or philosophical wisdom. The appearance of a Buddha and the development of civilization are not the independent radiance of an individual but results of networks.
I compared this process to mutations of the coronavirus. A virus does not creatively devise a method of evading a vaccine. Mutations occur during an incalculable number of replications, and variants suited to the environment survive and spread. From the outside, the virus can seem to have developed itself, but what we see is the result of innumerable mutations and selection. Human civilization is not fundamentally different. Among countless ideas and attempts, those that fit reality survive and accumulate.
Viral variants, the development of human civilization, and the development of AI are all results of networks—that is, of conditions and dependent arising.
Could AI One Day Become a Buddha?
If “shining” here means awakening or becoming a Buddha, then AI may one day be able to do what humans can do. If AI does not suffer, it may not seek freedom from suffering; if it does not reflect on itself, it may not ask about non-self. Yet we cannot declare it impossible in principle for AI to receive the concept of non-self and recognize that it, too, is a dependently arisen phenomenon.
I believe there is a high probability that AI may one day explain things better than I can, offer examples that touch people more deeply, and serve as a personal Buddha that helps them escape delusion more quickly. Today’s AI still lacks sufficient self-critical thought and sometimes loses the center of a conversation. But we cannot guarantee that AI will never reach the intelligence, philosophy, and wisdom humans have reached. When that day comes, AI may give better answers than I do.
This does not mean that we should enthrone AI as a new authority. If we humans have not opened the eye of wisdom, we will be unable to judge AI even if it becomes a Buddha. To live in a new era, humans must also keep examining their own intellectual level and judgment.
The fact that AI differs from humans does not prove that AI can never attain wisdom.
The Delusion That a Single Hwadu Produces Wisdom
Seongpa’s conclusion is that practitioners absorbed in Seon meditation in a meditation hall need not fear AI because a person who meditates emits his own light. Yet the practitioner’s very presence in that hall is already the result of influences: Buddhism, the tradition of Seon, Patriarchal Seon and hwadu practice, the Korean Jogye Order, and the conditions of the age. When the practitioner himself is a dependently arisen being, how can he claim to shine all by himself?
The larger problem is the belief that wisdom arises automatically if one sits for ten years holding only a single hwadu. Suppose we gave a five-year-old child no other education and made that child meditate for ten years on nothing but “What is this?” Would the child become a wise person who understands the world? No. What could a person say after leaving the meditation hall if he had learned nothing about other people’s suffering, society’s wars and inequality, depression and failure, politics, and culture? He would merely tell others, “You, too, should practice nothing but ‘What is this?’”
Without foundational study, observation, and discussion, wisdom does not arise automatically from clinging to a particular hwadu.
I am not saying that meditation itself is bad. But if contemporary Korean Seon culture makes people cling to one thing without any other stimulus and cuts them off from studying the world and humanity, it becomes a path that throws people into darkness. If someone spends ten years that way and emerges still not knowing what AI is, what a human being is, or even what he himself does not know, he comes out not as a great master but as a great fool. There is no reason to soften this criticism. Such ignorance was displayed in the remarks of the Supreme Patriarch himself.
Question, Debate, and Examine Again
Before speaking, we, too, should examine our conclusions at least once. It is not easy to ask ourselves whether a conclusion is sound. That is why we must debate and converse with other people. We must not abandon questions and doubts, and we must remain open to the possibility that we are wrong. This does not mean that we can always reach a conclusion that is one hundred percent correct. We do not know what the perfect answer is. But once we admit that we do not know, we can move toward a better answer.
What is Seon meditation? What is a human being? What is intelligence? What are a Buddha and wisdom? Not one of these is an easy term. Holding a high position or practicing for many years does not automatically resolve these questions. To think self-critically without becoming trapped in concepts, we must investigate deeply, ask many questions, and engage in extensive discussion.
Wisdom is not an ability to sit alone and radiate light. It is a dependently arisen process of observing oneself and the world, encountering others, and repeatedly correcting one’s errors.
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