Sunday, August 02, 2026

John Tan on Emptiness, Dependent Arising, Right View, and Non-Meditation

By Soh

John Tan · Emptiness · Dependent Arising

John Tan on Emptiness, Dependent Arising, Right View, and Non-Meditation

A comprehensive synopsis of the 27 June 2026 Zoom meeting

Edited, source-faithful synopsis · Research references verify named texts and concepts, not John Tan’s realization claims

YouTube Videos and Audios by John Tan: Union of Dependent Arising and Emptiness

Editorial and attribution note

The corrected transcript was reconciled from five supplied transcript witnesses. The newest speaker-attributed file was treated as an additional witness, not as automatically controlling. Speaker letters reset between separately processed Parts, so John Tan’s turns are identified by continuity, direct address, autobiographical ownership, topic ownership, and cross-Part handoffs rather than by assuming one letter remains stable throughout.

The high-confidence John Tan mapping is: Parts 1–13, Speaker A; Part 14, Speaker B; Part 15, Speaker A; Parts 16–17, Speaker B; Part 18, Speaker A; Part 19, Speaker B; and Part 20, Speaker A. The strongest internal checks include “John Tan’s mosquito” being addressed to Part 15 Speaker A, and Part 16 Speaker A referring to “John” immediately before Speaker B answers in the first person about choosing the five core logics.

This synopsis distinguishes John’s statements from other participants’ remarks, personal interpretations, traditional anecdotes, speculative comparisons, and independently verifiable textual context. At the user’s request, other participants are not named except in section 27 on Soh’s translation prompts.

The central argument

John is not presenting luminous nonduality or anatta as the endpoint. A practitioner can experience no-self, radiance, seamlessness, and total exertion while still interpreting reality through an unexamined framework of objects, substances, space, time, consciousness, or fluid process.

The later work is to bring experience, right view, and conventional functionality into alignment. Emptiness must disclose not a blank absence but the impossibility of self-established phenomena—and therefore the possibility of dependent appearance, interaction, transformation, and causal efficacy.

Detailed contents

1. The universality of emptiness and genuine non-meditation
2. Signs of maturation and the distinction between phases five and six
3. The desynchronization between experience and view
4. Spiritual bypassing: saying “empty” without understanding why
5. What John actually says about Longchenpa and judging masters
6. John’s own gap after anatta and total exertion
7. Conceptual designation and dependent designation
8. The apple as a multidimensional designation
9. Designation without naming and labelling
10. AI as a research interlocutor, not an authority
11. Relation without independently existing relata
12. Why phase six is analytical
13. Why anatta and noun-to-verb fluidity are not the endpoint
14. Why essence would make arising and interaction impossible
15. The “half-void, half-ego” condition
16. Arising, ceasing, and the analysis of time
17. Three criteria for investigating a phenomenon
18. Why John insists on the two truths
19. Hidden inherent views concerning space, time, and boundaries
20. Deconstructing “I” and “mine”: possessive mineness and appropriation
21. The MMK as a transformative exercise rather than a textbook
22. The danger of relentless negation and attachment to groundlessness
23. Causal efficacy without inherent causal power
24. Conventionality becomes crucial when no substrate remains
25. Conceptuality, pure perception, and non-meditation
26. What continues to drive John’s practice
27. His reaction to Soh’s translation prompts
28. Refining right view so that experience can open further
29. Mipham, Tsongkhapa, translation, and traditional anecdotes
30. John’s qualified suggestion for using AI with difficult books
31. John’s selection of five core logics
32. Infinite regress, scientific “stuff,” and designation upon characteristics
33. Niels Bohr and Karen Barad: corrected names, comparison, and conjecture
34. The organization of John’s video material and its AI-oriented component
35. His reservations about public circulation of the videos

Part I · From Nondual Experience to the Need for Emptiness

1. The universality of emptiness and genuine non-meditation

John begins from the universality of emptiness. Emptiness is not confined to meditation, thought, consciousness, economics, material objects, or any other selected domain. Every phenomenon must be penetrated in the same way. When this universality becomes clear, the division between meditation and non-meditation loses its foundation: there is no independently existing meditator who enters a special state, no fixed point of entry or exit, and no real distance that effort must cross.

Everything ordinarily divided into inside and outside is equally dependently originated and empty: body, environment, thought, matter, wind, a mechanical blower, perception, luminous clarity, and the apparent distinction between practice and ordinary activity. John therefore considers genuine non-meditation extremely difficult without a clear realization of emptiness. Presence or luminous clarity can otherwise be interpreted as a subtle consciousness, background field, or pervasive substance.

Emptiness is what prevents luminosity from becoming another metaphysical foundation. Only when every appearance is seen as empty can there truly be no entry and no exit. Nevertheless, John says that he continues to meditate even though he considers himself to be in non-meditation. Non-meditation is not permission to abandon formal practice; it means that formal meditation is no longer understood as an inherently separate realm entered by an inherently existing practitioner.

2. Signs of maturation and the distinction between phases five and six

Asked how someone recognizes deepening insight, John says there may be signs, although the practitioner ultimately knows through growing confidence and an opening of insight. One sign is that everything appears very light: the felt solidity, heaviness, and self-established nature ordinarily attributed to phenomena has loosened.

He then distinguishes what he calls phase-five and phase-six insight. Phase five is associated with radiance, nonduality, direct clarity, manifestation as appearance, anatta, and recurring moments of “mini-total-exertion.” His example is deliberately ordinary: a door opens, or an MRT train moves, and the vibrations, movement, train, body, and environment are experienced as one undivided presentation. No internal observer stands apart to receive an external event.

This can be a profound opening, but the experiential taste may be far stronger than the practitioner’s view. Phase six addresses precisely that imbalance by investigating the framework through which experience is understood.

3. The desynchronization between experience and view

John describes a fundamental desynchronization among direct experience, insight, and the framework used to analyse and articulate that experience. Someone may repeatedly experience seamlessness and anatta while continuing to assume isolated objects, an external world confronting an internal subject, things that exist before entering relations, space as a container, time as a stream, or consciousness as an underlying field.

Nondual experience does not automatically remove these assumptions. When the experience subsides, the analytical mind may resume using the old framework. John considers it very difficult to overcome this simply by collecting more experiences. The framework itself must be exposed, questioned, re-educated, and retrained.

He does not dogmatically claim that explicit analysis is the only conceivable route. Vajrayāna and other approaches may operate in ways he does not claim to assess completely. His narrower point is autobiographical and practical: in his own experience, it is extremely difficult to move beyond the residual framework without investigating it directly.

4. Spiritual bypassing: saying “empty” without understanding why

John repeatedly criticizes spiritual bypassing. Here the phrase means using spiritual language, experiences, or doctrines to avoid examining unresolved assumptions. A person may say “everything is empty,” “there is no self,” “everything is just awareness,” or “there is no view,” yet be unable to explain why conditions, objects, relations, and cognition are empty.

His test is not whether someone can recite the accepted conclusion. It is whether that person can investigate why an object cannot possess inherent existence, why essence would obstruct change and interaction, how dependent designation functions, and how empty phenomena nevertheless remain causally effective. When reasoning, experience, and interpretation are not integrated, the statement “everything is empty” may be memorized doctrine rather than assimilated insight.

Sincerity therefore includes the ability to say, “I experience this, but I do not understand it.” John treats that admission as more valuable than turning an experience into a premature claim of completion.

5. What John actually says about Longchenpa and judging masters

John’s point here is narrower than the earlier synopsis suggested. He reports that Malcolm had quoted or interpreted Longchenpa as treating external reality as true. Another participant reacts by saying that they would not dare conclude from this that Longchenpa did not understand emptiness. John agrees that it is extremely difficult to comment on masters such as Longchenpa, Tsongkhapa, and Mipham without deep practice and a clear understanding of deconstruction.

John does not resolve the textual dispute or accuse Longchenpa of substantialism. He redirects the discussion to the practitioner’s own understanding: even if one can repeat that Longchenpa or another master said something, does one actually see why phenomena and conditions are empty? Merely citing an authority is not a substitute for integrating experience, reasoning, and view.

Later, John gives his personal assessment that Candrakīrti, Mipham, and Tsongkhapa express Nāgārjuna’s meaning with exceptional clarity. This is his evaluation, not a neutral ranking across Buddhist traditions.

Part II · Dependent Designation and the Reconstruction of View

6. John’s own gap after anatta and total exertion

John uses his own development as the central example. For several years after anatta, he experienced repeated moments of mini-total-exertion. Later, total exertion itself became very clear. He had the taste and the direct insight, but knew that his view had not caught up.

When he encountered the chariot exchange between Nāgasena and King Milinda, he immediately recognized a connection with total exertion. Yet he could not initially explain the view underlying it. His response was not to pretend that intuitive recognition amounted to understanding. He knew the teaching was pointing toward something correct, that it corresponded to his experience, and that it supplied a missing element—but he also knew he did not yet understand why.

The question that seized him was not merely whether the chariot had a referent. It was more specific: why must the designation be said to depend upon the parts? That question became a doorway into his later investigation.

Textual verification: In the Milindapañha, “chariot” is explained as a conventional designation used in dependence upon the pole, axle, wheels, body, and other constituents, rather than as an additional entity separate from them. See SuttaCentral, Mil 3.1.1.

7. Conceptual designation and dependent designation

In ordinary life, people do not consciously think that they designate things upon parts and conditions. When someone says “apple,” the ordinary assumption is that a complete apple already exists, the mind sees it, and the word is then attached to that object. The same model is applied to a mouse, controller, train, or body.

John calls this ordinary model conceptual designation: an object is believed to stand there independently and a concept is placed upon it. Dependent designation operates differently. It does not begin with an independently established whole. The whole is intelligible only in dependence upon parts, causes, conditions, functions, relations, perceptual manifestations, and conventional practices.

The designation does not disclose a hidden essence behind this network. John initially recognized the point through total exertion—the entirety of conditions presenting as this particular event—but knew that experiential recognition did not yet explain the mechanism completely.

Context: Nāgārjuna’s analysis is widely interpreted as rejecting an ontological foundation beneath dependently arisen phenomena. MMK 24.18 famously links dependent arising, emptiness, and dependent designation, although its precise interpretation is debated. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Nāgārjuna and a recent Journal of Indian Philosophy study.

8. The apple as a multidimensional designation

John develops the distinction through an apple. Ordinary cognition treats the apple as a single whole object standing outside the observer. In his account, however, what is called “apple” presents through multiple experiential dimensions: colour and visual consciousness, bodily sensation, taste, and the other streams of sensory consciousness involved in the encounter.

These dimensions form bases in dependence upon which the apple is designated. John’s point is not that a second, hidden apple-entity must stand behind them and possess them. Nor is it enough simply to reduce the apple to atoms while treating the atoms as intrinsically existing things; that would merely relocate the assumed substance.

He is trying to understand why Madhyamaka speaks of designation upon bases, parts, causes, and conditions when ordinary cognition feels as though it first encounters a complete object and only then attaches a word to it.

9. Designation without naming and labelling

John’s next question was whether designation can operate without verbal naming or deliberate labelling. He imagines a world in which everything is blue. Without contrast, blue is not distinguished as a particular feature. When green appears, the contrast becomes manifest immediately, even before anyone invents or applies the words “blue” and “green.”

There is already difference, contrast, structure, distinguishability, and organization of the perceptual field. John calls this designation without naming and labelling. The phrase is his own analytical formulation, not a standard definition accepted by every Tibetan Buddhist school.

The point is that designation cannot simply mean consciously attaching a word. A prelinguistic or nonverbal differentiation may already structure how something appears as this rather than that. Otherwise “freedom from conceptual elaboration” could be reduced to the absence of internal speech, making any wordless moment equivalent to enlightenment—an interpretation John considers clearly inadequate.

10. AI as a research interlocutor, not an authority

For a long period, these questions remained in John’s private notes and contemplation. He found it difficult to locate clear explanations online, difficult to verify his intuitions, and difficult simply to ask a teacher to settle what had become his own investigation.

When more capable AI systems appeared, he began using them as research interlocutors. He did not accept the first answer. He repeatedly asked, challenged, requested broader searches, checked terminology, rejected simplistic explanations, and reframed the question. Through this process, he became increasingly convinced that designation in Tibetan Buddhist contexts cannot be reduced to ordinary naming.

AI’s role here is investigative and preparatory. It helps search, compare, and orient; it does not become an infallible teacher or replace direct reading and contemplation.

11. Relation without independently existing relata

A further problem then arose: if independently existing things cannot be found, how are dependence and relation possible? The ordinary model assumes that entity A exists, entity B exists, and a relation subsequently connects them. John challenges the assumption that A and B are already fully constituted before the relation.

In the encounter itself, what conventionally counts as “this,” “that,” “subject,” “object,” “you,” and “I” becomes determinate. The relata are not necessarily pre-packaged entities waiting to interact. John compares this with Karen Barad’s notion of intra-action, which rejects the assumption that independent relata must precede their relation.

He does not claim that agential realism and Madhyamaka are identical. The comparison helps illustrate a relational structure at the conventional level. Relation itself is not elevated into an ultimate substance: relata, relation, and event are all empty.

Comparison verified: Barad’s “intra-action” is explicitly contrasted with interaction because interaction presumes independently existing relata. A concise scholarly explanation is available from Cultural Anthropology.

12. Why phase six is analytical

John calls phase six analytical because its task is to transform the framework through which all earlier experience has been interpreted. Phase five may contain anatta, radiance, and total exertion; phase six investigates what dependent arising actually means, why phenomena cannot possess essence, how designation functions, whether relations require independent relata, and how causality works without intrinsic causal power.

It also investigates how appearance and unfindability coexist and why conventional function is not destroyed by emptiness. This is not abstract philosophy detached from practice. The analysis exposes assumptions that continue shaping perception and interpretation.

Once the framework is seen to be defective, the meaning of earlier nondual experiences changes. They are no longer interpreted through a hidden subject, consciousness, process, or substrate.

Part III · Beyond Anatta, Fluidity, and Hidden Substrates

13. Why anatta and noun-to-verb fluidity are not the endpoint

John illustrates anatta with formulations such as: there is no wind apart from blowing; the blowing is the wind. There is no lightning apart from flashing; the flashing is lightning. There is no separate listener standing behind hearing, and no agent apart from the activity.

These can bring a powerful shift from noun to verb, entity to activity, and observer to manifestation. Yet John calls this the comparatively easy part. Even after anatta and total exertion, a practitioner commonly imagines reality as fluid, wave-like, wind-like, a continuous dynamic field, a luminous stream, or a process underlying individual forms.

The static substance has disappeared, but a process-substance remains. A noun has been replaced by a reified verb. Nāgārjuna’s analysis, as John understands it, negates this fluid substrate as well. The flowing itself cannot be established as an independent ground. John’s “ninety-nine percent” remark in the meeting is rhetorical emphasis, not a measured statistic.

14. Why essence would make arising and interaction impossible

John treats the following as one of the indispensable conclusions of Madhyamaka analysis: if something possessed an intrinsic essence, it could not genuinely arise, change, interact, communicate, or appear through conditions.

An essence would establish the thing by itself. Conditions could not produce or alter it; relation could not constitute it; it could not become what it was not; it would have no need to arise; and it could not cease without losing the very nature said to define it inherently.

The absence of essence is therefore not a defect that prevents function. It is what permits conditional function. John wants the practitioner to investigate this until it becomes completely convincing, not merely intellectually agreeable. Only then does dependent origination cease to mean “real things interacting with other real things.”

15. The “half-void, half-ego” condition

John describes most practitioners as holding a mixed and inconsistent view. One part of the mind accepts no-self, emptiness, nonduality, and groundlessness. Another part continues assuming real objects, real consciousness, absolute space, flowing time, intrinsic causal powers, a subtle process, or an ultimate luminous foundation.

He calls this a half-void, half-ego view. Because both frameworks coexist, the practitioner may alternate between emptiness language and inherent interpretation without seeing the contradiction.

Ultimate analysis is needed to expose that what is experienced never existed in the manner in which it was assumed to exist.

16. Arising, ceasing, and the analysis of time

John uses the question: “A moment ceases as it arises. Does it arise, or does it cease?” The question exposes the instability of ordinary categories. He connects it with Nāgārjuna’s examination of time: the past is gone, the future has not arrived, and the present appears to remain.

But if the present has duration, it can be divided into earlier and later portions. If it has no duration, in what sense can a present moment be established? Likewise, if a moment ceases in the very act of arising, should it be classified as arising or as ceasing?

The purpose is not to announce that absolutely nothing exists. It is to reveal a defect in the language and framework through which existence and time are analysed. Nāgārjuna’s analysis therefore goes beyond replacing enduring entities with instantaneous events; the event, moment, arising, and ceasing are themselves unfindable as inherently established units.

17. Three criteria for investigating a phenomenon

John offers three connected criteria for penetrating a phenomenon:

Do not begin by demanding “What is it?” The question may already presuppose that an underlying thing must exist. In a completely substrateless understanding, there is no final independent “what” behind the appearance.
The phenomenon is unfindable. It cannot be established independently in perception, conception, its parts, apart from its parts, as the collection, or as an owner of the parts. Yet unfindability does not mean blank nonappearance; there is appearance.
It does not arise without conditions. Appearance is not random or causeless. Whatever appears depends upon causes and conditions.

The three must be held together: no final substrate, unfindability, and conditional appearance. Leaving out conditional appearance turns emptiness into mere negation. Leaving out unfindability turns dependent arising into interaction among inherently existing things.

18. Why John insists on the two truths

John strongly opposes collapsing the teaching into “one truth.” The two truths preserve two inseparable dimensions. Ultimately, no independently existing essence can be found. Conventionally, phenomena appear, function, depend upon conditions, produce consequences, and can be valid or invalid, accurately or inaccurately understood.

The ultimate does not abolish the conventional, and the conventional does not establish intrinsic existence. John’s criticism of “one truth” is directed against presentations that reify appearances, dissolve them into an undifferentiated absolute, dismiss conventionality as meaningless, or make emptiness into the one reality that truly exists.

Doctrinal context: Scholarly treatments of Madhyamaka distinguish conventional truth—dependently arisen, transactionally effective phenomena—from ultimate analysis, which finds them empty of intrinsic nature. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the two truths in India.

19. Hidden inherent views concerning space, time, and boundaries

John insists that people think inherently even when they deny doing so philosophically. Space is imagined as an absolute container in which objects are placed. Time is imagined as a large stream moving in one direction, with people and events located inside it. Things are assumed to possess boundaries before entering relations, and subject and object are assumed to be separate before perception occurs.

These assumptions feel obvious because they are built into ordinary cognition and language. As long as practitioners deny holding them, they cannot learn. The assumptions must first become visible.

John’s phrases “relation without relata,” “designation without naming,” and “causal efficacy without intrinsic causal power” are meant to loosen this hidden framework. They are his explanatory formulations rather than standard translations of fixed classical expressions.

20. Deconstructing “I” and “mine”: possessive mineness and appropriation

John recalls an earlier exchange in which his intended statement was: “There is no ‘I,’ but there is still ‘mine.’” The supplied transcripts repeatedly rendered the last word as mind, but the surrounding discussion, John’s immediate explanation, and MMK 18.2 establish that the intended contrast is between I and mine.

The issue is therefore not that a personal self has disappeared while a metaphysical mind or consciousness remains. It is the subtler structure of possessive mineness: experience, realization, body, thought, view, or awareness may still be appropriated as “mine,” “for me,” or belonging to a self even when an overt personal agent is no longer found.

John connects this with MMK chapter 18, where the pacification of self and what belongs to self is linked with freedom from the senses of “I” and “mine.” He was especially struck by the further connection with grasping and conceptual elaboration. He says openly that he did not yet fully understand that connection, and this recognition showed him that his earlier understanding of anatta was incomplete.

Thus, the incompleteness is not merely that removing a personal “I” leaves an entity called mind. It is that I-making and mine-making are mutually supporting structures of appropriation, and both must be penetrated.

Textual verification: Niisaku’s study of MMK 18.2 renders the relevant expression as freedom from the sense of “mine” and the sense of “I” through the calming of the self and what belongs to the self. See Yoshiaki Niisaku, “Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Chapter 18, Verse 2 and the Prasannapadā’s Commentary Thereon”.

Part IV · Reading Nāgārjuna Without Falling into Negation

21. The MMK as a transformative exercise rather than a textbook

John says the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is difficult and may take years to understand. Unlike a textbook that simply supplies propositions, Nāgārjuna’s arguments challenge the reader’s basic assumptions.

John discusses the four alternatives of production: from self, from other, from both, and without cause. If something were produced from itself, production would be unnecessary because it would already exist as what it is. The remaining alternatives also become incoherent when cause and effect are assumed to exist inherently.

The point is not to deny conventional causation. The analysis demonstrates that inherently conceived production cannot be established in any of the four alternatives. The practitioner is meant to ask how functioning occurs when causes, effects, and causal powers are not independent substances—not to invent a hidden fifth kind of fundamental stuff.

22. The danger of relentless negation and attachment to groundlessness

One of John’s strongest warnings concerns a modern misuse of non-implicative negation. A practitioner learns to say that self, object, relation, concept, and every new formulation are empty. The practice becomes an automatic solvent: whatever appears is immediately negated.

John says that treating relentless negation as the way is “incurable.” It can create attachment to groundlessness, mere absence, indeterminacy, refusal to formulate anything, or the belief that freedom consists in dissolving every distinction. He regards this as nihilistic because it sees only half of the teaching.

The easy part is to see a formation and deny that it exists inherently. The difficult part is to see how the formation arises, how its conditions operate, how it functions, how it remains unfindable, and how that very functioning formation is empty. Emptiness of emptiness means that emptiness itself cannot become the final ground or absolute solvent.

23. Causal efficacy without inherent causal power

John repeatedly distinguishes causal efficacy from an intrinsic causal power. Phenomena can affect one another without containing a self-established power inside themselves. He uses the image of two phantom-like figures fighting in a dream. Neither possesses independent essence, yet within the dream one can strike and apparently injure the other.

The analogy preserves appearance, consequence, conditional functioning, and lack of intrinsic substance. John invokes Nāgārjuna’s response to the objection that emptiness would eliminate the Noble Truths and Buddhist practice. His interpretation is the reverse: if phenomena possessed fixed natures, transformation would be impossible. Because phenomena are empty, suffering can arise, conditions can change, practice can operate, and liberation can occur.

This is why the fact that things are empty enables interaction. The target is not causality but the idea of a causal power existing independently within a cause.

24. Conventionality becomes crucial when no substrate remains

John asks what becomes most important if there is no ultimate reality, substrate, essence, or independently existing thing. His answer is conventionality. This must not be dismissed as “only conventional.”

Conventional phenomena appear, function, matter, produce effects, and can be valid or invalid. Because no ultimate substrate lies underneath them, analysis does not reach a final non-conventional layer. The basis of one conventional account is another network of conventional conditions. There is no endpoint at which an independently existing entity is finally uncovered.

Ignorance consists in projecting inherence onto this conventional presentation—adding a self-existing core that is not there. The task is not to destroy conventional appearance but to empty the appearance of the inherence projected upon it. John considers Tsongkhapa especially clear in emphasizing the importance and validity of conventionality when no ultimate foundation is admitted.

25. Conceptuality, pure perception, and non-meditation

Once conventionality and emptiness are integrated, John says one no longer needs to fear either conceptuality or pure perception. Conceptual appearances include names, thoughts, interpretations, categories, and symbolic layering. Pure perception may involve luminous clarity with little obvious conceptual overlay.

Before emptiness is understood, a practitioner may privilege pure perception as closer to reality and reject conceptuality as contamination. This can reify luminous non-conceptual awareness. When both conceptual and non-conceptual appearances are understood as empty conventional presentations, neither must be absolutized nor rejected.

At this point the distinction between meditation and non-meditation no longer governs experience in the same way. This returns the discussion to John’s opening claim: non-meditation becomes possible when emptiness penetrates every form of appearance, not merely a privileged state of luminous consciousness.

Part V · Practice, Study, AI, and Publication Responsibility

26. What continues to drive John’s practice

Asked what he is trying to improve or maintain, John says he is not trying to preserve a special state. His phases of insight have been driven by what he does not understand.

Sincerity requires admitting confusion, investigating unresolved questions, exposing attachment, opening the body-mind, opening habitual thought, and allowing the framework of understanding to change. John calls opening oneself “the toughest thing in the world” and “the greatest art.”

The path does not end with one dramatic realization. Each genuine opening reveals further depth. Realizing that anatta and fluidity are insufficient leads to a deeper investigation of Nāgārjuna. Clearer understanding produces not complacency but humility, greater confidence in dependent arising and emptiness, deeper respect for the Buddha and great masters, and a more serious commitment to practice.

27. His reaction to Soh’s translation prompts

Near the end, John expresses admiration and amusement at the long development behind Soh’s translation prompts. He says that he likes the prompt and thinks it must have been developed over years.

John himself describes the prompt as ten or twenty pages, like an entire book, more than or almost one hundred pages, and possibly auto-self-generating. He says he has never seen a prompt of that length and was shocked when he saw it.

Comment by Soh: My automated AI workflow is doing work for me 24/7 even when I am away from the computer.

John’s substantive assessment remains positive: he considers the translation work and prompts useful and encourages the blog to focus on careful translation, while keeping his unfinished private video experiments from being circulated as public teaching.

Other participants supply most of the jokes about whether an AI can tolerate such an instruction, being treated like a feelingless robot, and the water and energy consumed by extensive AI use. The final encouragement to meditate and rest is also spoken by another participant after John says that he has to leave; it should not be attributed to John.

28. Refining right view so that experience can open further

In the later discussion, John advises a participant to refine the view and allow it to open. Right view is not an intellectual ornament added after experience. A dualistic and inherent framework conditions how reality appears; when the framework changes, experience also changes.

He warns against speaking prematurely of “no view.” One must first understand right view. Otherwise “no view” can serve as a slogan protecting assumptions that have never been examined.

He tells the participant that experiences and dreams of clarity are already present, but the view is weak. Greater confidence in the right view allows the mind and experience to open further and makes the practitioner less likely to misinterpret nondual or luminous experiences.

29. Mipham, Tsongkhapa, translation, and traditional anecdotes

John recommends serious engagement with Mipham and says that Mipham’s writings and the Madhyamaka polemics gave him many insights. During the exchange, the participants identify Karma Phuntsho’s Mipham’s Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness and Mipham’s Beacon of Certainty; the full book title is supplied by another participant while John recognizes and discusses the works.

John warns against casually calling Mipham a substantialist and says that how a passage sounds can depend heavily on the translator. He states that Mipham knows the MMK “inside out.” He also contrasts the Nyingma integration of luminous clarity with Tsongkhapa’s presentation, while repeatedly insisting that both Mipham and Tsongkhapa are extremely profound and should not be judged casually.

The extraordinary anecdotes are jointly produced and must not be assigned wholesale to John. Another participant makes the strong claim that Mipham could fly and leave footprints in stone. John explicitly qualifies this—“I don’t know whether he can fly or not”—and then relates a traditional story about Mipham’s master travelling to another realm and returning with an unfamiliar flower. John also says that Mipham translated many important works within days or weeks. The Natural History Museum joke and most of the ensuing Tsongkhapa retreat narrative come from the other participant.

Because these are conversational recollections without documentary support in the meeting, they should be presented as traditional anecdotes, not as verified historical findings.

Book verification: Karma Phuntsho’s official title is Mipham’s Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness: To Be, Not to Be or Neither. The other work is singular, Mipham’s Beacon of Certainty.

30. John’s qualified suggestion for using AI with difficult books

John—not another participant—suggests using Gemini or ChatGPT with a difficult book: upload the whole work and ask for a summary of a chapter or its main points. When asked whether the AI will do it properly, he immediately qualifies the suggestion: it cannot do the work very well, but it may provide enough initial understanding for the reader to proceed slowly into the text.

Another participant then raises the opposite concern—that material this important may be downplayed by Gemini—and says it is better to read the book directly. The exchange therefore presents two complementary cautions: AI may help with initial orientation, but it is unreliable as a substitute for close reading.

The surrounding jokes about ADHD, medication, dating, and reading one chapter a day are divided between John and another participant. They should not be converted into a single polished instructional method or attributed entirely to either speaker.

31. John’s selection of five core logics

John explains that his “five core logics” are a pedagogical selection from patterns running through the twenty-seven chapters of the MMK. He refers to a common grouping involving chapters 1, 2, 15, 18, and 24, then says he changed two selections in order to emphasize identity and infinite regress.

He clearly mentions chapter 10, but the other substituted chapter is not recoverable with confidence from the supplied transcript witnesses. A later line saying “chapter 5” in connection with svabhāva is almost certainly a dropped “1”: the same passage has just referred to chapter 15, and chapter 15 is the MMK chapter on intrinsic nature. The corrected transcript therefore records chapter 15 while disclosing the witness error.

John’s pedagogical reason is clearer than the exact list. Earlier phases of his framework already address presence and anatta, including the issues associated with chapter 18. He therefore wants the later analytical material to bring out additional problems of inherent identity, grounding, and regress rather than merely repeat the earlier emphasis.

32. Infinite regress, scientific “stuff,” and designation upon characteristics

John argues that infinite regress is particularly problematic for a substantialist framework. Explanation is repeatedly deferred: an object is explained by atoms, atoms by electrons, protons, and neutrons, those by quarks or deeper constituents, a creator by another creator, and a substrate by another substrate. The promised ground never actually explains what it was introduced to explain.

For a non-substantialist view, the absence of a final ground is not itself a defect. John says that names such as “atom,” “electron,” or “quark” can designate patterns of behaviour and characteristics rather than an unseen entity that houses those characteristics.

He adds that experimental inquiry measures characteristics through interaction among the observer, the device, and what is being measured; it does not simply reveal a bare thing in itself. He uses this as a philosophical illustration of dependent designation, not as a complete technical account of contemporary physics.

33. Niels Bohr and Karen Barad: corrected names, comparison, and conjecture

John speculates that Niels Bohr may have studied emptiness because he associates Bohr’s account of indeterminacy with the denial of intrinsic characteristics. Nothing in the transcript or the sources reviewed establishes that historical claim, so it must remain explicitly John’s conjecture.

John then connects Bohr with Karen Barad. The transcript’s garbled forms “Newborg” and “Karen Barat” are securely resolved as Niels Bohr and Karen Barad from the surrounding references to Einstein, the Copenhagen interpretation, agential realism, and intra-action.

Barad’s concept is a useful comparison because intra-action rejects the assumption that fully constituted relata must exist before their relation. The analogy should not be expanded into an assertion that agential realism and Madhyamaka are identical, or that Barad supplies the full meaning of Nāgārjuna.

Comparison verified: Scholarly descriptions of Barad’s intra-action explicitly state that relata do not pre-exist relations but emerge within specific intra-actions. See Jaksland, “Decoherence, appearance, and reality in agential realism”.

34. The organization of John’s video material and its AI-oriented component

John says the video material has been reorganized into five main parts. The recording clearly names decoding the view and understanding dependent origination, and it then groups axioms and mathematical formalization as material directed more toward AI and standardization across different LLMs. The audio does not permit a completely secure reconstruction of five separately titled categories, so the synopsis should not manufacture a precise five-item list.

John imagines loading an axiomatic representation of his framework into an LLM as a persona or analytical system. A proposition could then be checked for consistency, contradiction, reversal, or compatibility with the axioms.

This technical project is presented as distinct from, but related to, the experiential and philosophical explanation of anatta, emptiness, and dependent arising.

35. His reservations about public circulation of the videos

John is firm that his experimental videos should not be treated as finished public Buddhist teaching. He originally expected a small circle of roughly ten or twenty familiar people to see them. When views rose to about 220 or 228, apparently after wider sharing, he became concerned and considered making them private.

He describes the material as personal opinion, a personal journey, storage for ideas that may later become chapters, and experiments with AI-assisted presentation. He says some AI-produced material may be inaccurate, and that his non-orthodox phrases—such as “relation without relata” and “designation without naming and labelling”—require substantial explanation and can mislead when detached from context.

John explicitly says that he is not a teacher and that one cannot casually teach Buddhism. He prefers people to study the texts. His videos may serve as a limited reference or record of a personal journey—perhaps five or ten percent of someone’s study—not as a substitute for the sources. This final sentence is a faithful synthesis of several adjacent remarks rather than a verbatim quotation.

He would rather share the videos privately or through a restricted link with a small circle able to ask questions. He also emphasizes ownership and responsibility: it is his work, and the decision about whether and when it is ready for wider release belongs to him. His YouTube channel was partly personal storage and an AI testbed, so unrestricted reposting defeated the intended use.

Integrated account of John’s position

Direct realization of anatta can dissolve the personal agent and produce vivid nondual experience. Total exertion can reveal an event as the undivided manifestation of all its conditions. Neither guarantees that the practitioner’s framework has been transformed.

The mind may continue to reify consciousness, luminosity, fluid process, space, time, relations, causal power, or a subtle universal field. Madhyamaka analysis exposes why none can function as an independent substrate. A phenomenon cannot possess essence and still arise dependently; if its identity were fixed by itself, conditions could neither produce nor transform it.

Dependent designation shows that the conventional whole is not an entity added to its parts, conditions, functions, and manifestations. Relation does not require ready-made relata standing outside the relation. Causal efficacy does not require a causal substance hidden inside a cause.

Yet emptiness does not eliminate appearance. Phenomena remain conventionally valid and functional. The absence of ultimate foundation makes conventionality more important, not less. Ultimately phenomena are empty and unfindable; conventionally they appear, function, and arise dependently.

Mere negation sees only the first side and risks nihilism. Substantialism sees only the second and mistakes conventional function for inherent existence. When both dimensions are integrated, neither conceptuality nor non-conceptual luminous clarity must be reified or rejected. Meditation and ordinary life no longer constitute inherently separate domains, while formal meditation, inquiry, and disciplined practice continue.

John’s governing principle is sincerity. One should be driven not by the desire to preserve an attainment but by what remains misunderstood. Every unresolved contradiction becomes material for contemplation, analysis, and further opening. The result is increasing humility, deeper respect for the Buddhist masters, and a more serious commitment to practice.

Sources and verification scope

The meeting transcripts control what was said; no public source can resolve speaker identity. Public sources were consulted only to verify names, titles, textual references, and the limits of historical claims. They do not certify John’s interpretations, realization claims, or the truth of traditional anecdotes.

Watch and listen: John Tan on dependent arising and emptiness

The companion collection gathers John Tan’s videos and audios on right view, phase six, dependent designation, relations without relata, causal efficacy, the five MMK deconstruction logics, and why mere negation is inadequate.

YouTube Videos and Audios by John Tan: Union of Dependent Arising and Emptiness

Prepared from the supplied 27 June 2026 Zoom transcript. This is a comprehensive synopsis, not a verbatim transcript.

Sunday, November 02, 2025

Experience, Realization, View, Practice, and Fruition (Revised)

By Soh

Experience, Realization, View, Practice & Fruition

By Soh
中文翻译：体验/觉受、证悟、见地、修行与果位

(Note: This article was originally written in 2011 when I was 21. It has been lightly edited for English flow in 2025.)

Here's something I just added to my e-book.

I was trained in these three aspects and John Tan (Thusness) asked me to write something clearer about 'experience, realization and view', and synchronistically I actually had the same thought on that day. I think I'm going to add this as one of those preface chapters before I start with the journal section in my e-book.

So the three aspects I'm talking about are:

The Experience
The Realization
The Implications of View

However, for the sake of this article and benefit for readers, I will add two more:

The Practice
The Result/Fruition

I put Practice after the first three instead of dealing with practice in the first part because I want people to know what they are doing their practice for, the reason why they are doing those practices, how those practices result in realization, and their effects on View. You will understand as you read further.

This article documents my insight, experience, and journey. Even though whatever I said is authentic, spoken from experience, and accurate, it is not meant to be an authoritative map for everyone. Not everyone goes through these insights in the same linear fashion (for instance, the Buddha only taught people to realize Anatta and Shunyata in the traditional Pali texts and did not talk about Self-Inquiry or I AM/Self-Realization, even though the luminous mind is spoken of). However, it is true that all traditions of Buddhism (provided that there is right guidance and training) will eventually result in these various kinds of insights and experience, despite going through a different path or practice.

It should also be understood that when people talk about "no-self", it could imply a number of things... from impersonality, to non-dual, to Anatta. In the worst case, it is being misunderstood as dissociation (I, the observer, dissociate from phenomena as not myself). Therefore, we should always understand the context of 'no self' that is being said by the practitioner or person and not always assume that the 'no self' must be the same as the 'no self' you have in mind. Due to lack of clarity, very often 'Anatta' is confused with 'impersonality', or 'Anatta' with 'non-duality'. They are not the same even if there may be overlaps or aspects of each in one's experience. One must be careful to distinguish them and not confuse one with another.

I would also like to quote from a forum post Thusness made in 2010 which I feel is quite important to understand:

"...there exist a predictable relationship between the 'mental object to be de-constructed' and 'the experiences and realizations'... As a general guideline:

1. If you de-construct the subjective pole, you will be led to the experience of No-Mind.
2. If you de-construct the objective pole, you will be led to the experience of One-Mind.
3. If you go through a process of de-constructing prepositional phrases like 'in/out', 'inside/outside', 'into/onto', 'within/without', 'here/there', you will dissolve the illusionary nature of locality and time.
4. If you simply go through the process of self-enquiry by disassociation and elimination without clearly understanding the non-inherent and dependent originated nature of phenomena, you will be led to the experience of 'I AMness'.

Lastly, not to talk too much about self-liberation or the natural state, it can sound extremely misleading... we have to understand that to even come to this realization of the “Simplicity of What Is”, a practitioner will need to undergo a painstaking process of de-constructing the mental constructs. We must be deeply aware of the ‘blinding spell’ in order to understand consciousness…"

1. The Experience

I will now start explaining 'experience'. There are a number of important experiences related to our true nature:

1. Pure Presence/Witness

This is the case when practitioners have experienced a pure radiance of presence and awareness in the gap between two thoughts. Having recognised this pure presence-awareness, one tries to sustain this recognition in daily life. In daily life, one may sense this as a background witnessing presence, a space-like awareness in the background of things. It is felt to be something stable and unchanging, though we often lose sight of it due to fixation on the contents of experience or thoughts (like focusing on the drawing and losing sight of the canvas). This is related to the 'I AM', but still, this is the experience, not the realization.

Impersonality

This is the case when practitioners experience that everything is an expression of a universal cosmic intelligence. There is therefore no sense of a personal doer... rather, it feels like "I" and everything is being lived by a higher power, being expressed by a higher cosmic intelligence. But this is still dualistic – there is still this sense of separation between a 'cosmic intelligence' and the 'world of experience', so it is still dualistic.

I experienced impersonality after the I AM realization, however, some people experience it before I AM realization. Theistic Christians may not have I AM realization (it depends), however through their surrendering to Christ, they can drop their sense of personal doership and experience the sense of 'being lived by Christ', as in Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." This is an experience of impersonality that may or may not come with the realization of I AM. And as Sailor Bob Adamson said, "That separate entity, the belief in that entity or person, has never done a damn thing! It never can and never will. You must realize that you have been lived. That body-mind that you call 'you' is being lived, and it is being lived quite effortlessly. As Christ said, 'Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?' That separate entity can’t do a bloody thing."

It should be noted that impersonality is not just an experience of non-doership. It is the dissolving of the construct of 'personal self' that leads to a purging of ego effect to a state of clean, pure, not-mine sort of "perception shift", accompanied with a sense that everything and everyone is being an expression of the same aliveness/intelligence/consciousness. This can then be easily extrapolated into a sense of a 'universal source' (but this is merely an extrapolation and at a later phase is deconstructed) and one will also experience 'being lived' by this greater Life and Intelligence.

Impersonality will help dissolve the sense of self but it has the danger of making one attached to a metaphysical essence or to personify, reify and extrapolate a universal consciousness. It makes a practitioner feel "God". At this phase, it is good to focus on this impersonal and universal aspect of consciousness, but beware of the tendency to extrapolate.

2. Non-dual into One Mind

Where subject and object division collapsed into a single seamless experience of one Naked Awareness. There is a difference between a temporary non-dual experience and non-dual insight. Explained later.

3. No-Mind

Where even the naked Awareness is totally forgotten and dissolved into simply scenery, sound, arising thoughts and passing scent. This is the experience of Anatta, but not the realization of Anatta. Explained later.

4. Sunyata (Emptiness)

It is when the 'self' is completely transcended into dependently originated activity. The play of dharma. There is a difference between this as a peak experience and the realization of emptiness/dependent origination. Explained later.

2. The Realization

Next is the 'Realization':

1. The Realization of I AM

Having an experience of witnessing, or a state of pure presence, is not the same as having attained the doubtless self-realization - in that case, the practitioner can be said to have an experience, but not insight/realization. I have had experiences of Presence and Witnessing consciousness since 2007, but not the realization until February 2010 after almost two years of self-inquiry practice.

Also just to be clear: the 'I AM' that Nisargadatta mentions is not the same as the 'I AM' as defined by me and Thusness. For me and Thusness, 'I AM' refers to the doubtless apprehension of Awareness, doubtless Self-Realization. Just so you know... many people use terms differently. Nisargadatta's 'I AM' is more related to Ramana Maharshi's I-thought, the root thought or the Aham Vritti. When you have seen that Aham Vritti, continue inquiring into the Source of that – Who is it that Witnesses the sense of self? And continuing to ask "Who am I?", "Who is the source of that?", eventually the 'I thought' will vanish and the Source will be realized. This Source that I call “Realization of I AM” is not to be confused with Nisargadatta’s “I AM” or Ramana’s “Aham Vritti”.

Self-realization is attained when there is a complete certainty of Being - an unshakeable and doubtless realization of Pure Presence-Existence or Consciousness or Beingness or Existence as being one's true identity. You clearly see that you are not a machine, you are nothing inert, you are not just an inert or dead corpse but you are pure Existence, Consciousness Itself. There is nothing clearer or undoubtable or irrefutable than You! Eureka. Without this quality of 'unshakeable certainty', whatever experiences one has cannot be considered as a realization.

One realizes the luminous essence of mind but is unable to see it as all manifestations under differing conditions (that would be non-dual realization and beyond). Yes, this luminous essence is experienced as a non-dual, non-conceptual, direct, immediate mode of perception (NDNCDIMOP) and is a Self-Knowing Consciousness (the Presence is itself its Knowing, there is no separate knower of its presence). Yes, in this moment of Beingness, there is no thought, and not even any sense of self. It is all-pervasive and limitless, and is often described as being like a raindrop (sense of individuality) dissolving into the ocean - one identifies oneself AS this infinite Presence, and in this infinite oceanic Presence there can be no sense of individuality (especially when this phase of experience and realization has matured in terms of intensity and impersonality). However, as Thusness puts it:

"The sense of 'Self' must dissolve in all entry and exit points. In the first stage of dissolving, the dissolving of 'Self' relates only to the thought realm. The entry is at the mind level. The experience is the 'AMness'. Having such experience, a practitioner might be overwhelmed by the transcendental experience, attached to it and mistaken it as the purest stage of consciousness, not realizing that it is only a state of 'no-self' relating to the thought realm."

The sense of 'Self' dissolves in all sense doors and experiences (in seeing just the seen without seer, in hearing just sound no hearer, in thinking just thought but no thinker, etc) when Anatta is realized as 'nature', as a dharma seal. This is discussed later.

In this phase of insight (I AMness) one sees all thoughts and experiences as coming from and subsiding within this Ground of Being, but the Beingness as a noumenon is unaffected by the comings and goings of phenomena, like the movie images passing through the screen, or the waves coming and going within an unchanging ocean. Seeing a subtle distinction between the Noumenal and Phenomenal, one clings to the pure thoughtless beingness (which is non-conceptual thought) as one's purest identity, as if it is the true unchanging self or ground Behind all things - one clings to a formless background source or witness of phenomena.

Since the view of duality and inherency is strong, Awareness is seen as an eternal witnessing presence, a pure formless perceiving subject. Therefore even though the I AM experience is itself non-dual, one still clings to a dualistic view which therefore affects the way we perceive reality and the world. This dualistic framework distorts a non-dual experience by clinging or reifying that experience into an ultimate Background which is merely an image of a previous non-dual experience made into a Self, ultimate and unchanging. So it is being perceived/conceived that "I am here," as an eternal unchanging Witness/Watcher of passing thoughts and feelings. The “I” simply witnesses but is not affected by, nor judges the thoughts/perceptions that are experienced - nonetheless there is a separation between the Observer and the Observed. A true experience is being distorted by the mind's tendency at projecting duality and inherency (to things, self, awareness, etc).

Also, in my experience, the I AM experience after the initial realization is tainted with a slight sense of personality and locality. That is, even though the mind knows how to experience Presence beyond all concepts, the mind still cannot separate Presence from that slight and subtle sense of personality. It wasn't until about two months after the realization, that the sense of a localized witness completely dissolved into a non-localized, impersonal space of witnessing-awareness-presence (but still dualistic and 'background'). At this level, the I AM is separated from Personality, and it is seen as if everything and everyone in the world share the same source or same space, like if a vase breaks, the air inside the vase completely merges with the air of the entire environment such that there is no sense of a division between an 'inside space' or an 'outside space', such that everything shares the same space, as an analogy of all-pervading presence. Because of the dissolving of the personal construct, it seems that myself and the chair and the dog equally 'share' the same space, the same source, the same substance of consciousness. Actually it is not that one "merges", but one Realizes that one IS the infinite self and not a small enclosed self.

2. The Realization of Non-Dual, into One Mind

Having an experience of non-duality is not the same as having a realization... for example, you may have a temporary experience where the sense of separation between experiencer and experience suddenly and temporarily dissolves or there is the sense that subject and object has merged... temporarily. I had such experiences since 2006 (I had a number of similar experiences in the years following, differing in intensity and length). The first time I had it was when looking at a tree - at that point the sense of an observer suddenly disappeared into oblivion and there is just the amazing greenery, the colours, shapes, and movement of the tree swaying with the wind with an amazingly intense clarity and aliveness as if every leaf on the tree is crystal-like. This had a lot of 'Wow' factor to it because of the huge contrast between the Self-mode of experience and the No-Self mode of experience (imagine dropping a one-ton load off your shoulders, the huge contrast makes you go "Wow!"). This is not yet the realization of non-duality... the realization that separation has been false right from the beginning... there never was separation.

When non-dual realization (that there never was subject-object duality) arises, non-dual experience becomes effortless and has a more ordinary, mundane quality to it (even though not any less rich or intense or alive). Everywhere I go, it is just this sensate world presenting itself in an intimate, non-dual, clean, perfect, wonderful way, something that 'I' cannot 'get out of' even if I wanted to because there is simply no illusion and sense of self/Self that could get out of this mode of perceiving, and there is nothing I needed to do to experience that (i.e. effortless), something that has no entry and exit. In the absence of the 'huge contrast' effected in a short glimpse of non-dual experience prior to insight, there is less of the 'Wow' factor, more of being ordinary, mundane, and yet no less magnificent and wonderful.

At this stage, you also become doubtless that the taste of luminosity experienced in I AM is exactly the same taste in all six entries - sights, sounds, smell, taste, touch, thought. So now you realize the "one taste of luminosity" and effortlessly experience pure luminosity and presence-awareness in and as the transience (a note however: the ‘one taste’ spoken in Mahamudra tradition is not just one taste of luminosity but the one taste of the union of luminosity and emptiness). You realize that the I AM (non-conceptual thought) that you realized and experienced is simply luminosity and NDNCDIMOP (non-dual, non-conceptual, direct, immediate mode of perception) in one particular state or manifestation or realm, by no means the totality. By not realizing this you reified one state into the purest and most ultimate identity, and thus you no longer "choose" or have "preference" on a purer state of presence to abide, since you see that I AM is no more I AM than a transient sound or sight or thought; everything shares the same taste of luminosity/awareness, and of non-duality. Here the tendency to refer back to a background is reduced as a result of this seeing.

Hence merely having temporary non-dual samadhis are not enlightenment... why? The realization that there never was separation to begin with hasn't arisen. Therefore you can only have temporary glimpses and experiences of non-dual... where the latent dualistic tendencies continue to surface... and not have seamless, effortless seeing.

And even after seeing through this separation, you may have the realization of non-dual but still fall into substantial non-duality, or One Mind. Why? This is because though we have overcome the bond of duality, our view of reality is still seeing it as 'inherent'. Our view or framework has it that reality must have an inherent essence or substance to it, something permanent, independent, ultimate. So though everything is experienced without separation, the mind still can't overcome the idea of a source.

Certain contemplations like "Where does Awareness end and manifestation begin?" are helpful for challenging and breaking through the dualistic view of Awareness as a watcher of manifestation, until we see clearly there is no real demarcation of 'inside' and 'outside', 'subject' and 'object', 'perceiver' and 'perceived'. Without an artificial dualistic boundary yet with an inherent view of Awareness, Awareness and manifestation become seen as an indistinguishable and inseparable oneness like the surface of a bright mirror and its reflections – can’t say the mirror is this and the reflection another. In One Mind, seer and seen are one inseparable seeing, one naked awareness – it is the inseparability of seer and seen instead of realizing no subject, no agent, no observer.

There is no overcoming the idea of an ultimate metaphysical essence, something unchanging and ultimate, even with insight into the non-duality of subject and object. With this view of inherency, Awareness is seen as inherent, even though previously it was as if things were happening 'In' Awareness but now all manifestations ARE Awareness, or rather, Awareness is manifesting 'AS' everything (rather than things happening 'IN' Awareness which would be dualistic). Awareness is not apart from manifestation. Here it is seen that "All is Mind" - everything is You! The trees, the mountains, the rivers, all You and yet not You - no duality or division of subject and object.

At this phase, subject and object are seen to be indivisible by collapsing all manifestations into the One Subject/One Awareness/One Mind. Therefore the mind keeps coming back to a 'source', a 'One Naked Awareness', a 'One Mind' which manifests as the many, and is unable to breakthrough but finds the constant need to rest in an ultimate reality in which everything is a part of... a Mind, an Awareness, a Self.... Or one tries to be non-dual by attempts to reconfirm the non-dual or one mind (thinking the sound and sights is You, trying to subsume everything into Mind, trying to be nondual with or intimate with sights and sounds) which is another form of effort arising due to ignorance – the ignorance of the fact of anatta that always already, seeing is just the seen, no seer, and therefore no effort or attempts to reconfirm are necessary. All effort is due to the illusion of ‘self’.

What this results in is a subtle tendency to cling, to sink back to a ground, a source, or attempt to reconfirm, and so transience cannot be fully and effortlessly appreciated for what it is. It is an important phase however, as for the first time phenomena are no longer seen as 'happening IN Awareness' but 'happening AS Awareness' – Awareness is its object of perception (or rather, all objects of perceptions are subsumed to be Awareness itself), Awareness is expressing itself as every moment of manifest perception.

It should be understood that even in this phase, at the peak of One Mind, one will have glimpses of No Mind as temporary peak experiences where the source/Awareness is temporarily forgotten into 'just the scenery, the taste, the sound, etc'. Very often, people try to master the state of No Mind without realizing Anatta, thus no fundamental transformation of view can occur.

Since no fundamental change in view has taken place (the view is still of 'inherent Source/Self'), one can still fall back from that peak experience and reference back to the One Awareness. That is, until you see that the idea itself is merely a thought, and everything is merely thoughts, sights, sounds, disjoint, disperse, insubstantial, ephemeral, bubble-like. There, a change of view takes place... the result of:

3. The Realization of Anatta

Here, experience remains non-dual but without the view of 'everything is inside me/everything is an expression of ME/everything is ME' but 'there is just thoughts, sight, sound, taste' – just manifestation.

More precisely (as it is realized for me in October 2010 when I was doing Basic Military Training): in that moment of seeing, you realize that the seeing is JUST the experience of scenery! There is no 'seer is seeing the scenery' - the view of 'seer seeing the seen' is completely eradicated by the realization that 'in seeing ALWAYS just the seen, Seeing is just the seen'. In seeing, always just the shapes, colours, forms, textures, details of manifestation. The illusion of agency is seen through forever. This is not merely the subject-object, seer-seen, awareness-content inseparability of One Mind but seeing the emptiness of an inherent Self/Awareness, it is seeing through the need to posit a subjective essence as there isn’t any. It is no longer the ‘seamlessness, indistinguishability and inseparability between the bright mirror and its reflections’, it is seeing that there is no mirror, there is no observer, needless to speak about the inseparability of an observer and its display. Instead, there is simply the flow of observing/observed as a verb, as action, as manifestation, nothing about a source or agent – nothing unchanging, no background reality that is inseparable from the foreground.

It is seen very clearly in Anatta that all views and notions of consciousness/super-consciousness having some independent or unchanging true existence is not true, awareness is simply the quality of the transient sensate world, it is intrinsically self-luminous or self-aware but does not exist as some independent unchanged substratum, background, source, etc. Of course, without awareness, there is nothing made manifest. But it is not "awareness, therefore sensation". It is "awareness-sensation", "awareness-world". Prior and after (false construct of time) doesn't apply so the source-emanation analogy does not apply. The three kayas are a single co-arising. Source/awareness goes with transience like wetness goes with water. They are not even inseparable, they are synonymous. In seeing there is only/just the seen. To speak of water is to speak of wetness, to speak of sensations is to speak of luminosity, just as to speak of wind is to speak of blowing. Both are words but just points to the single flow of empty-luminosity, as just this action, just this activity (but not some One Mind/source and substratum of phenomena).

BUT... this is not the end of story for Anatta and no-agency. The initial entry into Anatta for me was the aspect of Thusness's Second Stanza of Anatta, however the First Stanza was not as clear for me at the moment (for some people, they enter through the first stanza, but for me and those focusing on non-dual luminosity, insight comes through second stanza first).

A few months later, even though it has already been seen that ‘seeing is always the sights, sounds, colours and shapes, never a seer’, I began to notice this subtle remaining tendency to cling to a Here and Now. Somehow, I still want to return to a Here, a Now, like 'The actual world right here and now', which I can 'ground myself in', like I needed to ground in something truly existing, like I needed to return to being actual, here, now, whatever you want to call it. At that point when I detected this subtle movement I instantly recognised it to be illusory and dropped it, however I still could not find a natural resolution to that.

Until, shortly maybe two weeks later, a deeper insight arose and I saw how Here/Now or something I can ground myself in doesn't apply when the "brilliant, self-luminous, vivid, alive, wonderful textures and forms and shapes and colours and details of the universe", all sense perceptions and thoughts, are in reality insubstantial, groundless, ephemeral, disjoint, unsupported and spontaneous, there was a deeper freedom and effortlessness. It is this insight into all as insubstantial, ephemeral, bubble-like, disjoint manifestations that allows this overcoming of a subtle view of something inherent. There is no observer observing something changing: simply that the "sensate world" is simply these disjoint manifestations without anything linking each sensation to another, without some inherent ground that could link manifestations, so manifestations are 'scattered'.

Prior to this insight, there isn't the insight into phenomena as being 'scattered' without a linking basis (well there already was but it needs refinement)... the moment you say there is an ‘Actual World Here/Now’, or a Mind, or an Awareness, or a Presence that is constant throughout all experiences, that pervades and arise as all appearances, you have failed to see the 'no-linking', 'disjointed', 'unsupported' nature of manifestation – an insight which breaks a subtle clinging to an inherent ground, resulting in greater freedom.

This opens the way to the experience of the self-release of everything – spontaneous, disjoint, self-releasing without any linkage. One also begins to understand Zen Master Dogen’s doctrine – that firewood is a complete and whole dharma-position of firewood, ash is a complete and whole dharma-position of ash, it is not that firewood turns into ashes. Similarly awareness does not turn into world nor is there an awareness which emanates world. Each manifestation is a whole and complete awareness-world with no before and after, disjoint and self-liberating upon its inception.

Only one who realizes Anatta and thus becoming a stream winner (Sotappana) will start to understand the purpose of Buddhist practice.

4. The Realization of Emptiness (Shunyata)

Effectively with the realization of Anatta, the substantiality of any self/Self is totally seen through. There is no such thing as a 'self' or an ultimate 'Self' with the capital S at all - always, in seeing just sights, in hearing only sounds, in sensing - just tactile sensations. Manifesting and liberating upon inception... moment by moment. Once seen, there is no longer any more clinging to some ultimate Source or metaphysical essence/substance. Instead, one finds delight in the direct revelation of the sensate world moment by moment, seeing, hearing, tasting, all wonderful, all marvellous, how alive... words can never capture it, the practitioner is no longer concerned with concepts and contents, but instead 'grooves' in the minutest details of every sensation. Freedom from sense of self/Self is very freeing and blissful.

However, having said so much, there is a danger of reifying the sensate world into an actual, substantial, tangible, inherently existing objective universe. This is the phase after the realization of Anatta, and before the realization of Shunyata. At this phase, it is as Thusness has said:

"Before the insight anatta first arose, you still risked the danger of seeing the physical as inherent and truly existing. Therefore there is a period that you are lost, unsure and AF [Actualism/Actual Freedom - a teaching that aims to eradicate all sense of self/Self and emotions] seems appealing - a sign that you have not extended the insight of emptiness to phenomena though you kept saying twofold emptiness."

And after Shunyata it is more like:

"There is just aggregates that are like foams, bubbles, ethereal having all the same taste without substantiality and implicitly non-dual. No sense of body, mind and the world, nothing actual or truly there."

So what is the realization of Shunyata?

When observing a thought in the beginning of June 2011, observing where it came from, where it goes to, where it stays, it's discovered (again, a eureka moment) that the thought is utterly illusory (and likewise all forms and sense perception are the same)! Empty! No-arising, no-staying, no-cessation! Insubstantial! Coreless! Substanceless! Hollow! Unlocatable! Without an origin! Without a destination! Cannot be pinned down! Cannot be grasped! Cannot be found! And yet, as empty as it is, still, like a magician's trick, an apparition, an illusion, vividly manifesting due to interdependent origination out of nowhere, in nowhere! How amazing it is! A sense of wonder and bliss arose in light of this realization, a newfound freedom and liberation.

It should be understood that everything is dream-like, mind-only, in the sense of Emptiness is not the same as Substantial Non-duality of One Mind.

It is now seen that everything is really no different from a thought - as in as baseless and empty as a projected thought like a dream, though it doesn't literally mean everything (including sense perceptions) are mere figment of imagination or projection (if you stop thinking, illusory perceptions still manifest due to natural dependent origination). Since everything is dream-like and illusory, they are fundamentally no different from a thought or a dream, and it is in this sense we can say that everything is mind-only. So all is mind in terms of emptiness signifies this dreamlike nature, vastly different from all is mind from a substantialist perspective.

So in short, there is a very big difference between substantialist non-dual of One-Mind and what I said here. In this experience, there is no background reality. It is NOT 'The world is illusory, only Brahman is Real'. It is not about the background Awareness (there is no awareness apart from manifestation!) but rather the foreground aggregates that I am talking about - A thought. Everything is as insubstantial and illusory as a thought or a dream. There is just the aggregates that are like foams, bubbles, ethereal, having all the same taste (of luminosity and emptiness) without substantiality and implicitly non-dual. No sense of body, mind and the world, nothing actual or truly there or here.

Also, it is crucial to understand the transition from Anatta to Emptiness involves a deepening of insight regarding reification. As John Tan pointed out to me in a conversation from 2022:

John Tan: Still only anatta then pure appearances as one's radiance clarity. That will not lead you to the insight of emptiness. You need two more insights, what are those?

Soh Wei Yu: Whatever dependently originates are non arising... everything is like chariot... Anatta is before emptiness. But it sees through inherent view of awareness and background...

John Tan: If you stay at this... then you only know "oh, there is no self" and all your focus is on eliminating self, it will not lead to emptiness.

The insight of Anatta leads to seeing consciousness as a construct, similar to the "weather." When you understand Anatta, you realize awareness is like "weather" - it is a label to denote this luminous yet empty arising (rain, clouds, wind), which are pure aggregates. We feel the wind and the blowing, but when we look at language and mistake verbs for nouns, we reify "Weather" into an entity. Similarly, seeing through the background and inherent existence of awareness leads to the direct taste of manifestation, but one must extend this to seeing through the constructs of objects—seeing that "flower" and "redness" deconstruct into vivid, non-referential empty clarity-appearance. Like red is no longer mistaken to be "redness of a flower" as an object; the redness and flower deconstruct into mere vivid red.

3. The Implications of View

The implication of views wasn’t very clear to me until more recent months (some time after I realized Anatta and Shunyata), when I began to see that what was causing grasping, clinging, the wrong way of perception, sense of self and so on was actually the latent view of inherency and duality. Even though previously realizations had arisen which had clearly done damage to such views, the impact of views in our experience and living wasn’t fully clear until more recently.

What is view? View is a deeply held notion, belief, position, stance, with regards to the reality of self and objects. This view has direct implications on how we view things - how we form a mental conception of self and things which causes grasping and contraction. When you want to cut ignorance, you go for cutting its roots, not its leaves and branches. In this analogy, sense of self/Self is its manifest form (leaves and branches) in the form of a sense of contraction, alienation and self-grasping in the form of craving and emotions, while the latent view is its roots.

This is why we cannot successfully get rid of the sense of self/Self by will and effort without effectively cutting off self-view from its root through a paradigm shift via realization. There are times of peak experiences which everyone has been through some time in their lives (usually in childhood) where the sense of a self/Self goes into temporary abeyance and there is just the sensate world, magnificent and wonderful, untainted by any sense of self or emotional contents, just the pristine purity and clarity of the sensate world at large. Yet most of us tend to forget those moments, and continue our lives not transformed by such experiences at all. Why is that so? Our self-view is intact, and no amount of glimpses of PCE (Pure Consciousness Experience) or NDNCDIMOP (non-dual, non-conceptual, direct, immediate mode of perception) is fundamentally going to transform us unless we cut off the roots of ignorance.

Self and Phenomena as a Learnt, Reified Concept

Recently John Tan asked me to recall when did I realise that 'self' is a learnt and reified concept. Wanted to mention that this is an important point and even in initial anatta breakthrough it is usually unclear at first. It comes as a deepening of insight.

At the I AM level, the personal ego is seen to be “learnt” and dropped... but all self/Self is only seen through and dropped at Anatta.

However, John Tan corrected me: "I don't think this is true. Think deeper, recall. You must understand that you can enquiry "who am I" and search for "I", you can have experience of "I AM" or even experience no-mind, or even realized that "I" does not exist, but still not realized that "I" is a reified concept."

I replied: ““I” as reified concept probably becomes clearer as I contemplated more on emptiness. But even in the initial Bahiya Sutta realization, there was a recognition that the sense of a seer or a seeing or awareness behind or beside manifestation is a reified concept that is wrong. That it is imagined and abstracted out of manifestation due to false view and then Anatta is immediately authenticated as luminous manifestation and realised as always already so. Seeing is only ever the seen and no other seer beside, in the seen only the seen. Like putting on glasses and vision is corrected finally.”

John said: “Yes, you realized "self/Self" is learnt, there is no self. A reified mental construct, a named thing mistaken as real. Then you extend that insight to all phenomena. A thorough de-construction of inherentness on all aspects of named things in which “觉” (Awareness) is one of such phenomena/dharma only, although a very crucial one. All these deal directly with alaya in "uprooting" ignorance.”

The View of Existence ("There Is") and Non-Existence ("There Isn't")

I have just come to a new realisation in mid 2011 on the implications of views in daily life. I now see that every single attachment is an attachment to view, which, no matter what it is, comes to two basic clinging: the view 'there is' and the view 'there isn't'.

The view of There is.... Self, body, mind, awareness, world, whatever. Because of this clinging on to things as existent, they appear real to us and we cling to them. The only way to eradicate such clingings is to remove the root of clinging: the view of 'there is' and 'there isn't'.

The realization of Anatta removes the view of 'there is self', 'there is awareness' as an independent and permanent essence. Basically, any views about a subjective self is removed through the insight that "seeing is just the seen", the subject is always only its objective constituents. There is no more sense of self, body, awareness, or more precisely there is no clinging to a "there is" with regards to such labels. It is seen that these are entirely ungraspable processes. In short, the clinging and constant referencing to an awareness, a self dissolves, due to the notion "there is" such things are being eradicated.

The realization of dream-like reality removes the view of 'there are objects', the universe, the world of things... One realizes what the Heart Sutra meant by no five skandhas. This is basically the same realization as Anatta, except that it impacts the view "there is" and "there isn't" in terms of the objective pole, in contrast to the earlier insight that dissolves "there is" of a subjective self.

As Loppon Namdrol (Dzogchen teacher Acarya Malcolm Smith) states: "At base, the main fetter of self-grasping is predicated upon naive reification of existence and non-existence. Dependent origination is what allows us to see into the non-arising nature of dependently originated phenomena, i.e. the self-nature of our aggregates. Thus, right view is the direct seeing, in meditative equipoise, of this this non-arising nature of all phenomena."

Let me offer something for you to think about: every day we go into a state of deep sleep where all our beliefs, concepts, views, thoughts are temporarily suspended. But when we wake up, what happens? We are as ignorant as ever. Our framework of viewing self and reality is still the same. We still experience the same problems, the same sufferings, the same afflictions. This analogy should clearly show you that sustaining a state of non-conceptuality or mastering a state of 'forgetting the self' is not going to result in a fundamental change or transformation or effortless seeing, unless true wisdom and insight arises.

I shall offer two more analogies which are related: a person deluded as to see a rope as a snake, will live in fear, trying to tame the snake, trying to get rid of the snake, escape from the snake. Maybe he has managed a way to distance himself from the snake, yet the belief that the snake is still there is nevertheless going to haunt him. Even if he managed to master the state of forgetting the snake, he is nonetheless in a state of delusion. He has not seen as it truly is: the snake is simply a rope.

In another analogy, the child believes in the existence of Santa Claus and awaits eagerly for arrival of his presents on Christmas day. One day the parents decide that it's time the child be told the truth about Santa Claus. To do this, beating the hell out of the child is not going to work. You simply need to tell the child that Santa Claus doesn't truly exist. In these analogies, I try to showcase how trying to deal with the problem of false views through means of 'forgetting conceptuality, forgetting the self' is as useless or deluded as 'trying to forget the snake, trying to tame the snake, trying to beat the hell out of the child' when the simple, direct and only true solution is only to realize that there is only a rope, and that Santa Claus isn't real. Only Awakening liberates us from a bondage that is without basis. A ‘self’ was never truly there to begin with, so why are you trying so hard to get rid of it? Simply stop conceiving that there is one. But you cannot help but conceive a self until the doubtless realization of Anatta arises which erases our false view.

There are two kinds of views (with sub categories):

1. View of Subject-Object Duality

The view of subject-object duality is prevalent in everyone prior to nondual realization. If you have not realized I AM, this duality is felt as a sense of alienation, separation, distance, between I as a subjective perceiver inside my head looking at the world 'outside' from a distance.

2. View of Inherency

The view of inherency is twofold: the view that a subjective self [whether personal or universal], and the view that objects/phenomena have intrinsic, objective substantiality (whether gross such as 'a tree', or subtle, such as elemental existence of atoms).

All metaphysical views come down to 'is' or 'is not'. Either something exists, or something does not exist. The former is eternalism, the latter is nihilism. Both views are extremes and to be rejected according to Buddha.

4. The Practice

I think the topic of Practice is dealt with more in-depth in other sections of the e-book, therefore I am going to skim through this portion here.

There are many kinds of practices one can engage in in order to give rise to realization. There are neo-Advaita teachers who teach that "no practice is necessary, no realization is needed", I call bullshit to that. As long as ignorance, false view of reality is in effect, we are going to experience suffering, afflictive emotions, sense of self, self-contraction and all that. Even though there never was truly a self and all these are a result of pure delusion, nonetheless, unless we wake up, we can never be liberated from suffering. There are "pure now-ists" that say, all thoughts of awakening are a dream, your true self is fully evident Here and Now. Well that's ok as a pointer - but to take it as a suggestion that no practice or no realization is necessary? Bullshit again, and even though your true nature is fully evident in the present, unless you realize it, it is as useless as a diamond hidden under a beggar’s pillow unnoticed - the beggar is still going to be poor, perhaps for his entire life, which is tragic to say the least.

There are many neo-Advaita teachers who basically teach that "seeking after enlightenment is simply the delusion that there is a seeker and a thing apart from a seeker to be sought, therefore it is dualistic". But the problem is that seeking WILL continue as long as you have not realized that there is no you. In other words, it is not through force, will, or intention that seeking and the delusion of a seeker ends.

How does seeking end? Only by the realization that always already, there is no you, and no 'thing' apart from you that can be sought - reality never had a subject and object dichotomy. The 'self' is a mere delusion... there is just the spontaneous perfection of the inseparability of awareness-emptiness AS all appearances, all happenings. When this is seen, naturally the seeking falls away.

Direct path does not mean if you take up this practice, you will attain awakening today or tomorrow (it took me 1 year 10 months of self-inquiry to realize I AM and a couple of months more to realize the further stages of insights). It is direct, because the practice focuses on a form of very direct contemplation on the nature of self and reality that results in a direct realization of the nature of reality. It does not focus on cultivating experiences (such as merely experiencing awareness, presence, space-like awareness, or any other aspects of experience that becomes natural and implicit after realization). Rather, it goes right to the core of things, very quickly resulting in a direct realization of our true nature.

As for gradual practice: for example, practicing 'Awareness Watching Awareness', turning the light of awareness upon itself and so on is a gradual method that focuses on the experience of I AM but eventually can lead to realization after the experience has matured and stabilized.

But I should say, when I advise people on how to move from non-dual to Anatta, I always advise both direct path contemplation and also the practice of vipassana and mindfulness. So it is not always an 'either/or' case.

My practice and the practice I advise differs according to your aim at the moment, and where you are in your practice.

For I AM: Self-Inquiry ("Who am I?")
For Non-Dual: Focus on the four aspects (impersonality, etc) and challenging boundaries.
For Anatta: Investigate Bahiya Sutta ("In seeing just the seen").
For Shunyata: Investigate where thoughts arise from, where thoughts abide and where thoughts go to.

Apart from these direct path contemplations, daily practice of meditation (both in sitting and daily lives) is helpful. It is best to take meditation seriously and sit one hour a day. It could be split into two sessions. At least thirty minutes if you do not have time. (Update 2025: John Tan personally sits 3 to 4 hours a day for the past couple of years, and advises others and myself to sit 2 hours a day at least).

Thusness told me many years ago that it is important to "go beyond names and labels to touch our pristine awareness and experience reality as it is...". However, he said that one must be able to sustain "at least 30 minutes of thoughtlessness in meditation for the clarity and vitality to arise". Note that it does not mean "30 minutes of meditation" (which can be spent in distraction anyway) but rather "30 minutes to maintain the gap between two moments of thoughts".

He also criticized teachers who put down the importance of meditation by telling me “do not listen to people saying there is no need for meditation, these are people with only small attainment and realization”. That said, there is a time when everything becomes effortless and non-meditation takes over effortful meditation.

5. The Result/Fruition

You may be wondering, what is all this fuss about? Why should I bother with this stuff? Why get awakened? What are the results out of this? Is there any practical transformation in life?

But to me, in my experience, when you have sufficiently deep insight and experience, a far more profound and life-changing transformation takes place.

Here's what I know can be attained through deep awakening (at this moment these are the ones more apparent to me but as time progresses there could be more):

A permanent freedom from all delusions pertaining to the view of an existing self or object.
Freedom from any sense of self, separation, alienation from the world, self-contraction.
Freedom from attachment to a sense of a body-mind, drop off body-mind - no more inside and outside or any kind of boundaries and weight.
High degree of attenuation of craving, anger, fears, sorrow, attachments, or any afflictive emotions, thus by inference the complete eradication of all mental afflictions, defilements and clinging are definitely possible.
Pure bliss and wonder and delight in the intimate and intense aliveness of every moment's experience due to effortless and perpetual NDNCDIMOP: non-dual, non-conceptual, direct, immediate mode of perception of reality.
Deep sense of wakefulness, clarity and aliveness.
Sleep need reduced, wakefulness and alertness increased very much.
Discursive thoughts lessen, replaced by NDNCDIMOP.
Thoughts that do arise self-release without trace.

It should be understood that you should not focus on removing emotions head on, or removing thoughts head on, or removing sense of self head on. Why? If you do not go for the roots, but try to cut off the branches, then you leave the root intact. Your delusion is intact even if you managed to 'get rid of the sense of self' (just like your delusion is intact even if you managed to distance yourself from the illusory snake that actually is a rope). But once you cut off the root ignorance, the branches are dealt with, or they naturally fall away easily. So when realization occurs, you honour realization first, understanding that there is no liberation from afflictions without first liberation from ignorance via true knowledge and vision of things as they are.

Also, before realization, it is truly difficult to experience things like 'the luminosity of the textures and forms of manifestation', 'non-dual, non-conceptual, direct, immediate mode of perception' and things like that. But after Anatta, it seems that this brilliant non-dual luminosity is very effortless - I don't need to practice anything to be in NDNCDIMOP or the pure consciousness experience. Every ordinary and mundane experience even in daily life and non-meditation setting is already implicitly so.

Like Simpo said, "IMO, before the insight of no-self, it is quite hard to not get caught at the content level. This is because, before the non-dual, non-conceptual experience/insight, one does not know how 'not getting caught' in the content is like."

That is why insight is important. But don't worry if you don't experience all those qualities before awakening - it is very difficult to, but it becomes natural after insight, so just focus on insight.

Labels: Anatta Dependent Origination Emptiness I AMness Non Dual Stages of Enlightenment View and Path No comments