Geovani Geo wrote:


Thusness/John Tan:

Very good.

Means both stanza is clear.
In hearing, no hearer.
In hearing, only sound.  No hearing.



without any essence undergoing arising/abiding/ceasing, just like
reflections and dreams. Therefore the view of phenomena fluxing and
flowing with momentary arising/abiding/ceasing is also dissolved

深入观行, 婆酰迦经。
了悟经旨, 直指无心。
无执能所, 忘却身心。
方知见性, 只需明相。
明相见性, 见色明心。
真心空性, 随缘显相。
迷时幻相, 悟时真心。
山河大地, 原是法身。
色声香味, 尽是妙心。

Deeply contemplating Bahiya Sutta.
Realizing the quintessence of the sutta, directly pointing to No Mind.
Without grasping at subject and object, body and mind are forgotten.
Thereby know that seeing one’s nature, only requires comprehending appearances.
True mind is empty by nature, appearances manifests according to conditions.
While under confusion deluded appearances are apprehended, during realization appearances dawn as true mind.
Mountains, rivers and the great earth, are originally dharmakaya.
Forms, sounds, smells and odors, are entirely the marvellous mind.
[9:22 AM, 10/6/2019] John Tan: Post anatta, there is a phase where experience can turn very "physical", that is why I told you de-construct "physicality". There isn't background yet there are clearly all those external "things" that are solidly and concretely "real". Like "I AMness", the external "things" seem so undeniable.

Therefore at this phase, anatta is limited to no self, no background, only aggregates and one can experience a concretely external world in constant interaction with aggregates forming into the 18 dhatus.

Then when we engage into the teaching of emptiness, "physicality" gets deconstructed, phenomena too are realised to b empty. So what does that mean?

It is not about the cessation of those we conventionally called "things"; not the sudden disappearance of diversities into a whole. Therefore it is not a subsuming either into an integrated wholeness.

Then what is it? How should the view be like to re-integrate this anatta "experience" if we were to do away with the dualistic and substantialist view?

Such integration and re-orientation of "view" with the new found anatta insight and experience are not a one day event or a year or a is an ongoing continuous refinement as the dualistic and substantialist paradigm runs very deep.

It involves a phase where you are able to deconstruct the meaning and definition of conventional "things" and existence and relook at experience. This is not a "non-conceptual" state where practitioner is unable to differentiate left from right or a lost of diversities or even subsuming into a one whole oneness.

It is a phase post anatta and one begin to taste the six entries and exits in a new deconstructed way without subsuming and with diversities intact, without background. Neither this, nor that; neither internal nor external; neither caused nor uncaused, neither exist nor not exist… beyond extremes… that is where practitioner begin to genuinely appreciate the view of DO and Emptiness into the anatta experience and the phases of experiential insights. That is the beginning of the integration of view, experience and realization.

Most confusions arise because we are too used to analysing things in isolation and separation. Either we exclude awareness when analysing thing or we subsume everything into one, that is the karmic tendency of essence view… once we realize this habit and see the flaw of it, the mind will b willing to drop such paradigm and become open. If the world is seen and experienced from a perspective that is never divorce from awareness and there is no background and conventional things are de-constructed, look into your experience right now and tell me, what is it like when you experience conventional existence.

[12:59 PM, 10/6/2019] Soh Wei Yu: Like reflections.. dynamic and functioning but unfindable and without essence. Also when I say leg is aching I dont think true existence of leg and aching is located somewhere inside the leg. It's just dependently originating sensations conventionally called leg pain that's all.. vivid but empty

[1:02 PM, 10/6/2019] John Tan: We were trained to think and analyse otherwise. Therefore heart sutra says 远离一切颠倒梦想。

[1:03 PM, 10/6/2019] Soh Wei Yu: Ic.. yea

[1:03 PM, 10/6/2019] John Tan: Yes correct. Therefore this dynamic functioning without essence without dimension unfindable is expressed in the view of DO [dependent origination] and emptiness. Totally exerted but nothing real. Like water reflections.
From Awakening to Reality: A Guide to the Nature of Mind

When both stanzas are completely realized as always already so, that is John Stage 5.





~ Stanza one

There is thinking, no thinker

There is hearing, no hearer

There is seeing, no seer

The lack of doership that links and coordinates experiences


“A thought is "Unsupported" because it does not arise in dependence upon anything else, not "caused" by another thought ("mind-objects") and of course not "produced" by a thinker, which the Bodhisattva realizes does, not exist. Such an "unsupported thought", then, is prajña, arising by itself nondually… ...He began by drawing the following diagram:

Each oval represents a thought, he said; normally, we leave one thought only when we have another one to go to (as the arrows indicate), but to think in this way constitutes ignorance. Instead, we should realize that thinking is actually like this:

Then we will understand the true nature of thoughts: that thoughts do not arise from each other but by themselves.” ~ Zen teacher David Loy, Nondual Thinking

Rather than saying thought is "not dependent", I think it is better to put it this way:

“[1:20 PM, 10/2/2019] John Tan: DO [dependent origination] and the idea of substantialist cause and effect is different. Arise in dependence cannot be said to be causeless/uncaused or caused.  That is why it is the middle path. So we say arise in dependence.”


In the natural state there is no entity who is coordinating the messages from the different senses. Each sense is functioning independently in its own way. When there is a demand from outside which makes it necessary to coordinate one or two or all of the senses and come up with a response, still there is no co-ordinator, but there is a temporary state of coordination. There is no continuity; when the demand has been met, again there is only the uncoordinated, disconnected, disjointed functioning of the senses. This is always the case. Once the continuity is blown apart -- not that it was ever there; but the illusory continuity -- it's finished once and for all.



What functions is a primordial consciousness, untouched by thought.” - U.G. Krishnamurti, U.G. Krishnamurti: The Mystique of Enlightenment“Let's say it will be noticed that the body is out of shape. A thought may arise that the body could do with some exercise. Next a decision to go to the gym could come up. Nowhere in this 'chain of events' is there the need for an entity that takes the decision. If there was such an entity, it first would have to decide to take such a decision to be able to claim 'authorship.' It also would have to decide to decide to decide ad infinitum, thus creating an infinite regress.

What I always say is that non-doership does not mean that you are helpless, but that the 'you-agent' is fictitious. We say "I live, I think, I breathe" and so on but living, thinking and breathing is not done by someone; it happens by itself.

Let's have a look at thinking: Is there really a 'thinker of thoughts' independent of thought? Does this 'thinker' know what the next thought will be? Or is the thought only known when it comes along? This thought may get claimed in the next thought, which could goes something like "Oh, I just thought about such and such". But is the 'I' claiming to be the thinker of the thought- not itself part of the thought?

Do not take this too literally please, as there actually isn't even a 'next thought'; only this thought right now. There is no past, which has led up to this moment. There is only THIS; including memories and other apparent evidence for such a past.

Nevertheless, there is the unfolding of this dream in which "the Tao, without doing anything, leaves nothing undone." As such there may be the appearance of doing exercises, making decisions, planning your day, falling asleep, waking up, gazing at the stars, reading these words, or registering the sounds around you. It all happens by itself. As the Zen saying goes:

Sitting quietly, doing nothing,

Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” - Leo Hartong

“What Leo said is experientially there but in terms of understanding there is a great difference from that of Buddhism. You must go deeper and arise the insight of anatta and dependent origination.

"There is no thinker, just thoughts". A practitioner must not only see that there is "no agent", he must also see the "just thoughts". 'Thought' not as a passing phenomenon and nothing to care about but thought as pristine, luminous, non-dual, emptiness, its dependent originated nature and powerful imprints it can cause leading to the understanding of actions and tendencies rolling on. The best part is when 'tendency' is experienced in conventional sense it appears 'so solidly real'. Only when emptiness nature is directly experienced does reality becomes dream-like.

There are 4 important insights a practitioner must have on the experience of anatta:

The no doership leading to a spontaneous arising experience. Though spontaneous, it is not by 'nature' or 'haphazard'; with the presence of conditions, the arising is spontaneous.

The absence of an agent leading to a 'direct' experience of phenomena. A non-dual experience that dissolve the subject/object split.

No doer but there is doing and leading to the understanding of imprints and actions.

The impermanence and manifestation that leads to the understanding of arising due to conditions. The no-self nature of dependent origination that is free from the view based on who, where and when.

Buddhism is not exactly the union or co-arising of subjective witness and objective phenomena but rather the inseparability of luminosity and emptiness, appearances and conditions.


This is an experiential glimpse of non-arising in Buddhism, try to go beyond the 'now' teaching and understand the emptiness nature even this moment of Presence.

There is just this actual moment, which is a thought. Not arising from anywhere or going anywhere. There is even no “right now”, no timeline; free from the dream of the 3 times and resting entirely in this actual phenomena which is, a thought. Arising and ceasing is an appearance, the nature of clarity is non-arising, always just this: a moment, a thought, a witnessing, an action, yet empty!


Sitting quietly, doing nothing,

Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Although there is no authorship, it is also not 'helplessness'. There is no doer but there is doing. Free from the 2 extremes, karma and dependent origination are taught.

To progress further, you must understand the differences and experience it directly.” - John Tan, 2009, in response to Leo’s statement above

The direct insight of the absence of an agent



“In the article on, I mentioned about the 2 stanza. There is the no-agent aspect and there is the intensity of luminosity aspect. I find that your present experience is still centered on the luminosity aspect. You are directly experiencing seamlessness of any happening where no clear line of demarcation can be drawn between the subject-object split. You realized the boundary is purely illusionary and is clear about the cause that resulted in such
division but still, that is not the ‘essence’ of an experiential insight of anatta in my opinion. There is a difference in saying "there is no split between thinking and thinker, the thinking itself is 'me'" and "there is thinking, no thinker". You must be aware that having immediate and direct experience but with dualistic framework intact and complete replacement of the dualistic framework entirely with DO (dependent origination) yields very different experiential insight; you may want to investigate further and move from "they are all flowing independently" to "manifesting in seamless inter-dependencies." - John Tan, 2010

“In the Vajrayana there is the direct path to examining mind. In everyday life we are habituated to thinking, "I have a mind and I perceive these things." Ordinarily, we do not directly look at the mind and therefore do not see the mind. This is very strange because we see things and we know that we are seeing visual phenomena. But who is seeing? We can look directly at the mind and find that there is no one seeing; there is no seer, and yet we are seeing phenomena. The same is true for the mental consciousness. We think various thoughts, but where is that thinking taking place? Who or what is thinking? However, when we look directly at the mind, we discover that there is nobody there; there is no thinker and yet thinking is going on. This approach of directly looking in a state of meditation isn't one of reasoning, but of directly looking at the mind to see what is there.” - Thrangu Rinpoche, Thrangu Rinpoche on Nature of Mind



Great insight.


Manage” - Alan Watts: Agent and Action

~ Stanza two
In thinking, just thoughts
In hearing, just sounds
In seeing, just forms, shapes and colors.

Direct realization of luminosity/radiance as the very vividness of forms and textures
of transience beyond subject/object division.

“Division of subject and object is merely an assumption.
When self becomes more and more transparent,
Likewise phenomena become more and more luminous.
In thorough transparency all happening are pristinely and vividly clear.
Obviousness throughout, aliveness everywhere!” - John Tan, 2009

“(9:14 PM) Thusness:    when we talk about Buddha’s teachings, the essence should be so: the electricity [analogy used to represent consciousness] should not be taken as an entity. The organs are part of the conditions for manifestations. When condition arises, it is the luminosity of the appearances that you must know. You never see or know what awareness is unless through conditions where appearances manifest, that vividness of appearance is awareness in real time and life… ...not what i see glows, it is the seeing is the object is the awareness” - John Tan, 2007


“...We don’t need to bring our awareness anywhere -
awareness is always within the arising
of the experience itself.

We don’t need to make any separation
between bodily sensations and awareness.
Bodily sensations are already awareness.

Thought is already awareness.
We don’t need to bring
awareness to the thought.

What we’re exploring
is not the body
but the body’s awareness.

We’re just exploring
the body of awareness…” - Charles Genoud, Gesture of Awareness

“...have adequate experience of the vividness, realness and presence of Awareness and the full experience of these qualities in the transience. Without which it will not be easy to realize that "the arising and passing sensations are the very awareness itself." A balance is therefore needed, otherwise practitioners may experience equanimity but skew towards dispassion and lack realization.“  - John Tan, 2009, Emptiness as Viewless View and Embracing the Transience

"The key towards pure knowingness is to bring the taste of presence into the 6 entries and exits. So that what is seen, heard, touched, tasted are pervaded by a deep sense of crystal, radiance and transparency. This requires seeing through the center." - John Tan

“...Similarly, regarding whatever is in the field of the tactile sense organ, such things as fabrics that are soft or rough to the touch, this tactile sensation itself is your own mind. Avoid slipping into grasping or rejecting. Whether soft or rough, do not try to find the mind anywhere apart from the softness or roughness itself, but rest at ease right there without distraction. If a pleasant or an unpleasant feeling arises, recognize it and rest mindfully.

Lord Gotsangpa said:

"In general, the apparent myriad of phenomena is one’s own mind. Since phenomena and emptiness have never been abiding as two separate entities, there is no need to restrain cognizance within."


"When there is an appearance of a form in the field of the eyes, that appearance of form itself is one’s mind; the apparent form and emptiness are not two. By resting gently right on the form without grasping, subject and object become naturally liberated. The same applies to sounds, smells, tastes, textures, as well as mental occurrences: by resting on the occurrence itself, it becomes self-liberated. That is to say, instead of meditating on cognizance, by meditating without grasping right on the outer objects of the six sense perceptions, the six senses arise as meditation and enhancement will ensue."” - Self-Liberation by Khamtrul Rinpoche III



"Previously you cleared up uncertainties when you looked into the identity of a perception and resolved that perceptions are mind. Accordingly, the perception is not outside and the mind is not inside…” - Resolving That Thoughts and Perceptions are Buddha-Mind

“Hi Mr. J, Despite all differences we may have about lower yanas, no practices needed, Absolute…I really appreciate your zealous attempt to bring this message into view and I agree with you wholeheartedly on this aspect of “transmission”. If one truly wants this essence to be “transmitted”, how can it be otherwise? For what that is to be passed is truly of different dimension, how can it be adulterated with words and forms? The ancient teachers are extremely serious observing and waiting for the right condition to pass the essence unreservedly and wholeheartedly. So much so that when the essence is transmitted, it must boil the blood and penetrate deep into the bone marrow. The entire body-mind must become one opening eye. Once open, everything turns “spirit”, mind intellect drops and what’s left is aliveness and intelligence everywhere! Mr. J, I sincerely hope you well, just don’t leave trace in the Absolute. Gone! :)” - John Tan, 2013




“An interesting comment Jax. After realization… Just eat God, breathe God, smell God and see God… Lastly be fully unestablished and liberate God.” - John Tan, 2012

(Soh: Lest readers misinterpret that John is affirming a substantialist notion of a ‘God’, it should be noted that by the phase of Anatta realization, there is simply no more reifications or conceivings of a metaphysical ‘God’ or ‘Creator’ of any kind, and John was simply using the lingo of Mr. J to convey the complete absence of a background substratum of Presence and the total luminosity of Presencing-as-manifestation to Mr. J using Mr. J’s ‘esoteric lingo’. Even the word ‘Presence’ is not referring to some static entity here - ‘Presencing’ is perhaps a better term, for as James M. Corrigan wrote, “...Awareness is not something other than the “presencing” (i.e. naturing) of appearances. It is not a thing. It is not part of a thing. It is not an “aspect” of a process… is the process—not some aspect of it”
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Carlus Sego's Breakthrough. Read from last page from bottom to top

Thag 1:49  Rāmaṇeyyaka

Even with all the whistles & whistling,
the calls of the birds,
this, my mind, doesn’t waver,
for my delight is in


Jui asks: (? Question about samadhi)





Me: best way is to practice vipasssana?


Me: so you are advising Anapanasati?



Also see: Right Samadhi



Malcolm (Loppon Namdrol) wrote:
    The faults of not meditating are:
    the characteristics of samsara appear to one,
    there is self and other, object and consciousness,
    the view is verbal,
    the field is perceptual,
    one is bound by afflictions,
    also one throws away the path of the buddhahood,
    one does not understand the nature of the result,
    a basis for the sameness of all phenomena does not exist,
    one's vidya is bound by the three realms,
    and one will fall into conceptuality
    He also added:


