Thusness · John Tan

After Anatta · Dependent arising · The journey

Dependent Arising: The Journey

How I came to understand dependent arising after anatta, in parts, with every article that opens up each part.

“Dependent arising” looks like a simple phrase. Yet understanding it took up almost all of my practice life after anatta. So I have made it the hub that links all my bonus articles. Most of them open up what I came to understand on that journey. I say this without exaggeration: the mind that assumes things are inherent does not understand the logic of dependency at all.

The whole view is set out in one article: Dependent Arising: If You Think You Understand, You Don’t. Listen · Watch

The given

Tossing an apple, seeing a mountain: these everyday examples are opened up here.

  1. 1.1The Illusion of the GivenOne bowl, many beings: no hidden thing stands behind what appears.ListenWatch

The logic that runs against the grain

The logic of dependency goes against how the inherent mind thinks.

  1. 2.1The Logic of DependencySubstance and dependency, side by side.ListenWatch
  2. 2.2Annihilation Is an Inherent View“It is not” leans on “it is”.ListenWatch

Subtle knots

Seeing dependencies released very subtle knots, one after another. One example: even after anatta, I still felt luminous clarity deeply as subjective, as “mind”. For a period it stayed central for me. The insight “appearances are one’s own radiance and clarity” set this off.

  1. 3.1The Lamp That Does Not Light ItselfClarity is never missing, and never a light that shines on itself.ListenWatch

How subjective is the subjective?

If the subjective depends on the objective, and the objective on the subjective, how subjective can it be? In the same way, if mind and matter depend on each other, in what sense is mind “mind”?

Vivid, yet nowhere to be found

This insight is crucial. Everything that appears is so clear and so vivid that the inherent mind takes it to be there: outside, objective, standing on its own. Under the inherent framework, the two sides of the same appearing get split apart. Its unfindability is taken as something private and subjective, an “inner mind”. Its vividness is taken as something public and objective, an “outer world”. Again and again, it came as a surprise that this is not so. In time the mind could take it in and see clearly: “No.” Quite the opposite. What appears so vividly cannot be found anywhere, not even “nowhere”. This insight is also the key phase of stage 3 in the pathway.

  1. 4.1Mind and Consciousness: Both Are Also Singled OutMind and matter as two cuts of one appearing.ListenWatch
  2. 4.2Vivid and Nowhere: What a Phenomenon IsIt takes apart the subtle holding of luminous clarity as subjective, and frees the weight of grasping at both clarity and matter.ListenWatch
  3. 4.3Insubstantial AppearancesVivid, workable and empty.ListenWatch
  4. 4.4The Limits of the ToolsPresenting what vividly appears.ListenWatch
  5. 4.5Knowing From SomewhereThe six higher knowledges, read without a hidden ground.ListenWatch

The middle way, and cause and effect

Dependent arising, which is emptiness, is the middle way. It is what let me look deeply into cause and effect. Together these show that functioning and continuity never needed any essence.

  1. 5.1Causal Efficacy Without Causal PowerNo power in the cause; conditions are the appearing.ListenWatch
  2. 5.2Beyond Cause and EffectNot a way out of dependent arising.ListenWatch
  3. 5.3Neither Carried Nor CutContinuity without a carrier, moment to moment.ListenWatch
  4. 5.4One Flame Lights AnotherKarma and rebirth without a traveller.ListenWatch
  5. 5.5The Lamp That Does Not Light ItselfClarity is never missing, and never a light that shines on itself.ListenWatch
  6. 5.6Isn’t Energy the Substrate?Is energy the modern successor to substance?ListenWatch

Meeting the MMK

Then I met Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. It shows how illogical and untenable our inherent framework is, and how much it goes against what we actually experience moment to moment. It refined my logic and insight. It let me see that the framework does not hold, without putting anything else in its place.

  1. 6.1Nāgārjuna’s Middle WayBook 3: the 27 chapters of the MMK, each with its own video.Listen
  2. 6.2Science and the DharmaWhere science comes closest to emptiness, and the one step it still leaves.ListenVideo soon

More parts of this journey, on the taste of the view and on the rainbow body, are still being written.