This collection begins with six videos on awakening, anatta, and right view, followed by John Tan’s newer 27-video series on Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK) and the remaining video and audio teachings.
Further Explorations and Other Video Teachings
Explore further videos on emptiness, dependent arising, awareness, rebirth, relationality, science, AI, and other topics, with related readings and discussion excerpts accompanying selected teachings.
Mipham's 2 Models of 2 Truth:
The Paradox of the Phantom Vase: Mipham vs. Gelug on Emptiness & the Negandum:
Not Even a Minuscule Gap Where Dependent Arising Fails in an Empty World:
The Fallacy of 24/7 Awareness: Deconstructing the Witness in Deep Sleep:
Related reading — added by Soh: deep sleep, dream practice, and the “24/7 witness”
Turiya / Awareness in Deep Sleep? — Presents the Dzogchen view as explained by Dzogchen teacher Ācārya Malcolm Smith: genuine deep sleep is unconscious and unaware, so there is no continuously present, unchanging knower or witnessing awareness persisting through it. Malcolm explicitly rejects claims of a continuous “knower” in deep sleep, arguing that if one is aware, then it is not genuine deep sleep. In this framing, turiya as an ever-present witnessing consciousness is an Advaita-style imputation rather than the Dzogchen view. John Tan agrees with Malcolm on this point.
Dream Practice — Distinguishes genuine dream and sleep practice from deliberately sustaining the “I AM” state or witnessing consciousness throughout the night. It emphasizes integrating realization across waking, dreaming, and sleeping, while allowing dream clarity or clear-light practice to arise naturally rather than maintaining a strained semi-awake witness.
Conscious in sleep? — Warns that trying to maintain awareness continuously into sleep can reinforce fixation on a formless background witness and, if practiced improperly, may disturb sleep, energy balance, and daytime functioning. The suggested direction is instead to investigate and dismantle the seer-seeing-seen structure, bring luminosity to the foreground of the senses during waking life, and allow practice across the three states to mature naturally rather than forcing 24/7 consciousness.
The Wisdom of Fan Li (范蠡): Avoiding the Four Fatal Flaws:
Reprogramming the Human Machine: AI and the End of Aging:
A Reply To: The Epistemological Challenges of Spiritual Realization:
Vivid Groundlessness:
Carrierless Continuity -- Overcoming the Architecture that Sustain Fear of Annihilation:
Negation Is Inadequate: Why the world appears so amazingly real, solid, undeniable and objective?
John Tan’s comment on this video:
This is important. One of my greatest disappointments is that, despite modern science increasingly moving toward non-substantialist interpretations—whether in quantum physics, cognitive science, or even developments in large language models and transformer architectures—we still see Buddhist practitioners interpreting the teachings through a substantialist lens. They remain confused, unable to articulate the view clearly or to see how it applies across different fields, let alone in daily life.
The Ontology Trap: From Anatta to AI:
Rebirth Video 1 of 3: Evidentiary Audit: Textual Foundations:
Rebirth Video 2 of 3: The Chronological Retrieval Protocol:
Rebirth Video 3 of 3: The Forensic Laboratory:
Reality Isn’t Made of Things — It’s Made of Relations:
Do We Think Inherently? An Honest Clinical Interrogation:
The Anatomy of a Label: How Words Create Our Reality:
The Miracle of the Unfindable: Why You Must Be Empty to Function (Phase 6):
Empty Dimensionless Nature, Multi-Dimensional World:
Deconstructing: Who, What, Where and When:
Beyond Non-Dual Anatta: Logic and Causal Efficacy of a Substrateless World:
Context: Ontic Structural Realism, Category Theory, and Empty Relations
Tyler Jones: This and another recent PasserBy video are about the connections between John Tan’s view and science and mathematics. Do you know whether John is aware of ontic structural realism—the philosophical view that there are no objects, only structural patterns—which grew out of an analysis of general relativity and quantum field theory? Recent work in the foundations of mathematics, such as category theory, higher category theory, topos theory, and homotopy type theory, also seems to move cutting-edge mathematical practice toward OSR.
Soh Wei Yu: John Tan said: “Ontic structural realism, yes. But it is not the same, because relations are ultimately empty too in a substrateless world. Ontic structural realism asserts that these structures are completely objective and exist independently of human minds or language.”
Soh Wei Yu: “Agential realism and Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics are closer.”
Soh Wei Yu: John Tan then made this new video and said, “This should answer Tyler Jones’s question.”
John Tan: It is also worth emphasizing that the causal efficacy of relations does not apply only to physics, but to all facets of the conventional world, including physics, culture, spirituality, myth, economics, karma, astrology, language, mathematics, and so on. Once all these facets are included, it becomes easier to understand why relations themselves are empty.
Aditya Prasad: The link may have changed to https://youtu.be/yob8YRp5x2Y. Also, how familiar is John Tan with the Yoneda Lemma? It is great fun to study category theory up to that point if one is interested in that sort of thing.
Tyler Jones: Yes, the category-theoretic foundations of mathematics change things. It might be interesting for John Tan to look into this if he has not already come across it. In category-theoretic foundations, mathematical and linguistic structures derive their properties only from their relations. Homotopy type theory and higher category theory then make it so that there are relations of relations, and so on—relations all the way down. It seems that these could potentially overcome the objections John raised.
Soh Wei Yu: Yes, thank you.
John Tan: Yes, definitely. The Yoneda Lemma and category theory are perhaps among the most elegant mathematical presentations of MMK. This reminds me of isomorphism in computer science and object-oriented programming. I think the mathematics captures the beauty of the inseparability of emptiness and the non-referential aspects of dependent arising excellently.
John Tan: But in practice, we need the experiential taste and the soteriological dimensions. Relational formation is emphasized alongside the deconstruction of the object so that the mind does not attach to relations as the new substrate.
John Tan: Actually, the main purpose of presenting the relational view is to deconstruct the “relata” and to dispel the misconception that causal efficacy is lost when essence is emptied. On the contrary, when this is understood correctly, we see causal efficacies manifesting everywhere: in cognitive science, mathematics, physics, language, culture, finance, economics, mythology, and so on.
John Tan: The relational presentation is also much more effective in deconstructing essence and can convey more than the noun-to-verb fluidity of anatta.
John Tan: It is to demonstrate that “essence” is never needed. Ironically, explanations become more coherent and tenable, with fewer contradictions, when we do away with essence. The intention is never to make “relations” a new reality or a new ground, since relations too are conventional expressions of valid functioning.
John Tan: However, it is not easy to control NotebookLM’s generation of a cinematic video so that it conveys the meaning within five minutes. It is meant to convey some points that may help break stubborn projections of independent absolutes in space, time, self, object, and so on. It was also for me to test out the new features of Gemini NotebookLM. 😂
Causal Efficacy Without Causal Power:
You, Ice, Coldness Don't Exist Before Interaction:
Relational Ontologies and the Deconstruction:
Measurement Problem and Objectivity (Relational Ontology but not MMK):
Emptiness Is Not Relational Ontology: Relations Without Relata
26 June 2026. A dialogue on dependent arising, emptying conditions, and the danger of turning emptiness into either relational existence or mere negation
John Tan’s central distinction:
“Dependent arising is not saying that there are things and that they are made of relations—that is relational ontology. It is a valid conventional description within the domain of conceptual designation.”
Mr. Y’s Shared Reflection
Mr. Y shared:
Nihilism says, in effect, that nothing has reality, value, or meaning. Emptiness says something very different: that whatever reality, value, and meaning there are do not rest on independent substances or intrinsic essences. Nihilism flattens the world into negation. Emptiness reveals the world as relational. Nihilism destroys significance by denying the reality of phenomena. Emptiness re-situates significance within the web of conditions that make phenomena possible. These are not neighboring positions. They move in opposite directions. Nihilism says the world is too empty to matter. Emptiness says the world matters precisely because nothing in it stands alone.
But emptiness is not below phenomena. It is not behind them. It is not the secret ingredient from which they are made. It is their structural mode of being. The tree, the body, the thought, the river, the institution, the self—none of these conceals emptiness as a hidden content. Each is empty because each exists structurally, relationally, dependently, without intrinsic core. Emptiness is therefore not what remains after things are taken away. It is what things have been all along once the fantasy of self-existence is removed.
Physics has shown that matter is not the kind of compact solidity common sense once imagined. What appears hard and substantial at the human scale turns out, at other scales, to involve fields, interactions, structural regularities, and dynamic relations that do not resemble the furniture of ordinary intuition. Biology has shown that organisms are not sealed units but living exchanges with environments, microbiomes, ecologies, and evolutionary histories. Cognitive science has increasingly suggested that perception is an active construction shaped by prediction, selection, and embodied need rather than passive copying. None of these developments imply that reality is unreal. They imply something subtler and more demanding: that the reality available to ordinary intuition is filtered through forms of organization that privilege usability over completeness. The solid world is not simply an illusion, but neither is it the final truth.
The social sciences extend this movement further by exposing how much of what appears individually possessed is actually relationally constituted. Institutions are not things in the way stones are things. They exist through repetition, recognition, enforcement, and shared expectation. Money exists because patterns of trust, law, exchange, and symbolic coordination sustain it. Nations persist through narratives, borders, administrative systems, collective memory, and ritual forms of belonging. Identities are formed through recognition, language, power, exclusion, aspiration, and role-performance. None of these phenomena are unreal because they lack intrinsic substance. They are real precisely because patterns of relation sustain them and because effects follow from their organization. Social reality is perhaps the clearest domain in which object-thinking becomes obviously misleading. To ask where “the institution itself” exists apart from the practices that constitute it is to begin seeing the problem. The institution is real, but not as a self-standing thing. It is real as organized relation.
Emptiness is therefore inseparable from dependent origination. It is not one doctrine placed beside another, as though one first believed in dependent arising and then later added emptiness on top. They are two ways of expressing the same insight. To say that something is empty is to say that it arises dependently. To say that something arises dependently is to say that it is empty of intrinsic self-being. Emptiness is not a second hidden truth behind dependent reality. It is dependent reality understood correctly. What appears exists, but only through a network of conditions. Emptiness names the fact that there is no extra metaphysical core hiding beneath this dependence.
So the inquiry ends where every genuine inquiry must end: not in the possession of a final object called Truth, but in a transformed relation to what is always already here. The room is still full of objects; the world is still full of persons, systems, histories, desires, losses, and fragile forms of care. Nothing theatrical has vanished. And yet nothing is quite the same, because what once appeared as a room of separate things now appears as a local articulation of a larger weave. The cup, the table, the body, the memory, the voice, the grief, the promise, the mountain, the city, the species, the world—all remain, but none remain as self-enclosed substances. They remain as patterns in the fabric. To understand this is not to leave the world behind. It is to enter it more completely. The fabric does not stop weaving because one has seen it. It goes on: holding by not holding, enduring by changing, cohering without foundation, connecting without external glue, giving rise to worlds of form without ever hardening into independent things. What is finally revealed is neither thing nor void, but the relational texture of reality itself—the fabric that holds everything together because nothing in it was ever separate enough to fall entirely out of the weave.
Dialogue
Soh Wei Yu (12:47 PM): What do you think about what he said?
John Tan (12:49 PM): That is not emptiness.
John Tan (12:58 PM): Yes. Dependent arising is not saying that there are things and that they are made of relations—that is relational ontology. It is a valid conventional description within the domain of conceptual designation.
John Tan (12:59 PM): And what is expressed is more like dependent arising, although emptiness cannot be understood apart from dependent arising.
John Tan (1:01 PM): So we can say that what is valid in the context of the conceptual mind is dependent arising. Emptiness is not that relational or conventional description itself, but the absence of essence discovered when that dependently arisen conventionality is analyzed. Yet emptiness cannot be understood apart from dependent arising, because without dependent arising, emptiness collapses into mere negation.
John Tan (1:01 PM): The problem with my video is that it can only be five to eight minutes.
John Tan (1:02 PM): So sometimes people might misunderstand it as relational ontology.
Soh Wei Yu (1:02 PM): Hopefully the technology will advance in a year to allow one-hour-long videos.
John Tan (1:02 PM): Also, I try not to talk about the taste when the view matures.
John Tan (1:08 PM): If emptiness lands as mere negation, then it is nihilism. So we must see dependent arising, and in the formulation, see that they are empty.
John Tan (1:13 PM): In other words, the emptiness of emptiness that we commonly talk about is not about treating emptiness as a “substance.” That is the easy part. It is attachment to emptiness as negation, and not understanding dependent arising as formation. That is the incurable disease. I actually have several videos on it, but it is difficult to express properly, and NotebookLM cannot generate this out.
John Tan (1:21 PM): So although we say, “Oh, that is relational ontology,” it is empty too. Practitioners who do not know how relational ontology works conventionally, and who just rest in negation thinking that this is groundlessness—treating it as an ultimate solvent—fall into the incurable disease that is difficult to see but easy to land in, in my opinion. Therefore the mistake is not merely reifying relational ontology. The opposite mistake is worse.
John Tan (1:32 PM): Emptying conditions is key. At the back of our mind, there is a deep conviction that conditions are really established. This is not easy to deconstruct. And the emptying must be understood from clearly seeing active formation. Otherwise, how are we to see relations without relata, causal efficacy without causal power, designation without naming and labeling, functioning without essence, and appearance without any “thingness”? If we do not clearly see that, we will not know how dependent arising can map to our actual experience. Mere negation will not be able to see that. It will only land us in a mistaken groundlessness due to relentless negation. But clear seeing will open us up entirely, effortlessly, as natural and primordial freedom. That, then, is spontaneous presence. So MMK is no different from Dzogchen if understood correctly. It is the view that will lead us from Prajñā to Yeshe.
Final emphasis: emptying conditions:
“Emptying conditions is key. The emptying must be understood from clearly seeing active formation. Otherwise, how are we to see relations without relata, causal efficacy without causal power, designation without naming and labeling, functioning without essence, and appearance without any ‘thingness’?”
MMK Non-Implicative Negation Ironically Shows: Dependent Arising = Spontaneous Presence:
Context: Presence and Its Nature
Mr. G: Right, no fundamental substratum or substance. But all this seems to be the branches. Is not the root the very presence of anything or no-thing, in whatever manner, way, or mode? Without such presence, existence, or being — call it what you like — we would not even be talking here.
Soh Wei Yu: Realizing Presence is not the same as realizing its nature. Without realizing its nature, there is no liberation; instead, there are reifications and further bondage.
As John Tan also commented before on Thusness’s Seven Phases of Insights:
“First 4 phases of insights are all about perfecting the taste of presence.
Only phase 5 onwards are about the "nature" of presence.
That is why I kept telling you, don't keep talking about spontaneous perfection without clear insight of phase 6.”
Soh Wei Yu: John Tan just posted a new video, MMK Non-Implicative Negation Ironically Shows: Dependent Arising = Spontaneous Presence. It is precisely related to this point.
Further Exchange: Presence and Its Empty Nature
Mr. G: Soh Wei Yu — Realizing Presence is realizing its nature. Sambhogakaya is not separate from Dharmakaya. The very realization of Presence is Sambhogakaya.
Soh Wei Yu: I would still distinguish recognizing clarity or Presence from realizing its empty nature. This point is discussed in Recognizing Rigpa vs Realizing Emptiness, and the Different Modalities of Rigpa.
“We don’t have any misunderstanding. Again this is rhetoric versus reality. Up until the third vision, ‘emptiness’ is obscured, and therefore at the time of direct introduction it is merely rhetorical. The nature of mind, as non-dual clarity and emptiness, is not truly known until the third vision — again, per Longchenpa, per Khenpo Ngachung, etc.; this is not something I have made up. What do we generally recognize in direct introduction? We recognize clarity [gsal ba], and the aspect of vidyā that is concomitant with that clarity. Vidyā is then what carries our practice, but vidyā is not the citta dharmatā, the nature of mind. This is why the first two visions are likened to śamatha, and the last two are likened to vipaśyanā.”
“I’ve never met anyone who gained any insight into emptiness at direct introduction. Plenty recognized rigpa kechigma, though. I don’t presume to know better than luminaries like Longchenpa and Khenpo Ngachung, who state that emptiness is not actually known until the third vision and so on. You may presume otherwise, and in that case we can agree to disagree.”
— Kyle Dixon
Soh Wei Yu: I also wrote to Mr. J that, as John Tan has said before and as many others have likewise reiterated — including Malcolm, the Dalai Lama, and others who went through similar phases — there is a distinct phase of realizing Awareness, or the unfabricated clarity aspect of rigpa, and a distinct realization of emptiness. Malcolm may not use the term “Awareness” in the same way, but the distinction remains important. Even Longchenpa and other Dzogchen masters point out that realizing emptiness in thögal happens only at the third vision.
John Tan’s reply on something Malcolm wrote in 2020:
“This is like what I tell you, essentially emphasizing 明心非见性. 先明心, 后见性. (Soh: Apprehending Mind is not seeing its Nature. First apprehend Mind; later realize its Nature.)
First is directly authenticating mind/consciousness — 明心 (Soh: Apprehending Mind). There is the direct path, like Zen sudden enlightenment of one’s original mind, or Mahamudra, or Dzogchen direct introduction of rigpa, or even self-enquiry in Advaita — the direct, immediate perception of ‘consciousness’ without intermediaries. They are the same.
However, that is not the realization of emptiness. Realization of emptiness is 见性 (Soh: Seeing Nature). In my opinion, there is a direct path to 明心 (Soh: Apprehending Mind), but I have not yet seen any direct path to 见性 (Soh: Seeing Nature). If you go through the depth and nuances of our mental constructs, you will understand how deep and subtle the blind spots are.
Therefore emptiness, or 空性 (Soh: Empty Nature), is the main difference between Buddhism and other religions. Although anatta is the direct experiential taste of emptiness, there is still a difference between Buddhist anatta and the selflessness of other religions — whether it is anatta as the experiential taste of the dissolution of self alone, or whether that experiential taste is triggered by the wisdom of emptiness.
The former focuses on selflessness, and the whole path of practice is all about doing away with self; whereas the latter is about living in the wisdom of emptiness and applying that insight and wisdom of emptiness to all phenomena.
As for emptiness, there is the fine line of seeing through inherentness in Tsongkhapa, and there is emptiness free from extremes in Gorampa. Both are equally profound, so do not talk nonsense or engage in profane speech. In terms of result, ultimately they are the same, in my opinion.”
— John Tan
“Nature — there are many different levels. Conventional level, one nature. There are also different levels. Then, ultimate level, ultimate reality... so simply realizing the clarity of the mind, that is the conventional level. That is common with Hindus, like that. So we have to know these different levels.”
— Dalai Lama, quoted in “Dalai Lama on Anatta and Emptiness of Buddha Nature in New Book”
Conditions Have To Be Empty:
Curing the Disease of Relentless Negation — 1:
John Tan’s comment on this video:
I am making a video on the incurable disease that AI committed, as well as many highly learned practitioners, even when AI assumes the role of a highly learned MMK scholar and a highly attained practitioner.
The actual battleground, and the real learning and practice, is in the active formulation of what dependent arising is at the conventional level, not in relentlessly negating at the ultimate level. Why? Because in the active process of formulation, the negation has already been taken into consideration. By contrast, in relentless negation, the formation has not been considered; so when asked to formulate validly using conventional expression, it continuously fails, even with all the power and resources of AI. 😂
AI received a deep lecture from me. 😂
The test of whether one really understands the teaching is in the actual formulation of dependent arising at the conventional level, not in relentless negation at the ultimate level.
The Axiom of Great Responsiveness:
Soh Wei Yu: John Tan has also developed his own axioms and mathematical framing for the non-substantialist view, as a way of expressing dependent arising and emptiness in a more precise, structural form.
John Tan’s comment on the axiom video:
I am seeing an exceedingly close parallel between current quantum physics and the non-substantialist understanding of dependent arising and emptiness, especially in topics like quantum entanglement and Hilbert space, once I understand what those cryptic quantum-physics terms are pointing to. It is like a perfect instrument for modern physicists to understand the ancient philosophy of Madhyamaka.
The more I study, the more I see the beauty of modern science. It is truly like emptiness and dependent arising expressed in mathematics. I really hope that one day, Madhyamaka and quantum physics can be seamlessly brought together in a single teaching.
Practical Note: Using NotebookLM to Ask Questions About the Videos
Reader Feedback and Question About How the Videos Were Produced
A reader from England wrote to say that the Awakening to Reality blog had been instrumental in his development as a Middle Way practitioner and that the PasserBy (ATR) YouTube series had already been helpful after only a few days of viewing. He especially appreciated the breakdowns, visuals, vocabulary, and contemporary analogies and examples connecting the classical teachings of Nāgārjuna, Tsongkhapa, and Mipham with concrete, real-world specifics. He also asked how the videos were produced and whether AI had played a role, and offered warm wishes that the work benefit many and help bring realization to those earnestly seeking it.
Soh Wei Yu’s reply:
Thank you very much for your kind and encouraging email. I’m very glad to hear that the Awakening to Reality blog has been helpful in your practice, and that you have also found John Tan’s recent videos useful.
I shared your message with John, and this is what he said:
“Using NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook), but not easy to control. Some of the earlier videos may sound a bit like relational ontology. But the gist is there as long as people know that we are talking about non-substantialism. Will slowly release some other videos later to refine some of the terms used, as I’m quite busy now.”
— John Tan
So yes, AI has been useful mainly as a tool for turning the material into the present video format, particularly through NotebookLM. As John mentioned, however, it is not always easy to control the precise terminology or philosophical framing it produces, which is why some of the earlier videos may require further qualification or refinement.
Just as a personal note, although some of the material in this series has been newly written or organised for the videos, a considerable portion draws upon writings, notes and reflections that John has developed over many years. Some of this material formed part of an unreleased book he had been working on and had never previously been made public in this form.
So while AI has helped considerably with the presentation and production of the videos, the underlying substance—if we may use such a suspiciously substantial word—is not something generated from scratch by AI. Rather, it has dependently originated through John’s own insights, observations and understanding developed over many years of personal practice, contemplation and exploration.
I thought you might find that background interesting, particularly given your comments about the vocabulary, analogies and connections with Nāgārjuna, Tsongkhapa and Mipham.
Thank you again for taking the time to write and for your generous words and good wishes. I’m very glad that the materials have already been useful to you.
Very best regards,
Soh Wei Yu
Awakening to Reality
After the videos were shared, Jui asked whether the source notebook behind the videos could be shared, so that anyone who needed more help could continue asking questions about the topic.
Jui: Is the notebook that the videos are based on shareable? Then anyone who needs further help can keep asking questions to it, to help them understand this topic.
Soh Wei Yu: Unfortunately, the videos are based on John Tan’s book, and John Tan does not intend to release the book at the moment.
Jui: No worries. At least I tried. 😝
John Tan later suggested that readers do not need access to the book in order to make practical use of the videos. They can load the videos into NotebookLM and continue asking questions from there.
Actually, there is no need to have the book. Just load the videos into NotebookLM, like one reader did.
— John Tan
William: You know what is ironic? You are using NotebookLM to make the videos, and I am using NotebookLM to understand your videos. 😂
John Tan: Our perceptual and mental framework is cursed to see things, and not relations. 🤦
William: I was asking NotebookLM about the phenomenology of one who sees and experiences non-substantiality on a daily basis. 😂
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