Doing Good First Requires Deciding What Is Good
Volunteer work, social movements, and the practice of love generally sound good. Many activities seem worthy of active support and personal participation. I am not claiming that these activities themselves are bad.
Yet it is not self-evident which movement to support, which organization to fund, or which work counts as good. Our time, money, and strength are limited, so choosing one thing already means deciding what is more important and valuable.
An action does not acquire equal value with every other action simply because it is named “service.” We must judge whom it helps, what results it produces, and why it is more necessary than alternatives. The same applies to love, purity, and practice.
I discuss Venerable Pomnyun’s pilgrimage to India not to disparage a particular event. I ask whether we can look beyond a good name and benevolent intention to reconsider the value standard that selected the action.
What Does Jungto Society’s Indian Pilgrimage Presuppose?
Venerable Pomnyun and Jungto Society conducted a pilgrimage to India as an event marking the dedication of prayer practice. As I vaguely remember from earlier accounts, one wish of the person Pomnyun regards as his teacher may also have concerned caring for and visiting Indian sites associated with Gautama Siddhartha.
Participants spend time and money because they judge those places meaningful, believe walking there will help them, and consider the journey worthwhile for Buddhists. If they thought it entirely meaningless, they would have no reason to call it a pilgrimage and join it.
A sacred site literally means sacred land. Regions where Gautama Siddhartha is said to have been born, raised, renounced home, practiced, awakened, and taught are designated special places. Preserving, supporting, and visiting them contains a judgment that they mean more than other places.
The question therefore goes beyond whether the trip is pleasant or the event is well organized. Why is the land sacred? Why is going there more valuable than doing something else? What supports that judgment?
The Little Prince’s Baobabs and Nameless Flower
In an earlier lecture on The Little Prince, I said we must reconsider what humans call important. The Little Prince treats the baobabs threatening his planet as extremely important, but judges the three-petaled flower he meets in the desert to be nothing.
Neither the baobab nor the flower announces its own value. The Little Prince’s experience, needs, and memories attach the name “important” to one and “nothing” to the other.
We too learn phrases such as “the Buddha,” “a sacred statue,” “a holy place,” and “a great teacher.” Respect and meaning arise naturally when we hear them, but the naturalness of the feeling does not prove that value objectively.
If we practice Buddhism, we must reconsider whether what we call important truly is important and whether what we dismiss as nothing truly lacks value. The word “sacred site” cannot be exempt from this inquiry.
Is the Land Gautama Siddhartha Walked Truly Sacred?
Is the land in India where Gautama Siddhartha lived truly sacred? If it is, are lands in Korea, China, Persia, Africa, and the Americas, where he did not live, less sacred?
Among places made of the same soil, water, and life, one becomes sacred because the footsteps of a particular person remain there, while the rest become ordinary land. Does that distinction come from the land, or from human memory, faith, and naming?
Am I superior to an ant? Are you superior to a cicada? Does the place where Gautama Siddhartha lived stand above its tiny creatures and every other place? These are not irreverent jokes but questions that test the identity of our standard of sacredness.
From my standpoint, India is not sacred land. One may visit historical sites to study a historical person’s life, but that is different from believing the ground itself sacred. Historical travel and religious pilgrimage should not be conflated.
Favorable Words Such as Neighborly Love and Pure Practice
Love, practice, purity, social influence, neighbor, and service generally carry favorable meanings. Yet “love your neighbor” immediately raises the question of who counts as a neighbor. May we love neighbors while treating non-neighbors however we wish?
Frankly, a person who treats those nearby terribly is unlikely to treat someone across the globe well. It is also true that humans cannot feel exactly the same toward friend and enemy, their own child and an unknown child.
Religious practice, however, should reconsider precisely these familiar human frames. If Christianity speaks of loving enemies and Buddhism of compassion and non-self, they should ask us to examine a standard that distributes value according only to proximity and belonging.
Repeating good words does not make an action good. One can possess in the name of love, exclude in the name of purity, and cultivate superiority in the name of service. We must therefore examine standards and actual effects rather than names.
Other Uses for the Time and Money Spent on Pilgrimage
If India is not sacred land, we can ask whether the time and money required to travel there might be used differently. The same resources could help a nearby neighbor, support education, or serve living beings suffering now.
I do not declare one choice unconditionally correct. I ask us not to stop comparison and inquiry when the name “pilgrimage” is applied. Comparing an action with unchosen alternatives reveals what we truly regard as important.
A traveler may learn history and culture, meet people, and gain a new perspective. Such concrete effects can be evaluated. But the claim that walking on the Buddha’s land is meritorious because the land itself is sacred belongs to an entirely different kind of belief.
What matters is not concealing where we place value. The use of our time and money is our value system taking concrete form in life.
Humans Cannot Live Without Pursuing Anything
Hearing that Buddhism tells us to abandon the three poisons of greed, anger, and delusion can lead us to think every desire and pursuit must disappear. Yet humans predict and plan for tomorrow and live by hoping for things. A person who pursues absolutely nothing cannot live in reality.
For example, deciding whether to relocate the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries to Busan requires predicting the effects. Those who consider revitalizing Busan important may support the move, while also considering people and regions that could lose from it.
The issue is not a simple command, “Do not desire.” What matters is examining what I want, why I regard it as good and right, and what consequences my choice creates for whom.
The wish to become like the Buddha, transcend ordinary life, or receive universal applause contains a value judgment just as much as the wish to possess more. A pursuit is not exempt from scrutiny merely because it appears religious and noble.
Beneath Every Pursuit Lies an Image and a Standard
To desire and pursue something means thinking it good, right, or important. Disliking and rejecting what contradicts it likewise presupposes a standard of the desirable state.
That standard is an image in the mind. Names such as sacred, great, successful, and righteous are attached, and we move toward the image. Name-and-form is not merely language; it becomes a force directing action.
The Ganges region feels uniquely sacred among countless lands because of stories and images identifying it as where the Buddha was born and active. The problem is failing to ask where the image came from and whether it is justified.
Before suppressing desire, we must see the process that made something feel important. Who taught the name, which group repeated it, and can the standard survive examination of facts and consequences?
Without Reexamining Standards, Righteous Certainty Becomes Violence
People do not do harmful things only while believing themselves wrong. Many sincerely believe themselves right, pure, and just while excluding others.
The lecture cites people claiming a region as their land because their religion names it a promised land. To a believer, this can feel like a sacred order designated by God and territory that originally belongs to their people.
That very certainty can lead to expelling people with different religions and histories. Benevolent intention and pure conviction do not guarantee benevolent results. If standards go unexamined, the word sacred can become a license for violence.
“I meant well” is therefore insufficient. We must see whom our righteous action actually sustains or harms and whether the standard we assumed self-evident erases another person’s life.
Flag-Waving Religious Politics Also Believes It Is Right
People who wave Korean, American, and Israeli flags while claiming to defend the nation are not all hypocrites with different inner motives. Many probably believe they are genuinely performing just and patriotic work.
Religious groups that label certain politicians communists or villains and insist on protecting their preferred president and order are similar. The lecturer bluntly mentions cases such as Segero Church in Busan, Jeon Han-gil, and Jeon Kwang-hoon, asking whether they think their path is wrong.
This does not ask us to agree with their claims. It asks us to see that the psychological structure of believing oneself righteous belongs to everyone. If we regard opponents only as malicious hypocrites, we cannot see how their judgments were formed.
It is easy to say they are indoctrinated and colored by biased information. The next question is harder: Am I not indoctrinated? Is my information free from bias? Where did what I believe sacred and right come from?
Protecting My Sacred Site While Criticizing Others’ Beliefs
Jungto Society’s participants travel because they believe India and the Ganges region are sacred. If I say, “That is not a sacred site,” they will probably regard their belief as correct.
Flag-rally participants, members of a particular church, and pilgrims all perform meaningful and right action within their standards. Their contents differ, but the structure of treating their own judgment as obvious truth and opposition as error is similar.
The central issue is not for me to issue a final verdict on whether India is really sacred. It is whether we can criticize our own belief and apply to our thought the questions we readily direct at others.
I readily find contradictions in other religions and political groups. I have also criticized Sunniz for mixing incompatible Gnostic and growth doctrines without accurately understanding non-self. I must therefore criticize the Buddhism and interpretations I consider right with the same force.
Admitting That I Am Not Different from Them
Self-criticism is difficult because I think I am right and they are foolish. If I cannot accept that I am not different from them, criticism becomes an instrument for confirming my superiority.
I too received limited information and was colored by a particular family, society, religion, and period. If I now judge some matters better, it may be because I encountered different conditions, not because I am essentially superior.
Even my present thinking can be wrong. Sincerely recognizing this possibility makes humility unavoidable. Humility is not a performance of self-abasement but the knowledge that my judgment is conditioned and revisable.
I too once easily concluded that someone acted badly because the person was originally evil. Looking back, people formed their thoughts and conduct within the conditions they happened to meet.
The Many Conditions That Form One Person’s Standards
Korean society, nearby people, textbooks, teachers, parents, friends, the atmosphere of an era, television, YouTube, church pastors, religion, philosophy, and culture all form a person’s images and standards.
Twenty years ago, an American child may have known Korea only as a distant and obscure country, whereas a child exposed to K-pop today may see it as an exciting place to visit. The soil did not suddenly change; the images and social atmosphere the child encountered did.
The feeling of a sacred site arises similarly. When parents, teachers, and communities repeat the Buddha’s life, bow toward specific places, and speak of merit, the land already feels special before personal examination begins.
To view dependently means not reducing judgment to an individual’s inborn nature. It means seeing which relationships, information, and institutions formed it, and understanding that people and society can change when conditions change.
A Society That Did Not Teach Critical Thinking
To see society more broadly, we must ask why people obey authority blindly. Did schools teach critical thinking, or did they train students to memorize instructions and quickly write predetermined answers?
If people never learned that common sense, institutions, religion, and social systems can be wrong, it is difficult to question their beliefs suddenly in adulthood. For someone taught that textbooks, teachers, and religious authorities supply answers, inquiry feels dangerous and disrespectful.
Calling such a person unintelligent fails to see causes. We must examine which education, media, and communities blocked critical ability if we want to find a direction for social change.
Understanding conditions does not justify every action. Harmful claims and conduct must be criticized clearly, but we must also see the conditions from which they arose if we want to reduce recurrence.
Practice and a Reexamination of Values Must Proceed Together
I do not think volunteer work or the practice of love is bad. Concrete action that helps within life is necessary. But practice without a reexamination of one’s value system can wander down a wrong path with good intentions.
Conversely, thinking without doing anything is insufficient. We must test through action what effects our discovered values create in real relationships and choices. Buddhism does not choose either reflection or practice while discarding the other.
The question raised by Venerable Pomnyun’s pilgrimage ultimately returns to me. What do I call sacred, where do I spend time and money, and from whom did I learn the standard behind that choice? Do I examine my belief as much as I criticize another person’s attachment and indoctrination?
Questions change me not by delivering a single final answer. They challenge an assumed value, observe actual results, trace the conditions that produced it, and revise judgment and conduct when necessary. That combined process is the path of wisdom.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.