Reopening the Live Broadcast after a Cousin’s Death
On May 25, 2026, just after Buddha’s Birthday, the speaker returned to the live broadcast. A younger cousin had died suddenly several days earlier, so he had taken two days away. He thanked viewers for concern and encouragement and said the funeral had been handled. It was no occasion for laughter, but life could not remain only in grief, so the ordinary broadcast resumed.
The cousin was family in much more than name. After an uncle died in his early forties and the cousin’s mother also left, two boys grew up without parents. While the younger one attended a technical high school, the speaker brought him into his company for practical training, and they worked in business together for roughly ten years. The death was therefore not distant family news but the removal of part of the speaker’s own life.
There was a family history of early death reaching through great-grandparents, and the speaker believed liver illness connected many cases. His father developed cirrhosis while young and was given little hope but survived into his seventies. His uncle and both cousins died from liver-related problems. After his father in 2020, the elder cousin two years earlier, and now the younger, he had repeatedly handled death directly and reconsidered life from many angles.
For Buddha’s Birthday he had wanted to address two fields: social issues such as AI and war, and the individual’s inner problems. The special broadcast was missed, but tonight he would take up the second field. A popular drama supplied the material, yet the deeper sermon asked how to live in the face of death.
Everyone Is Fighting Their Own Worthlessness and Hwang Dong-man’s Cry
The speaker had not yet watched the final two episodes of the Netflix drama Everyone Is Fighting Their Own Worthlessness, shortened in Korean to Mojamussa. He was not presenting a completed review of every plot. Instead, he held onto the scene involving Hwang Dong-man that had struck him most strongly and used it to examine a modern interior.
Hwang dreams of directing films and keeps writing scripts but has not made one. Colleagues and seniors who worked beside him have debuted, created movies, and gained money and recognition, while he feels left behind. On a hill behind his neighborhood he cries, “Dong-man! Hwang Dong-man!” The shout holds the rage, misery, sorrow, and self-pity of an unrecognized person.
The series contains comedy, but depression, sadness, and wretchedness lie underneath. As the title says, the characters feel worthless and fight the verdict. Watching the cry, one does not need every situation translated into speech to recognize the comparison and injury of a person who has not succeeded.
The speaker did not stop at empathizing, shedding tears, and gaining vicarious satisfaction from a protagonist’s eventual success. Hwang is fictional, but his sense of worthlessness exists in countless real people. A Buddhist review places the question “Why does failure to succeed make him feel worthless?” after the response “How sad.”
After sharing the feeling inside “Dong-man, Hwang Dong-man,” ask why failure to succeed becomes personal worthlessness.
Move beyond Empathy and Ask Emotion “Why?”
Stories encourage identification and emotional cleansing. Viewers cry, cheer for success, and feel as if they became the protagonist. Empathy is not bad, but when the emotion’s cause appears natural, the standard producing it disappears from view.
It is surprisingly difficult to ask “Why does this feeling arise?” in the presence of rage, misery, sadness, and grievance. People have learned that failure naturally causes sorrow and lack of recognition naturally causes self-loathing. Concepts and standards familiar to the self become too natural to examine.
The speaker called the act of asking at precisely that moment Buddhism. Am I tormenting myself inside an illusion so natural that it never receives a question? Rather than remain inside the emotion and shout one’s own name, follow it backward to the value and desire that produced it.
“Why” is not a spell for removing emotion. Nor does it trivialize Hwang’s frustration or shift all responsibility onto his thoughts. It begins the separation of outer situation from inner judgment and helps distinguish what must be changed socially from what must be understood again within oneself.
How Desire Arises in a Child Who Wants a Transforming Robot
The speaker used his son’s transforming robot as an example. A child watches a brilliantly transforming machine defeat villains in a cartoon and says, “Dad, buy that for me.” Receiving it brings joy; seeing friends possess it while he does not brings sadness and demands. Fulfilled desire produces satisfaction, and frustrated desire produces suffering.
The child was not born wanting that robot. During the first episodes he may not even have known a toy existed. Repeated cartoons and other children’s play made it valuable and impressive. A message from the external environment became a standard inside his head.
The child does not question why he wants it. Because the desire feels natural, joy in possession and sorrow in absence also appear natural. The speaker said adult desire for success and recognition has the same structure. Adults use more elaborate language while learning that something is good and then tormenting themselves for lacking it.
The arising of desire from sight is not merely a moral scolding against greed. It displays how value and desire emerge through conditions. What arose is neither eternal nature nor an absolute command. Instead of making desire a sin, inspect when and in which environment the object became valuable.
Natural Standards Are Too Familiar to Doubt
A one-year-old cannot understand the value of gold or a bank balance. Standards of beautiful faces, desirable partners, large homes, and good careers are not present at birth either. Family, school, advertising, drama, and surrounding people teach and repeat them until they feel like one’s own thought.
Saying that value is learned does not mean every value is false and must be discarded immediately. It means the standard is conditioned rather than eternally right. The childhood robot becomes a computer, game item, romance, travel, home, and career. What once seemed absolutely desirable loses force as age and environment change.
Naturalness blocks questions. When success and victory in competition seem obvious, people question only the reality of not succeeding, never success itself. “Why have I not done it yet?” repeats, while “Why do I believe I must do this to have value?” never appears.
Buddhism restores the latter question. It observes how socially received value moves emotion and self-evaluation and overturns the board used to price good and bad. Without breaking naturalness, one cannot leave a standard even when it causes continuing pain.
What I believe valuable may be a learned and absorbed standard rather than a truth originally inside me.
Does Failure Cause Suffering—or the Thought That One Must Succeed?
Hwang judges himself worthless because colleagues debuted while he could not make a film. The distance between “I too can do it; why does no one recognize me?” and present reality produces rage. Viewers understand this so naturally that they do not question the standard.
The speaker reversed the sentence. What torments a person is not only the fact of not succeeding but the thought that success is required for worth. Inside the belief that fulfillment alone grants happiness, hope produces excitement, possible failure produces despair, and the self is punished each time.
This was not someone else’s problem, he repeated. He had lived between a duty to support family and make business succeed, and a wish to earn money, express his will, and receive recognition. The obligation to care for mother, father, sibling, wife, and cousins joined his personal desires in pressing down on the present.
The drama was therefore a startling self-portrait and possibly the portrait of many people. He was not lecturing Hwang from an enlightened height. He remained bound to the same value until his father’s death near the end of 2020, and it took eight more months to break the fantasy of what a Buddha must be.
This Is Not Merely an Argument against Money, Beauty, and Materialism
The lecture loses its core if reduced to a sermon against desiring money, beauty, and houses. Standards differ. A religious person may value nirvana, purity, and years of practice; a politician may value appearing just and holding power. Even the aspiration to build an equal society is a value.
Medical school, a civil-service exam, ranking first, entering politics, making a film, and being recognized as righteous can all be like the child’s robot. The social meaning of each goal is not identical. The psychological structure is: something becomes learned as good, and its absence becomes personal unhappiness.
Even a socially admirable goal can torment self and others once made absolute. One may feel worthless for failing to achieve justice or treat dissenters as less than human. Before praising the content of a value, inspect how it is possessed and turned into attachment.
The speaker said he had owned many such robots throughout life. The conclusion is not to abandon goals but to understand where a goal came from and why its frustration becomes a verdict on the whole self. Removing a value means loosening its absoluteness, not turning into a blank without values.
Distinguish Social Injustice from Suffering Produced by Self-Judgment
The speaker clearly refused to attribute every suffering to private thought. If money, power, or violence forces unwanted harm and produces genuine injustice, it is a social problem. Facts should be exposed, institutions changed, and perpetrators held responsible so that the victim is no longer denied justice.
Ignoring social causes and saying only “change your mind” is not Buddhism. Poverty, discrimination, exploitation, and violence do not disappear because an individual concentrates. They require collective, legal, political, and economic remedy. The speaker’s language was strong enough to include fighting back and revenge in some situations, refusing to erase outer responsibility.
Separately, there is inner suffering in crying “Dong-man, Hwang Dong-man” or “Deok-man, Deok-man,” mocking one’s life, and sinking into self-loathing because it does not meet a success standard. Distinguishing actual injury from judgment repeatedly added afterward allows each to receive the proper response.
The two are not perfectly separate. Society’s standards of success, beauty, and class enter the mind and become self-verdicts. One must reform society while seeing how the standard already operates within, and understand mind without shifting real injustice onto individual responsibility.
Distinguish injustice requiring social remedy from pain produced by judging oneself through a learned standard.
Do Not Fight “I Am Worthless”; Overturn the Standard That Judged You
The title Everyone Is Fighting Their Own Worthlessness already accepts a verdict. I am worthless and must struggle to become valuable. The speaker asked viewers to overturn the entire board. Before asking whether I lack value, ask what standard is assigning my price.
Which possession—usefulness, success, beauty, recognition, money, or position—must be acquired for value? When and where did that standard arise, and is it appropriate for measuring a human? Without these questions, a failed result becomes a sentence against the self, and its naturalness prevents appeal.
A child does not become worthless for lacking a robot. An adult does not become worthless for failing to make a film, pass an exam, or own a good home. The problem is a value system that identifies life with one acquisition. The object of struggle should be the board judging existence, not existence itself.
The speaker compressed this into one final line: “You are not worthless. Only the values you hold are wrong.” This was not empty comfort but a conclusion following the long argument that values are learned and changeable.
A Mind That Chews the Past, Judges the Present, and Mortgages Itself to the Future
A value standard occupies all of time. It repeatedly chews the moment someone dismissed me, judges the present self as “not yet successful,” and draws a future in which success finally brings recognition. Past, present, and future all become material strengthening one standard.
When Hwang recalls a wound, the event has passed but anger and self-loathing return. Each period of idle time compares another’s success with his reality and fires another arrow. This is the second arrow: thought recreating the same pain after the first event has already struck.
The speaker asked whether failure itself causes the pain or whether self-reproach for failure is doing it. During work, conversation, or another absorbing task, suffering briefly disappears despite unchanged circumstances. That difference shows how much thought adds to present pain.
Seeing a second arrow does not deny the first wound. The embedded arrow must be treated, and real problems addressed. It means recognizing that one can release the arrow that repeatedly stabs today by replaying the past and comparing it with an unrealized future.
The Zeroth Solution Is Acquisition; the First Buddhist Solution Is Absorption
The speaker jokingly began with solution zero. A father can buy the robot, and Hwang can make a film and succeed. Actual acquisition is one method. Buddhism does not prohibit achievement and improvement of circumstances.
But not everything can be obtained, and each object creates a successor. Robot becomes computer, phone, romance, house, travel, and recognition. When acquisition alone is expected to solve the structure of pain, life becomes an endless next goal, and every failure shakes worth again.
The first Buddhist response is to notice that present thought is tormenting the self and let the thought pause. Absorption in breathing, dishes, mathematics, books, baduk, games, basketball, or current work prevents simultaneous chewing of past and future. In that moment, the person lives now.
This is not a command to escape automatically through alcohol or entertainment. Absorption demonstrates an ordinary mechanism by which the second arrow stops. Meditation and concentration can provide immediate rest during overwhelming pain. But the root value has not yet been understood.
While absorbed in the task of this moment, one cannot simultaneously chew the past and torment oneself with future comparison.
The Second Solution Is Deep Understanding of Desire, Value, and the Self’s Operation
Stopping thought is relief from immediate distress. When thought returns, the same standard can judge the self again. The second solution is therefore deep understanding of desire and wish, concept and value, and the phenomenon called self.
A middle-school student expecting 95 may receive 93, miss an award, and remain upset all day. A compelling book makes the feeling disappear until the report returns. Beyond recognizing “My thought causes suffering,” examine why 95 and an award became standards of personal value.
What do I desire and call valuable? How does the self compare and want, and under which conditions do body, feeling, and thought operate? As understanding deepens, one can prepare future goals without declaring the present self worthless for not yet reaching them.
Calling every thought false and living without thought is not the answer. That can become avoidance rather than wisdom. Buddhism carefully sees phenomena and understands relations and conditions. Rest through absorption and then examine the roots of standards and desire.
Do Not Make Today Unhappy as Collateral for Future Success
Anticipating and preparing for the future is necessary. The speaker makes videos because he wants more people to stop tormenting themselves. He hopes to affect society and make the channel better known. Having a wish is not itself wrong.
But if happiness requires being widely known, a present audience of only two thousand subscribers becomes a reason for lament. Like Hwang requiring a completed film before becoming valuable, an unrealized result turns into an admission ticket to happiness. Goal and present happiness are separate, but thought ties them together.
One can intend to succeed tomorrow and still be at ease today. One can support family and prepare a business without defining oneself as a loser who has not yet done enough. Action preparing a future and self-judgment making the present miserable are not the same duty.
Speaking almost to his former self, he asked why one should live miserably today while preparing tomorrow and pursuing something. Do not turn every day into a failed person’s time through the duty of “must” and the desire of “want.”
Dinosaurs and an Asteroid Reveal the Impermanence of Life
To explain life’s momentary nature, the speaker abruptly introduced dinosaurs. Imagine a Cretaceous dinosaur rejected by a beautiful mate, spending the day asking why he was not born more impressive. The next day an asteroid strikes Earth and most giant dinosaurs die.
Humans invest all value in future plans as though life tomorrow and ten years later were guaranteed. Yet a human life is as brief as a mayfly and does not remain. Filling today with depression, rage, and dissatisfaction while waiting for desire to be solved mortgages life to the future.
Impermanence does not mean abandoning plans and resigning oneself. Nor is it nihilism saying an asteroid may come, so effort is pointless. Because tomorrow is not guaranteed, do not use every present experience and relationship merely as raw material for future success.
Each day is precious, and the speaker wished viewers could live each one with some happiness. Without understanding impermanence, people absolutize a mistaken value and fail to live now. Understanding self, thought, body, and desire brings life back to this moment.
While today is tormented for happiness after eventual success, one unguaranteed day of life passes.
Closing the Lecture by Confessing a Lifetime Bound to the Same Standard
After an hour, the speaker complained that the subject did not require so long and that he had failed to communicate well. He had brought the drama but not used it skillfully enough. Even this self-criticism touched the subject: the standard that he must speak well still operated inside him.
He said he had no right to scold lives like Hwang’s as pathetic. Until nearly fifty, he remained bound to the same standards of success and responsibility, and only a few years had passed since change. Rather than blame others for not knowing, he wanted them to stop self-torment one year or even one day earlier.
Value, concept, dharma, and image are connected. Greater understanding of what one values and how emotion, thought, body, and world operate reduces harm to self and others. Without understanding, attachment to value can expand from private competition to war and missiles that kill others without recognizing the problem.
He hoped this wisdom would spread into a society where people do not torture themselves and live together with warmth, wisdom, and generosity. Changing private valuation is not mere self-comfort; it becomes a social attitude that no longer prices others as competitors and failures.
A Stronger Ego Torments the Self Regardless of Success
A viewer’s mention of ego extended the conversation after the lecture. Hwang suffers not only because he failed but because he possesses a powerful image of how he wants to appear. Whether successful or not, attachment to recognition and self-image remains within the same ego structure.
The speaker did not command elimination of ego. He honestly admitted feeling pleased by praise. When someone calls a video excellent or says it helped, satisfaction and joy arise. This is the natural operation of ego.
The problem is being completely dragged by ego or pretending to have transcended it. Understanding the competition to look impressive and win as a small comparison allows greater simplicity and detachment. The response can be seen without becoming the whole of life.
A viewer compared desire to fire: a great blaze burns everything, but no fire at all makes life difficult. Humans cannot exist without all desire, and psychological collapse in which every wish goes out is not ideal awakening. Realism means understanding and managing desire rather than erasing it.
No-Self Does Not Mean Eliminating Ego or Attaining a State without “Me”
A viewer described practicing no-self as the opposite of worldly desire. The speaker replied that this attached the term to the wrong task. No-self is neither the temporary stopping of thought in concentration nor a special state in which “I” disappears.
Its direction is simply that no independent and unchanging true self or atman exists. Do not posit a real me that survives death and existed before birth; see the self as a dependently arisen phenomenon made of body, memory, sensation, relationship, and conditions.
Even with that understanding, ego operation remains at the level of an organism. As snails and spiders respond around their own bodies, the human brain and body produce self-centered desire and feeling. Learned memory and language cannot be erased into a blank page, so a claim of total ego disappearance is fantasy.
The speaker repeated, “Be an elementary student who knows he is an elementary student.” Notice pleasure from praise, anger at insult, and desire for possessions, saying, “This is how I operate again.” The realistic direction of no-self and practice is understanding the human rather than escaping humanity.
No-self is not a state that eliminates me; it is understanding that no independent, unchanging true self exists.
Buddhism Is a Religion of Honest Understanding and Awareness from Beginning to End
The speaker concluded that Buddhism is a religion of understanding and awareness. Notice pleasure after praise, renewed desire for an object, or the impulse to strike back after an insult. Observing the operation reduces the degree of total capture and attachment.
He repeated the warning not to seek perfection. A person who maintains an unmoving expression and claims to have escaped ego may simply fail to observe reactions honestly. Knowing moments in which one is a frog in a well or operates like a child matters more than authority claiming enlightenment.
Observe oneself, ask questions, and hold doubt. As one understands bodily, emotional, cognitive, and sensory operations under conditions, the pursuit of a false perfection loosens. Buddhism must be honest with oneself and others from alpha to omega.
This honesty is not self-contempt. It does not say “I have ego, therefore I am awful,” which would be another verdict. It recognizes the actual operation of an organism. Awareness does not make one worthless; it ends the work of torturing oneself to match a false measure.
You Are Not Worthless; Reconsider the Values
Before ending, the speaker asked everyone to reconsider personal value. What seems utterly natural, and when and from whom was the standard learned? Only by returning to that question can people stop tormenting themselves instead of fighting their own worthlessness.
Prepare for the future, set goals, and pursue something. Work to obtain what is desired, and fight social injustice when necessary. But do not make today unhappy as collateral for success not yet present, or sentence existence as worthless for failing a learned standard.
Absorption temporarily stops the second arrow, while deep understanding of desire, value, impermanence, and the operation of self loosens the structure that makes the arrow. Do not eliminate ego; notice its response. Do not perform perfection; revise one thing at a time. This was the Buddhist response reached from dramatic empathy.
The final sentence was simple and warm: “You are not worthless. Only the values you hold are wrong.” He wished viewers comfort, said “May you attain Buddhahood,” and ended the 86-minute broadcast.
You are not worthless. Only the values that judge and torment you are wrong.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.