Videos and Audios made by John Tan. Remember to hit Subscribe to John Tan’s YouTube channel!

Reality Isn’t Made of Things — It’s Made of Relations:

To Function is to be Empty: Resolving the Paradox of Reality:

The Anatomy of a Label: How Words Create Our Reality:

The Miracle of the Unfindable: Why You Must Be Empty to Function (Phase 6):

The Miracle of the Unfindable: Why You Must Be Empty to Function (version 2):

Who Am I Vs Anatta:

Relation without Relata:

The Handshake That Creates The Hands:

Audio Teachings:

The Silent Witness is a Trap:
https://files.awakeningtoreality.com/The_Silent_Witness_Is_a_Trap.mp3

Everything is a Luminous Empty Display:
https://files.awakeningtoreality.com/Everything_is_a_luminous_empty_display.m4a

The Universe is Verbs, Not Nouns:
https://files.awakeningtoreality.com/The_universe_is_verbs_not_nouns.m4a

The Handshake That Creates the Hands:
https://files.awakeningtoreality.com/The_Handshake_That_Creates_the_Hands.m4a

Update

A reader recently sent me a message sharing that they experience everything as "just particles." John Tan responded:

Not everything is just particles; even that concept must be deconstructed without falling into nihilism. This realization comes when we understand how the vividness of luminous clarity and mental designations are enough to fabricate a vivid world of things that appear so "solidly real." — John Tan

Further Discussion on Relationality and Emptiness

Mr. CG: “Relationalities are the very texture of appearance… There is no background mirror… the interdependent contrasting reflections themselves are the mirror.” To me it sounds like he subtly reifies relationality. But there is no inherent relationality to be found. Maybe I misinterpret.

Soh Wei Yu: He does not reify relationality, but sees this point clearly:

Yin Ling · Tsongkhapa short verse on his profound enlightenment to the truth.
***
In a short verse work composed as a letter to his first attendant, Tsakho Ngawang Drakpa, Tsongkhapa would articulate this crucial point about the equation between emptiness and dependent origination:

When, with respect to all phenomena of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa,
You see that cause and effect never transgress their laws,
And when you have dismantled the focus of objectification,
At that point, you have entered the path that pleases the buddhas.

As long as the two understandings—
Of appearance, the regulated world of dependent origination,
And of emptiness, the absence of all standpoints—remain separate,
You have not realized the intent of the Sage.

However, at some point when, without alteration and at once,
The instant you see that dependent origination is undeceiving
If the entire object of grasping at certitude is dismantled,
At that point your analysis of the view is complete.

Furthermore, when appearance dispels the extreme of existence,
And when emptiness dispels the extreme of nonexistence,
And you understand how emptiness arises as cause and effect,
You will never be swayed by views grasping at extremes.

John Tan: This is perhaps the most important point for me post anatta insight. So profound and deep.

Yin Ling: John Tan yes and you emphasise this repetitively so thank you.

John Tan: Yin Ling yes. Tsongkhapa is familiar with emptiness free from all elaborations in traditional tibetan schools and in fact in his earlier days, he accepted this view. But many in the traditional schools see the ultimate that lacks sameness or difference, i.e, non-arisen of "sameness" of "difference" as literally "no" sameness or difference thinking that "oh ultimately they are just conceptual notions". Instead, Tsongkhapa pointed out that this "unestablished" free from elaborations means dependent arising, dependent on conditions, "this is, that is".

Soh Wei Yu:

“EMPTINESS DEVIATING TO THE BASIC NATURE
Timeless Deviation to the Nature of Knowables
The meditation of inseparable phenomena and emptiness is called “emptiness endowed with the supreme aspect.” Not knowing how emptiness and interdependence abide in nonduality, you decide that emptiness is a nothingness that has never existed and that is not influenced at all by qualities or defects. Then you underestimate the cause and effect of virtue and vice, or else lapse exclusively into the nature of all things being originally pure, primordially free, and so forth. Bearing such emptiness, the relative level of interdependence is not mastered. In this respect, this is what is known as mahamudra: one’s basic nature is unoriginated and, since it is neither existent nor nonexistent, eternal nor nil, true nor false, nor any other such aspects, it has no existence whatsoever. Nonetheless, its unceasing radiance arises as the relative level of all kinds of interdependence, so it is known as emptiness having the core of interdependence and interdependence having the nature of emptiness. Therefore, emptiness does not stray to the nature of knowables. In the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way it is said:

Anything that doesn’t arise dependently
Is a phenomenon that has no existence.
Therefore anything that is not empty
Is a phenomenon that has no existence.

And as said in the Commentary on Bodhichitta:
It is taught that the relative plane is emptiness,
And emptiness alone is the relative plane.”
– The Royal Seal of Mahamudra, Volume 2, Khamtrul Rinpoche

“A lot of talk on here lately about how lame relative reality is vs how awesome ultimate reality is.
Apparently an omniscient master is supposed to see how both the relative and the ultimate exist at the same time in a Union of Appearance and Emptiness.
It's because everything is dependently arisen that it can be seen as empty.
Not even the smallest speck exists by its own power.
Je Tsongkhapa said, "Since objects do not exist through their own nature, they are established as existing through the force of convention."
He was the biggest proponent of keeping vows and virtuous actions through all stages of sutra and tantra.
He also leveraged the relative by practicing millions of prostrations and offering mandalas.
He also practiced generation and completion stages of tantra while keeping his conduct spotless.
He held conduct in the highest regard in all of his texts on tantra such as his masterwork, A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages.”
- Jason Parker, 2019

The birth of certainty ~ Lama Tsongkhapa
The knowledge that appearances arise unfailingly in dependence,
And the knowledge that they are empty and beyond all assertions—
As long as these two appear to you as separate,
There can be no realization of the Buddha’s wisdom.

Yet when they arise at once, not each in turn but both together,
Then through merely seeing unfailing dependent origination
Certainty is born, and all modes of misapprehension fall apart—
That is when discernment of the view has reached perfection.
– Lama Tsongkhapa

Soh Wei Yu: Longchenpa on Nihilism. From Finding Rest in the Nature of Mind.

Those who scorn the law of karmic cause and fruit
Are students of the nihilist view outside the Dharma.
They rely on the thought that all is void;
They fall in the extreme of nothingness
And go from higher to lower states.
They have embarked on an evil path
And from the evil destinies will have no freedom,
Casting happy states of being far away.

”The law of karmic cause and fruit,
Compassion and the gathering of merit -
All this is but provisional teaching fit for children:
Enlightenment will not be gained thereby.
Great yogis should remain without intentional action.
They should meditate upon reality that is like space.
Such is the definitive instruction.”

The view of those who speak like this
Of all views is the most nihilist:
They have embraced the lowest of all paths.
How strange is this!
They want a fruit but have annulled its cause.
If reality is but a space-like void,
What need is there to meditate?
And if it is not so, then even if one meditates
Such efforts are to no avail.
If meditation on mere voidness leads to liberation,
Even those with minds completely blank
Attain enlightenment!
But since those people have asserted meditation,
Cause and its result they thus establish!
Throw far away such faulty paths as these!

The true, authentic path asserts
The arising in dependence of both cause and fruit,
The natural union of skillful means and wisdom.
Through the causality of nonexistent but appearing acts,
Through meditation on the nonexistent but appearing path,
The fruit is gained, appearing and yet nonexistent;
And for the sake of nonexistent but appearing beings,
Enlightened acts, appearing and yet nonexistent, manifest.
Such is pure causality’s profound interdependence.

This is the essential pith
Of all the Sutra texts whose meaning is definitive
And indeed of all the tantras.
Through the joining of the two accumulations,
The generation and completion stages,
Perfect buddhahood is swiftly gained.

Thus all the causal processes
Whereby samsara is contrived should be abandoned,
And all acts that are the cause of liberation
Should be earnestly performed.
High position in samsara
And the final excellence of buddhahood
Will speedily be gained.
- Finding Rest in the Nature of Mind (vol 1)

Also by Longchenpa:

"To reject practice by saying, ‘it is conceptual!’ is the path of fools. A tendency of the inexperienced and something to be avoided.”
— Longchenpa

Mr. TJ: John Tan do you consider this most crucial post-anatta insight fundamentally different from the other post-anatta insights discussed at length on the blog? Such as +A/maha/total exertion or spontaneous perfection? Does anyone other than Tsongkhapa and his followers clearly point to it?

John Tan: Mr. TJ no. It does not differ +A and -A, the natural openness requires that understanding. Tsongkhapa is profoundly insightful and revolutionary in certain sense, unfortunately I am not familiar with his other followers. However in my opinion what Tsongkhapa expounded cannot be understood by analysis alone, we can't logically deduce or induce what he said, it can only be experientially authenticated.