About this site

The Watcher and the Watched is an AI-assisted introduction to nonduality and emptiness, anchored in three books: Guy Armstrong’s Emptiness: A Practical Guide for Meditators (Wisdom Publications, 2017), David Loy’s Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond (Wisdom Publications, 2019; first published 1988) and Ben Connelly’s Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara (Wisdom Publications, 2016). It is not affiliated with the authors or with Wisdom Publications in any way: it is one reader’s map of three admired books, drawn with AI assistance and checked by that reader.

The prose was drafted by Claude (Anthropic) from a brief by Jörn Dinkla and reviewed by him; the house line in the footer — Drawn with AI · checked by Jörn — applies to every page. Ideas traceable to the three authors are attributed to them by name in the text. Nothing from the books is reproduced: the site paraphrases, and quotes only public-domain translations (Plotinus via Stephen MacKenna, whose 1930 Ennead VI volume entered the US public domain in January 2026; the Tao Te Ching via James Legge, 1891) plus a five-word sentence of Krishnamurti’s, each attributed where it appears.

What this site is not

It is not dharma instruction. It claims no realization, promises no outcomes, and offers no medical advice. The short sitting instruction on The witness is an experiment, not a curriculum; readers whose practice deepens are pointed to qualified teachers, generically, on the books page.

Claim labels

Where scholarship, doctrine and experience interleave, claims are tagged: Textual — it is in the source texts; Interpretation — a reading, attributed to whoever holds it; Practice-report — meditators say this happens. The recurring margin voice in indigo, the Skeptic, exists to keep the site honest about the difference between a report and a proof.

Sibling sites

This site is part of a family: Mind Only reads Vasubandhu’s Thirty Verses verse by verse through engineering lenses, and The Watercourse Way reads the Tao Te Ching chapter by chapter. This one is the doorway to both.