There is a man who has spent his life guided by the old saying: ‘If you hear the Way in the morning, you can die that evening without regret.’ He is Jeong Sun-il, professor emeritus at Wonkwang University. After studying Won-Buddhism at Wonkwang University, he earned a doctorate in Buddhist studies at the same university’s graduate school and later worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Indian Philosophy at the University of Tokyo. Returning to his alma mater, he served as director of Jeongyeokwon and dean of the Graduate School of Oriental Studies, and spent many years training tea and meditation specialists.
He has now published a substantial 656-page book. Its title is Meditation Ontology. At a recent book concert, he spoke calmly, and at times with a laugh, about how long he had wandered before completing it.
20 years to settle the contents, 33 drafts of the manuscript
Professor Jeong said he had sought out and studied under various teachers since he was young. In the 1980s, he even met Muhak Doin. Yet the knots in his mind did not easily come undone. For a man who had spent his life organising material and building systems, meditation remained an area that stubbornly resisted being put in order.
It took 20 years just to settle the contents of Meditation Ontology, he said. Each time he produced a draft contents page, he printed it out; the contents of the published book are the 33rd version. The inner insights and experiences of energy that came to him late in life did not arrive in sequence. The book emerged after he organised experiences that appeared in scattered, contradictory forms and then attached a theoretical basis to them, he explained. As he went through the traces of those 33 drafts one by one at the event, his voice carried the quiet composure of something long held in reserve.
Why ‘ontology’?
Ontology is originally a philosophical term. Of the three major branches of philosophy — ontology, epistemology and axiology — it refers to the study of being and belongs to the field of metaphysics. In recent years, however, the word has begun attracting attention in another field: artificial intelligence. Scholars use ontology to describe attempts to integrate fragmented algorithms and information into a single structure of meaning.
Professor Jeong recounted how a fellow academic researching AI ontology was pleasantly surprised when he said he had named the book Meditation Ontology. What he set out to do in the book was similar. Each meditation teacher claims that their own method is the best, and most teach people how to meditate — how to close their eyes and how to breathe. But they rarely explain why people should meditate, he noted. The book begins with that question of why.
Putting the starting point of meditation in the cosmos, not the mind
The picture Professor Jeong paints is a grand one. The universe began with the Big Bang and will one day converge into a single whole. The world smaller than dust and the vast cosmos are, in essence, one body, he argues. He describes human beings as microcosms, and meditation as the process of bringing the life of the human microcosm into alignment with the breath of the macrocosm.
On this theoretical foundation, he said he had organised cosmic emergence into four stages. He then added eight stages of reduction meditation and two stages of manifestation meditation as corresponding practices, creating a 16-stage system in all. Some of those who read the book in advance said it showed them a path through the fog, while others worried about whether it was really wise to reveal so much. Professor Jeong replied that he had decided this much needed to be made public in the age of AI.
‘Meditation is civilisation’s last relief pitcher’
During the question-and-answer session, one audience member asked what meditation meant in an age when AI appeared to be making people more alike. Professor Jeong’s answer was grave. An age had arrived in which AI could create an even more capable AI by itself, he said, and humanity could face a crisis within 10 years if the situation continued unchecked.
Humans could lose control over superintelligence, with consequences potentially greater than a climate disaster. In such circumstances, he said bluntly, meditation was civilisation’s last relief pitcher. The atmosphere in the lecture hall grew noticeably heavier at that point.
Asked whether it was possible to reach enlightenment without spiritual practice, he offered a three-part answer. Those who had accumulated extensive practice in a previous life might awaken in an instant; after enduring many cycles of reincarnation, one might eventually arrive there; and meditation was a shortcut that reduced the time and suffering involved. He compared it to shortening the period of military service, prompting laughter from the audience.
Asked how to distinguish wholehearted effort from attachment, he gave an unexpectedly plain answer. Meditation, too, could become an addiction: if not meditating made someone anxious, that state was no different from an addiction to alcohol or cigarettes. Perseverance was necessary, he added, but people should first examine whether it was being driven by anxiety.
Next meeting in November at CenterOne
Asked how best to read the book, Professor Jeong said he had already answered the question in its foreword. Just as a dog walking along a country road without a lead bounds across stepping stones, readers should not stop to wrestle with unfamiliar Buddhist terms but should simply read to the end, he said. When they returned to the book later, their eyes might be opened. Asked about plans for a translation, he also said that a young researcher had already come forward to undertake a first English draft.
The book concert has ended, but the conversation is set to continue. For six weeks from 3 November, simultaneous online and in-person lectures on Meditation Ontology will be held every Tuesday at 7pm at CenterOne, the Meditation Leadership Society centre in Haebangchon, Yongsan-gu, Seoul.
It is an opportunity to hear directly the story behind the contents page rewritten 33 times. Even after leaving, the idea of matching one’s breathing to the breath of the universe lingered for quite some time.