Why Begin Reform of the Jogye Order with the Four Great Vows?
I will explain across several lectures why the Jogye Order must be reformed. The first standard is saving sentient beings. A person who follows the Buddha’s Dharma and seeks Buddhahood must practice for awakening while helping beings in suffering. The first of the Four Great Vows promises to ferry across limitless beings. This is not optional charity added to Buddhist life; it is its foundation.
Yet the Korean Jogye Order appears uninterested in saving beings. An institution bearing Buddhism’s name while ignoring its heart becomes one that harms the Dharma. I regard the nationwide monks’ rally held on January 21, 2022, as a representative case.
Why Did Thousands of Monks Gather?
The rally demanded correction of religious bias and exceptional measures for cultural-property protection. It called for lawmaker Jeong Cheong-rae to resign after he compared admission fees around cultural-property zones to a road toll and the legendary swindler Bong-i Kim Seondal. Reports put attendance in the thousands, perhaps as high as five thousand.
The problem is that they lacked awareness of the time in which they gathered and the people dying beside them. Organizers, enablers, and participants did not examine what they were doing. They raised their voices for institutional interests and cultural assets while failing to hear beings living in hell.
Dependent Arising Makes Indifference Impossible
I do not exist alone. Everything is related to other things and arises and changes through those relations. Understanding dependent arising is not memorizing a sentence. It is living with the recognition that I, my neighbor, vulnerable people, ecosystems, trees, grass, and microbes are not separate.
Love of neighbor, protection of the vulnerable, nonviolence, compassion, social participation, and saving beings are not optional for Buddhists. A person who says “I alone will awaken” has not understood dependent arising. If there is awakening, the eye turns toward suffering people.
Why Was the IMF Crisis Cruelest to the Vulnerable?
In 1997 South Korea experienced the IMF bailout. Giant firms were dismantled, smaller firms collapsed, and workers lost jobs. Disaster does not strike equally. People with wealth can buy assets at the bottom and possess reserves that absorb lost income.
Those without savings can lose survival itself when a job disappears. Many invested severance pay in small businesses and fell from the middle class into poverty. Instead of sufficient public protection, credit-card rules were loosened. People paid living costs with cards and cash advances, accumulated debt, became delinquent, and in despair took their own lives.
Korea’s devastating suicide rate is not merely a statistic. It means that beings driven to the edge of death live beside us. Disaster breaks vulnerable lives first, and disciples of the Buddha should look precisely there.
Whose Voice Does Avalokiteśvara Hear?
Television favors prosperous, entertaining, and glamorous scenes. Ordinary people may miss invisible suffering. But monastics chose awakening and saving beings as their purpose. If they cannot hear suffering, why did they leave home?
Avalokiteśvara hears cries of “Save me” from beings in hell. Monks who invoke that bodhisattva should examine why people lack homes and are driven toward suicide by unemployment and debt. They should offer hope, demand fairer distribution and public action, and turn their eyes and ears toward them.
A Monks’ Rally during the COVID-19 Disaster
By January 2022, the pandemic had lasted almost two years. Koreans accepted limits on gatherings and business hours and followed masks and public-health rules. The cost was concentrated on small-business owners and precarious workers.
Vacancy notices covered shopfronts. Restaurants reduced ten workers to five, then one. Part-time workers without contracts vanished from statistics when dismissed. A person who borrowed to open a shop became a debtor when it closed. Public compensation was far too little to absorb the loss.
Thousands of monks gathered in Seoul at that moment. They did not demand adequate compensation, worker protection, or greater fiscal support. They demanded action on religious bias, cultural assets, and a lawmaker’s resignation. While people died in medical and economic hell, they shouted about institutional interests.
Who Heard the Beings in Hell That Day?
While monks demanded protection for cultural properties, who heard people crying, “Please save me”? If the state does not listen, religious people should, and monks reciting the vow to save limitless beings should listen first. Yet those thousands showed neither readiness, clear sight, nor compassion.
Before a presidential election they should have demanded stronger measures from every party for disaster victims. Had the gathering served suffering people, citizens would have seen Buddhism’s public role. Instead it mobilized around fees and property. That is why I tell them, “You are not disciples of the Buddha.”
A Religion of Cultural Property
The order charges hikers near mountain cultural sites and mobilized thousands against a lawmaker who criticized the fee. Yet it showed little concern for the Buddhists and citizens suffering through the pandemic. Its eyes were directed toward livelihood and property, not beings.
The One Million Aspirations campaign under President Wonhaeng included buildings, preservation, statues, and overseas temples. I do not call these Buddha-work. The Buddha’s work is saving beings. Rescue the drowning person calling Avalokiteśvara first. Only afterward, if energy remains, build structures—even though the Buddha asked that no statue be made of him after death.
When a building for cultural assets is called the Buddha’s work, the order becomes a religion of cultural property. Its monks become disciples of artifacts. Cultural heritage is not the order’s private possession; it belongs to the public.
Clear Sight, Not Cryptic Zen Exchange
Awakening is not the ability to trade difficult hwadu and obscure Zen dialogue. A person who cannot see the world, know what must be done, or recognize his conduct is not awakened, however sophisticated his speech. The leadership’s defense of institutional interests while citizens lived in hell reveals where its eyes were directed.
Leaders supported the rally and repeated its legitimacy in Buddhist media. They did not speak for the vulnerable crushed below. The question is not whether they recited the Four Great Vows but whether they lived them.
Reform Must Begin with Saving Beings
Practicing a religion of cultural property under Buddhism’s name and protecting organizational gain before beings harms the Dharma. The vow to save limitless beings must decide where the institution places money, people, and its public voice.
Lay and ordained Buddhists must join in fundamental reform. The order must see people before artifacts, confront structures that transfer disaster onto the vulnerable, and hear those living in hell. Only when Buddhists can answer “Where is Avalokiteśvara?” through their own actions can the Jogye Order again become Buddhist.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.