Q. Some people seem to have abundant relationship blessings. Whenever something happens, the right person appears to help them. But I have none. Is this relationship blessing something fixed by fate, or does it come to those who live rightly?

  How are we defining relationship blessing right now? Someone who brings me bread when I don’t have any? Someone who treats me well? In other words, we are calling someone who gives us help a relationship blessing.

Then what if someone appears and slaps me across the face when I’m being ignorant, and that itself is a relationship blessing?

  If I look for and get the bread myself, that is a blessing. But if I complain and curse about it, I am throwing away the blessing. The person who scolds me and makes me wake up when I lose my sense — that person is a true relationship blessing. There’s nothing more precious than someone who wakes me up when I’m lost.

  Receiving bread when I have none is not a relationship blessing. I must realize why I live without rice, why I need help from others. If I say I have a lot of relationship blessings, it means I have received a lot of help from others. Every time life gets hard, I get help, again and again. This person buys me meat, that person buys me a car — but constantly riding in that car is not actually helping me.

  My life must be structured so that I can solve things on my own. Only then can I truly say I received help. If something was taken away from me to make me learn a lesson, but someone gives me rice and blocks that realization, then they’ve actually taken away my chance to awaken. That is not a relationship blessing.

  Relationship blessing is when my life is led in a way that allows me to live rightly. Only then can I say, “I was helped.” Many people think they are “helping” when they give money or resources to someone in need, but that is not real help.

A person who only receives help their entire life should go to hell — because they’ve done nothing good. Then what about the one who constantly gives? Since they “did good,” they should go to heaven. But this means, “I will go to heaven by sending you to hell.” Does that make sense? I feed you endlessly, sending you to hell, while I step on you to go to heaven. How can nature run correctly that way?

  We must rethink what “help” truly means. Thousands of years ago, giving food to the poor was considered help — but can we apply the same idea in today’s world? Back then, society was ignorant. It was a primitive principle for that time. But now we live in a knowledge society. In a knowledge society, we must clearly distinguish between what truly helps and what harms.

  Someone who keeps giving me money when I’m struggling is not helping me. In the end, that person becomes my enemy. That’s why people who give material support end up being betrayed. This has been repeated for thousands of years. Yet people still haven’t realized it. Because they thought they were helping with material things, nature eventually strikes back.

  Giving someone material things may seem like helping them, but because of that material support, you have taken away their only chance to realize why they have to live that way in the first place. Once a person receives help like that, the weight of all their efforts collapses into nothing. As a result, they lose another chance to awaken, and their strength to overcome the world weakens.

  The world will become more difficult year after year—one year, two years from now—and if I don’t grow during that time, I’ll have to keep asking for help again when things get hard. You will live that kind of life over and over. And that person will keep giving to me. I will end up living a miserable and dependent life. This way, I will fail to live my own life and wander helplessly until I die.

  A true relationship blessing is a person who speaks harsh but truthful words to me when I’m going through hard times. And when someone invests in me financially, they must also invest their time—teaching me, scolding me, working with me, and guiding me. That is the only way it becomes real help. Simply giving me money is killing me.

  If someone gives me $1,000 and just gives the money, then they’re only giving $1,000. But if they give $1,000 while sharing their own pain, time, and effort to guide me, that is true help. Without that, giving $1,000 only harms the receiver. It blocks the person from solving the problems they must solve on their own in order to live their life.

  When someone gives me a sharp and firm word at the moment I fail to awaken, if such a person stands by my side, that is a heavenly relationship blessing.

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Q. I have a question about the meaning of “helping.” In Buddhism, they speak of “non-attachment giving” (無住相布施) — even if you help, you should not hold the thought that you helped. Should we see this statement itself as flawed?

  That’s wordplay. And what does “wordplay” mean here? It means avoiding the fundamental truth and turning sideways, making it sound as if it is something right. By using wordplay like this, people create all sorts of logics when they lack true knowledge.

  Helping someone materially is not true help in the first place. And saying “I shouldn’t think I helped” doesn’t make those thoughts disappear either. If I give someone material things, think of it as helping, then try to forget it by saying “I didn’t really help,” what happens?

  Nature will completely ruin you. It will take away everything you have. Meanwhile, the person you helped will eventually become very wealthy. If what was yours is taken away, it always means someone else becomes rich. That is how nature works.

  When you go bankrupt, you start to hear voices from people around you: “Why don’t you go find the person you helped before? Remember how much you helped them?” Hearing that, you say, “What do you mean I helped?” That’s because your belly is still full. So nature takes away even more of your money. Things get harder and harder for you, but those words — “Go find the person you helped” — keep coming back.

  And eventually, you quietly go find them. And you hear something very harsh. At that moment, your idea of “I helped them” collapses. You say, “I didn’t even think of it as helping… and yet I have to hear something like this?” That is the exact moment it hits you.

  That unconsciousness and stubbornness — the very idea that I helped someone — is fully exposed until it finally comes out of my own mouth. As things get harder for me, that hardship pushes me to seek out the person I once “helped” with a submissive and desperate mindset. And when I get there, I hear something unpleasant, and end up thinking, “That’s too much.”

  This is how nature brings out everything hidden inside me — exactly and without exception. Why? So I can awaken. You’ve probably seen this happen many times.

  The Baby Boomer generation and Generation X went through all of this directly. Nature made them personally experience the side effects and contradictions of this world — to make them study and learn. That is why they have seen and heard so much of it. That was their “education.” They grew up watching these contradictions and side effects, and through that, they gained knowledge in this field. They saw and heard firsthand how giving material things as “help” leads to contradictions and side effects.

  Coming back to the point — the saying “help someone but don’t think of it as helping” is nothing more than human logic. Nature has no such law. Humans made up these stories as they went on living and then attached meaning to them. We must treat this as material for study, not as the ultimate truth.

  All contradictions and side effects are nothing but ingredients left behind to help us rediscover the last remaining law of nature. The law of nature emerges by filtering through and clarifying all these contradictions.

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Q. So when people say during a fortune reading, “You will meet a benefactor,” should we consider that person a true benefactor?

  The concept of saju (Korean fortune telling) was created thousands of years ago in a time of ignorance. It was not made by intellectuals with complete knowledge like we have today. Now is an age of advanced knowledge, but thousands of years ago society was unimaginably ignorant compared to today.

  It makes no sense to take something created in that era and apply it directly to today’s knowledge society. The laws of nature today are not the same as they were then.

  For example, in the past, “being kind” was considered the same as “doing right.” But today is the era when we distinguish between kindness and what is right. Kindness is kindness — but it is not the same as righteousness. Doing right means doing what is correct even when it is cold and stern.

  Kindness is when you sympathize with someone less fortunate than yourself. But sympathy and righteousness are different things. The more righteous a person is, the less they should be swayed by sympathy.

  In ignorant times, it was considered helpful to give clothes or bread to someone out of sympathy. But now, in this era, if you let yourself be pulled by sympathy and give someone material things, you’re the one who ends up being betrayed.

In a knowledge society, you should not let sympathy control you — you must do what is right. When I act rightly, that is what truly helps the other person. This is how the world works now.