Thusness · John Tan

After Anatta · Explorations

Practice and Realisation

Recognition, not effort.

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Last updated 1 Nov 2026

Look at the old duck-rabbit drawing. It is a duck, then a rabbit. Nothing on the page changes. No effort pushes the duck out, yet the switch does not happen if you stop looking. This page is about that kind of change.

The question

If freedom is not made by practice, why practise at all? It seems to be either already here, so nothing needs doing, or out of reach, so nothing helps. And after a real opening, why does the old habit keep coming back?

The substance reading

Stated fairly, it says: the path is a journey made by a traveller. There is a self in bondage and a goal to reach. Bad states are removed like stones; good states are gained and held like coins. Awakening is a place one arrives at, and then keeps.

Effort aimed at states as things tends to harden into grasping: at progress, at experiences, at the self being improved. Its quiet twin says the opposite: "it is all effortless, so there is a pure state already here to rest in." Both treat freedom as a thing, made or found.

What the tradition says

'Free of grasping, I shall reach nirvāṇa; nirvāṇa will be mine.' Those who hold on in this way have a great hold of grasping.

Nāgārjuna, MMK 16.9

Without relying on convention, the ultimate cannot be taught. Without coming to the ultimate, nirvāṇa is not attained.

Nāgārjuna, MMK 24.10

The victorious ones taught emptiness as the way out of all views. But those for whom emptiness is a view, they called incurable.

Nāgārjuna, MMK 13.8

The traditions differ on how the habit is undone. Gelug describes a graded path of understanding and meditation that wears it down over time. Dzogchen speaks of a recognition (ngo shes) that is not an accomplishment and happens at once. That is a difference in method, not in whether freedom is made.

Applying the logic

1 · What would a substance view say?Freedom is a state produced by effort, or a pure state hidden under clutter and dug up. A self gets it and keeps it.
2 · What does dependency say instead?Freedom is seeing that appearing was never fixed. Practice undoes the habit of fixing, and that takes clear knowing. Anger is not a thing with its own nature: change the attention, the story, the posture or the circumstances, and it reconfigures. If states had their own nature, nothing could become other than it is (MMK 24.16–20).
3 · What is affirmed conventionally?The path, effort, teachers, study and analysis. Ethics and meditation as ways of arranging conditions. The practitioner, designated on the practising.
4 · What is never found?A goer apart from the going (MMK 2), a state to keep, or a hidden pure nature waiting under the stains.

So recognition is not effort, and it is not passivity either. "Effortless" is what is left when the fixing stops. It is not a better kind of effort, and it does not let you skip the clear seeing. The moment effortlessness is held as an accomplishment, it has become one more fixed object.

In layers, and in step

Anatta dawned for me in 1997, and it was a genuine breakthrough. There was no seer behind seeing. But for years afterwards my experience was free while my view was not. The self had dissolved, but the universe had not. That is the desynchronisation (see Step 1).

What helped was not a bigger experience. It was right view, worked through in each place the habit hid. View corrects the taste: a strong opening is easily read as an ultimate Awareness, and analysis catches that. The taste corrects the view: emptiness held only as an argument grows dry and negative, and the taste shows it is not a blank. Each refines the other.

A mind meets its own fixings one layer at a time: the self, then things, then process, then non-dual presence itself. So recognition is not reached once and kept. It is recognised again and again, wherever the habit returns. Whether analysis alone is enough, or whether recognition usually needs something outside the reasoning, such as a teacher's direct pointing, I leave open.

Two traps

Too much: eternalism

"There is a pure state, and I must reach it and keep it." Stillness forced by effort, or openness held as an attitude, becomes the new thing held: grasping the absence of grasping.

Too little: nihilism

"Nothing is fixed, so there is nothing to do." Non-action without clarity is dullness, not freedom. Emptiness is never an excuse to skip the actual work of seeing.

In practice

  • Just marks. Look at a word on this page and try to see it only as marks. You cannot. The meaning is already in the seeing. Seeing is never a bare layer first, named later.
  • Anger as conditions. Next time irritation comes, do not try to lift it out like a stone. Notice the posture, the story, where attention has gone. Change one, and watch the anger change.
  • Only the heard. For one minute, listen. There is the sound and the hearing. Look for a hearer standing apart from both.
  • Do not keep it. When a clear moment comes, notice the urge to hold on to it. That holding is the fixing coming back. Go back to plain looking.

In the chain: this page goes with Seeing Comes First (1 of 7); Beyond Cause and Effect (7 of 7).

In the books

Talks

Words to know

Recognition (ngo shes)
Seeing clearly that appearing was never fixed. Not produced by effort, and not passive.
Effortlessness
What is left when the fixing stops. Not a better effort and not a state to keep up.
Right view
Clear understanding of how things are. What lets an opening become a place to live, not a place once visited.
Desynchronisation
Experience free of substance while the view behind it is not.
Non-dividing seeing (avikalpa)
The same appearing when the dividing habit is not running. Not a second reality and not a stillness reached by effort.