I was asked what we should remember and practice consistently as we go through everyday life. Many answers are possible, but I want to begin with one thing that forms the foundation of a Buddhist and wise life. It is not a special posture, ritual, or particular meditation technique. It is the practice of observing, asking questions, holding doubts, and thinking about what appears before us in terms of dependent arising. In other words, it is a scientific way of thinking.
If you intend to practice, seek wisdom, or live a Buddhist life, you must internalize questions and doubts. They become a signpost toward a wiser life. Even when I think I know something, I must not let go of questions such as: “Is that really so?” “What have I missed?” and “Is this conclusion actually true?”
The Buddhist practice to sustain in daily life is to keep questions and doubts alive in the heart.
A Quiet Mind Is Not Necessarily Awakening
Suppose a monk has practiced diligently at a temple for a long time. One day his mind becomes very quiet, and he thinks he may have awakened to something. There is no need to deny the experience itself. If he went through a period of quiet through some experience, that is a personal fact that occurred for him. The problem begins when he immediately concludes that this quietness is awakening.
When the monk goes out into the world, meets people, receives and answers questions, collides with life, and begins pursuing things, that quietness may be shaken. Many practitioners actually experience this. The calm they maintained inside the temple breaks amid real relationships and conflicts. What, then, was the earlier quiet experience? The quietness was real, but we must ask again whether it was genuine awakening.
A person can become quiet simply by becoming absorbed in something. Whether it is seated meditation, chanting meditation, a hobby, or work, when the mind gathers around one thing it stops wandering among other thoughts and becomes comfortable and quiet. Entering concentration can happen through absorption in this way. Of course, the mind can also become quiet when one realizes that an obsessive thought was mistaken and lets it go. But quietness has many possible causes. The outcome of becoming quiet, by itself, does not prove awakening.
The quiet of concentration may be an experience, but quietness alone cannot be declared awakening.
The More We Practice Buddhism, the More We Know That We Do Not Know
If someone says that decades of practice have left them with no questions at all, I would say that even the foundation is not yet ready. The more we practice Buddhism, the point is not to strengthen the certainty that “I know everything,” but to realize that I do not know. Instead of believing that I can see truth and already possess the answers, I notice how much I do not know. This naturally produces humility.
Yet acknowledging ignorance does not mean stopping there. We cannot live wisely if we merely remain in ignorance. When I recognize that I do not know, questions finally arise. Why is this happening? What is its cause? From what conditions did that cause arise? How can it be addressed? What will happen if the solution I imagine is actually applied? Recognizing ignorance is not the abandonment of thought but the beginning of deeper inquiry.
Buddhist humility is not a gesture of lowering oneself; it is the attitude of knowing that I do not know and asking again.
Do Not Reduce Social Problems to One Cause and One Answer
Consider why South Korea has a high suicide rate and why so many people are unhappy. If I am full of the belief that I already know, I quickly conclude, “This is the cause.” I then offer a prescription: “Do this and the problem will be solved.” YouTube is full of such claims. With artificial intelligence in particular, titles constantly appear such as “How to Become Indispensable in the Coming AI World” or “Only This Will Remain, and Everyone Else Will Lose Their Jobs.” Some are clickbait designed to provoke anxiety.
Such titles announce that the speaker knows the cause and effect and will explain them to us. But we cannot know whether a conclusion reached after either brief or prolonged thought is the correct answer. Is South Korea’s high suicide rate caused by one thing? Can unhappiness be explained by one reason? Nor can we determine in advance that applying a proposed solution will truly make most people happy.
If someone gives a lecture on how to become indispensable in the age of AI, does that make the claim true? Are the many confident predictions that “only this will remain” correct? People often reach conclusions too quickly and present their guesses as facts. A Buddhist practitioner should think more deeply: Is the cause I identified really the only one? From what other conditions did it arise? What else must be examined before trying to solve it?
A conclusion I reach is a guess assembled from the conditions I have understood so far; it is not an answer in itself.
“This may be the solution” and “Would this work?” are proposals. If we mistake them for answers, we become arrogant, rush to conclusions, and mislead people. The more deeply I consider that everything in the world occurs within relationships, the more I realize that my own judgments also arise within countless relationships and conditions. Knowing this naturally makes me humble.
Questions Are Not an Excuse to Postpone Action
Holding questions and doubts does not mean postponing action forever. Sometimes right and wrong are clear enough at the present moment, and immediate practice is required. Then we should act. But if we speak and move on hasty judgments and decisions without examining them deeply, we make mistakes. At times we commit irreversible wrongs, and when we speak whatever comes to mind, we can tell falsehoods without even knowing that they are false.
What must change in Korean society? Why do such things happen in the world? Why did Yoon Suk Yeol emerge? What should we do with democracy? How can everyone live well and happily together? How many people possess complete answers to such questions? Even people who call themselves Buddhas or claim awakening can live inside the delusion that they know. We must therefore know that we do not know and keep asking, even while acting, “Will this really work?”
A question is not a wall that prevents action; it is how we check our direction so that hasty action does not become a grave mistake.
It Is Harder to See My Tinted Glasses Than Another Person’s Speck
This practice is especially difficult because looking back at oneself is extraordinarily hard. Another person’s faults are easy to see. We notice the speck in another person’s eye but fail to see the beam in our own. It is also difficult for me to recognize the tinted glasses through which I view the world.
Suppose I have worn blue glasses for thirty years. If even the memory of seeing the world without them has faded, a slightly blue world will feel normal. I will believe that the world is simply that color. It is difficult to notice that the world looks blue because I am wearing blue lenses. Those glasses are so obvious to me that they do not even appear as an object of doubt.
The hardest tinted glasses to remove are the ones I do not even know I am wearing.
We usually realize that what seemed obvious may not be obvious when we collide with a different experience. Travel, books, and unfamiliar cultures can reveal that my standard was not a universal fact but a pair of lenses formed in a particular time and place. Only then does the shock arrive.
Even Standards About Beards Are Made by Time and Place
I do not grow a beard and keep my hair relatively short. By my standards, a long beard can look untidy. Someone like Cheon Gong, by contrast, may grow a long white beard believing it looks mysterious and impressive. Either way, it is a personal standard and a personal pair of tinted glasses.
To recognize that this standard is not self-evident, we must change the time and place from which we look. In the Joseon period, it was natural for men to grow beards and not cut them carelessly. What was obvious then differs from what is obvious today. Yet when we are immersed in our own standard, we believe, “This is clean,” “This is right,” and “This is good.” When we live inside the obvious, the obvious itself becomes the hardest thing to question.
Worldviews, GPS, and the Shattering of Common Sense About Time
I too once took it for granted that time flows identically everywhere. I assumed that a person in Seoul and a person elsewhere, or someone on the first floor of an apartment building and someone on the twentieth floor, all lived in the same time. In that sense, my concept of time belonged to a Newtonian worldview.
Then I read a book about worldviews that discussed ancient, medieval, Scientific Revolution, Newtonian, Einsteinian, and quantum-physics worldviews. In its explanation of Einstein’s relativity of time, I encountered the claim that time passes differently, although only by a minute amount, on the first and twentieth floors. It felt as if the ground beneath me moved. A worldview I had never questioned because it seemed completely obvious had broken apart.
Phones and navigation devices using GPS communicate with satellites to calculate location. Satellites are far above the ground and experience gravity differently, so time passes differently for them than it does on Earth’s surface. If that difference is ignored, errors continue to accumulate in location calculations. GPS calculations therefore account for the time difference described by relativity. Although we do not feel it in ordinary life, time does not pass identically everywhere.
When common sense collapses, we discover that what we thought was fact had a worldview standing behind it.
People on Earth do not all live at the same altitude or under identical gravitational conditions. Some may live high in the mountains, others underground, and conditions can vary even across level ground. Are we, then, truly living in exactly the same time? This question does not end with one scientific explanation about time. It makes me ask how many other things I still believe to be truth and common sense simply because I have not yet encountered a different experience.
Keeping Doubt Alive Is Buddhism in Everyday Life
A worldview is also a collection of thoughts so obvious that we have never questioned them. Even with a beam and tinted lenses before my own eyes, I usually find them difficult to notice. Whenever another experience breaks my thinking, I am startled, say, “I see,” and change my mind. Then what about the beliefs I still regard as fact and truth only because I have not yet encountered such an experience? They surely exist, but for that very reason I do not know them.
Once I understand this, it becomes difficult to stiffen my neck and declare, “I know everything. I am intelligent.” Instead, I say, “There is much I do not know. This is what I think, but I am not even sure it is correct.” I cannot help becoming a little more humble.
So my answer to the question of what we should remember and practice consistently in daily life is this: Do not let go of doubts and questions. Place a question mark before my conclusions and other people’s conclusions, before long-familiar common sense and a worldview that feels completely natural. That is the foundation of Buddhism and the practice by which we continue a wise life in everyday circumstances.
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