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Books
The content of these ebooks and bonus articles is used to create this website.
Five works, each chapter to read and listen to, most with narrated videos, and twenty-two bonus articles you can read in one sitting. Not sure where to begin? See how to read the books.
The main work · 15 chapters
The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World
A logical case that nothing can be coherently posited as existing from its own side.
The companion · 23 episodes
The Transition from Anatta to Emptiness
How that case came to be lived: from anatta to a non-substantialist understanding of emptiness.
The root text · 27 chapters
Nāgārjuna's Middle Way
The Fundamental Verses, chapter by chapter: Sanskrit, a new English translation and a plain explanation with diagrams.
The shortest way through · 23 chapters
The Observer and the Taste of Presence
From the search for a witness behind experience to the Dzogchen phrase "beyond cause and effect".
The newest · 8 steps, 11 questions
The Logic After Anatta
Two ways of thinking, substance and dependency, in eight steps, then applied to eleven big questions. Each step has its own video.
For invited readers
Download the five books and the bonus articles as PDFs
The whole of each book, ready to download, and the bonus articles in the folder Articles. The bonus articles are explorations of the deep concepts in the books and how they apply. The folder opens only for readers John Tan has added: sign in to Google with the email address he added.
Bonus articles
| Article | Read | Listen | Watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isn't Energy the Substrate?Why the conserved quantity of physics is not a last substance. | Read | — | Watch |
| Dependent Designation and the Taste of PresenceFrom the chariot to the immediacy of appearing. | Read | — | Watch |
| Two Modes, One SeeingDividing and non-dividing mind, dependent arising and spontaneous presence. | Read | — | Watch |
| Beyond Cause and EffectWhy the question of cause stops applying, and how spontaneous presence and dependent arising meet. | Read | — | Watch |
| Insubstantial AppearancesVivid, workable and empty: two mistakes about appearances, and four points that loosen both. | Read | — | Watch |
| Vivid and Nowhere: What a Phenomenon IsSolid, dreamlike or described by physics: every appearance vivid, and none found standing anywhere. | Read | — | Watch |
| Mind and Consciousness: Both Are Also Singled OutMind, consciousness, luminous clarity and matter: all singled out, all designated, all phenomena. Why I do not say mind is the empty vivid appearing. | Read | — | Watch |
| One Flame Lights AnotherKarma and rebirth with nothing carried and nothing cut off. | Read | — | Watch |
| The Illusion of the GivenWhy no hidden thing stands behind what appears: one bowl, many beings, agreement without a hidden substance, mind and object arising together, and many worlds without a container. | Read | — | Watch |
| The Limits of the ToolsWhy concepts and drawings cannot hold what vividly appears, unfindable and following its conditions, and how to present it anyway. | Read | — | Watch |
| The Logic of DependencyThe two logics in full: substance and dependency, through change, the eight extremes, identity, convention, continuity and the path. The eight steps unpack it. | Read | — | Watch |
| Neither Carried Nor CutContinuity with nothing carried over and nothing cut off, seen in the six streams of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking. | Read | — | Watch |
| Annihilation Is an Inherent ViewWhy "it is gone" holds on to the same thing as "it lasts for ever": something can be cut off only if it was there from its own side first. | Read | — | Watch |
| Science and the DharmaWhere physics and cognitive science come closest to emptiness, and the one step they still leave to the Dharma. | Read | — | — |
| The Lamp That Does Not Light ItselfClear and empty, never a hidden substance. | Read | — | Watch |
| Causal Efficacy Without Causal PowerCauses work, but no power inside them is ever found. Is that orthodox Madhyamaka and Dzogchen? | Read | — | Watch |
| Insights and Tastes for PracticeWhat has to be seen, what has to be tasted, and how would I advise someone who practises? | Read | — | — |
| Rainbow Body and EmptinessIf nothing is found, what turns into light? Dzogchen, Gelug, the five lights, and the yang spirit. | Read | — | Watch |
| The Yang Spirit and the Rainbow BodyIf nothing is found, what turns into light? Dzogchen, Gelug, the five lights, and the yang spirit. | Read | — | Watch |
| Knowing From SomewhereKnowing From Somewhere: the six higher knowledges, read without a hidden ground. | Read | — | Watch |
| Three Descriptions, One TasteAnatta, dependent arising and spontaneous presence: one taste, met three times and described three ways | Read | — | — |
| Dependent Arising and DesignationWhat dependent arising and designation say, and what they are for: no power in the cause, no web behind things, the antidote to ignorance, and spontaneous presence. | Read | — | — |