The Awakening to Reality Practice Guide and The Original Awakening to Reality Guide
Welcome to Awakening to Reality
Hello! Welcome to the Awakening to Reality site.
Must-Read Articles
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“Thusness/PasserBy’s Seven Stages of Enlightenment”
Available in Languages: AR, BO, DA, DE, EN, ES, FR, HI, ID, IT, JA, KO, MS, NE, PL, PT-BR, PT-PT, RU, SR, TA, TH, VI, ZH.
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“On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection”
Available in Languages: AR, BO, DA, DE, EN, ES, FR, HI, ID, IT, JA, KO, NE, PL, PT-BR, PT-PT, RU, SR, TA, TH, VI, ZH.
- 真如(Thusness)/过路人(PasserBy)开悟的七个阶段
- (繁體) 真如(Thusness)/過路人(PasserBy)開悟的七個階段
- 关于无我(No-Self)、空性、摩诃(Maha)与平常,以及自然圆满
- (繁體) 關于無我(No-Self)、空性、摩訶(Maha)與平常,以及自然圓滿
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1) The Awakening to Reality Practice Guide — compiled and edited by Nafis Rahman
- Latest update: 1 May 2026
- AudioBook on SoundCloud
- Feedback: "The shortened AtR guide is very good. It should lead one to anatta (the experiential realization of no-self) if they really go and read. Concise and direct." – Yin Ling
- Download links: PDF · EPUB (Note: If you experience formatting issues with Apple Books, we recommend using a third-party reader like eBoox to open this EPUB file.)
- Update: Portuguese translation now available here
- Update: Chinese translations are now available.
3) The Awakening to Reality Guide — Original Version (compiled by Soh)
- This is the original 1300+ page document on which the practice and abridged guides are based.
"I also want to say, actually the main ATR document >1200 pages helped me the most with insight... ...I did [read] it twice 😂 it was so helpful and these Mahamudra books supported ATR insights. Just thought to share." – Yin Ling
"To be honest, the document is ok [in length], because it’s by insight level. Each insight is like 100 plus pages except anatta [was] exceptionally long [if] I remember lol. If someone read and contemplate at the same time it’s good because the same point will repeat again and again like in the nikayas [traditional Buddhist scriptures in the Pali canon] and insight should arise by the end of it imo.", "A 1000 plus pages ebook written by a serious practitioner Soh Wei Yu that took me a month to read each time and I am so grateful for it. It’s a huge undertaking and I have benefitted from it more that I can ever imagine. Please read patiently." – Yin Ling
Listening to PDFs on iPhone & Android
For the latest, more reliable ways to listen to PDFs on a phone, see the dedicated guide: How to Make Your Phone Read PDFs Aloud — iPhone & Android Guide (2026).
The guide covers built-in accessibility options, dedicated PDF text-to-speech apps, continuous and background playback, jumping to the place you want to hear, natural AI voices, and what to do with scanned PDFs that need OCR.
Comments
My special appreciation and gratitude to Soh and John for sharing profound dhamma for so long with the world.
Most of the paragraphs in the PDF is worth underlining and contemplating. While John provides deep dhamma points, Soh brings those out by asking great questions and complimenting his own realizations.
This is what I see as unique about this writing:
1) covers broadly both non-dual and buddha's teaching. Even with Buddha's teaching you are not limiting yourself to one branch as you share great pointers from theravada, zen, mahamudra etc.
2) you have succeeded in explaining deep dhamma without using any Pali or Sanskrit words!
3) Soh takes great care to share non-dual, I am, one mind, no-mind, awareness, consciousness etc etc using great examples that covers many angles - a feature that I haven't seen in any other great dhamma books.
4) Most writing is a result of their own realization - a rare point in most modern dhamma books and written in practical terms.
5) I also appreciate John's persistence to keep things simple. Most get bogged-down on dogmas and complicated dhamma points that result in stagnation and/or never ending discussions or arguments.
6) though I wish to highlight so many paragraphs, may I finish with only one:
"Intuit the vipassana and the samatha. Intuit the total exertion and realization. The essence of message must be raw and uncontaminated by words. It cannot be secondhand." -by John Tan, 2019.
May I add that the most important word here is 'intuit (intuition)'. I hope John agrees.
The ePub has just been uploaded: https://app.box.com/s/1yr71xbut8y7gr5qc7c6m4fzfl1bf37s
Hi MarkA,
Thank you so much, MarkA, for your heartfelt appreciation and thoughtful feedback :)