The Embodied Mind

Evocations of Groundlessness:

Our journey has now brought us to the point where we can appreciate that what we took to be solid ground is really more like shifting sand beneath our feet. We began with our common sense as cognitive scientists and found that our cognition emerges from the background of a world that extends beyond us but that cannot be found apart from our embodiment. When we shifted our attention away from this fundamental circularity to follow the movement of cognition alone, we found that we could discern no subjective ground, no permanent and abiding ego-self. When we tried to find the objective ground that we thought must still be present, we found a world enacted by our history of structural coupling. Finally, we saw that these various forms of groundlessness are really one: organism and environment enfold into each other and unfold from one another in the funda- mental circularity that is life itself.

Our discussion of enactive cognition points directly toward the heart of our concerns in this chapter and the next. The worlds enacted by various histories of structural coupling are amenable to detailed scientific investigation, yet have no fixed, permanent substrate or foundation and so are ultimately groundless. We must now turn to face directly this groundlessness of which we have had multiple evocations. If our world is groundless, how are we to understand our day-to-day experience within it? Our experience feels given, unshak- able, and unchangeable. How could we not experience the world as independent and well grounded? What else could experience of the world mean?

Western science and philosophy have brought us to the point where we are faced with, in the words of the philosopher Hilary Putnam, "the impossibility of imagining what credible 'foundations' might look like,"¹ but they have not provided any way for us to develop direct and personal insight into the groundlessness of our own experience. Philosophers may think that this task is unnecessary, but this is largely because Western philosophy has been more con-

cerned with the rational understanding of life and mind than with the relevance of a pragmatic method for transforming human experience. Indeed, it is largely a given in contemporary philosophical debate that whether the world is mind-dependent or mind-independent makes little difference, if any, to our everyday experience. To think otherwise would be to deny not only "metaphysical realism" but empirical, everyday commonsense realism, which is absurd. But this current philosophical assumption confuses two very different senses that the term empirical realism can have. On the one hand, it might mean that our world will continue to be the familiar one of objects and events with various qualities, even if we discover that this world is not pregiven and well grounded. On the other hand, it might mean that we will always experience this familiar world as if it were ulti- mately grounded, that we are "condemned" to experience the world as if it had a ground, even though we know philosophically and scientifically that it does not. This latter supposition is not innocent, for it imposes an a priori limitation on the possibilities for human development and transformation. It is important to see that we can contest this supposition without calling into question the first sense in which things can be said to be real and independent.

The reason this point is important is that our historical situation requires not only that we give up philosophical foundationalism but that we learn to live in a world without foundations. Science alone that is, science without any bridge to everyday human experience-is incapable of this task. As Hilary Putnam incisively remarks in a recent work, "Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away founda- tions without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position and no end to it is in sight is that of having to philosophize without 'foundations'."2

Although it is true that our historical situation is unique, we should not draw the conclusion that we stand alone in the attempt to learn to live without foundations. To interpret our situation in this way would immediately prevent us from recognizing that other traditions have, in their own ways, addressed this very issue of the lack of foundations. In fact, the problematic of groundlessness is the focal point of the Madhyamika tradition. With one or two exceptions, Western philosophers have yet to draw on the resources of this tradition. Indeed, one often gets the impression that Western philos- ophers are not simply unfamiliar with Madhyamika but that they suppose a priori that our situation is so unique that no other philo- sophical tradition could be relevant. Richard Rorty, for example, after thoroughly criticizing the project of foundationalism in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, offers in its place a conception of "edifying philosophy" whose guiding ideal is "continuing the conversation of the West."3 Rorty does not even pause to consider the possibility of there being other traditions of philosophical reflection that might have addressed his very concerns. In fact, it is one such important tradition, the Madhyamika, which has served as the basis for our thought in this book.

Hitherto we have spoken of the Buddhist tradition of mindfulness/awareness as though it were all one unified tradition. And in fact, the teachings of no-self-the five aggregates, some form of mental factor analysis, and karma and the wheel of conditioned origination-are common to all of the major Buddhist traditions. At this point, how- ever, we come to a split. The teaching of emptiness (sunyata), which we are about to explore, according to the Buddhist tradition itself as well as to scholarship, did not become apparent until approximately 500 years after the Buddha's death, at which time the Prajnaparamita and other texts that expound this doctrine began to appear. During those 500 years, the Abhidharma tradition had become elaborated into eighteen different schools that debated each other about various subtle points and debated the many non-Buddhist schools within Hinduism and Jainism. Those who adopted the newer teachings called themselves the Great Vehicle (Mahayana) and designated those who continued to adhere to the earlier teachings the Lesser Vehicle (Hinayana) an epithet to this day widely loathed by non-Mahaya- nists. One of the eighteen original schools, the Theravada (the speech of the elders) has survived with great vigor in the modern world; it is the undisputed form of Buddhism in the countries of Southeast Asia-Burma, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Theravada Buddhism does not teach sunyata. Sunyata is, however, the founda- tion of Mahayana Buddhism (the form that spread to China, Korea, and Japan) and of the Vajrayana, the Buddhism of Tibet.

In approximately the first half of the second century CE, the Prajnaparamita teachings were put into a form of philosophical argument by Nagarjuna (according to some Mahayana schools and many, but not all, Western scholars). Nagarjuna's stature in Mahayana and Varjayana Buddhism is enormous. His method was to work solely by means of refutation of the positions and assertions of others. His followers soon split into those who continued this method, which is very demanding for the listener as well as for the speaker (the Prasangikas) and those who made positive arguments about empti- ness (Svatantrikas).

The Madhyamika tradition, although it delighted in debate and logical argument, is not to be taken as abstract philosophy in the modern sense. For one thing, the debate was considered so mean- ingful in the social context of the courts and universities of early India that the losing side in a debate was expected to convert. More important, the philosophy was never to be divorced from meditation practice or from the daily activities of life. The point was to realize egolessness in one's own experience and manifest it in action to others. Texts discussing the philosophy included meditation manuals for how to contemplate, meditate, and act on the topic.

In exposition of Nagarjuna in the present day, there is a split between Buddhist practitioners (including traditionally trained prac- titioner scholars) and Western academic scholars. Practitioners say that Western scholars are making up issues, interpretations, and confusions that have nothing to do with the texts or with Buddhism. Western scholars feel that the opinions (and teachings) of "believers" are not an appropriate source for textual exegesis. Since in this book we wish to bring into contact the living tradition of mindfulness/ awareness meditation with the living tradition of phenomenology and of cognitive science, for our exposition of the Madhyamika we will draw from the practitioner as well as from the scholarly side of this interesting sociological detente.

Sunyata literally means "emptiness" (sometimes misleadingly translated as "the void" or "voidness"). In the Tibetan tradition, it is said that sunyata may be expounded from three perspectives-sunyata with respect to codependent arising, sunyata with respect to compation, and sunyata with respect to naturalness. It is the first of these, sunyata with respect to codependent arising, that most naturally fits with the logic we have been exploring in the discovery of groundless- ness and its relationship to cognitive science and the concept of enaction.

Nagarjuna's most well known work is the Stanzas of the Middle Way (Mulamadhyamikakarikas). From the perspective that we will now examine, it carries through the logic of codependent arising to its logical conclusion.

In the Abhidharma analysis of consciousness, each moment of

experience of a particular consciousness that has a particular object to which it is tied by particular relations. For example, a moment of seeing consciousness is composed of a seer (the subject) who sees (the relation) a sight (the object); in a moment of anger consciousness, the one who is angry (the subject) experiences (the relation) anger (the object). (This is what we have called protointentionality.) The force of the analysis was to show that there was no truly existing subject (a self) continuing unchangingly through a series of moments. But what of the objects of consciousness? And what of the relations? The Abhidharma schools had assumed that there were material properties that were taken as objects by five of the senses seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching-and that there were thoughts that were taken as an object by the mind consciousness. Such an analysis is still partially subjectivist/objectivist because (1) many schools, such as the basic element analysis dis- cussed in chapters 4 and 6, took moments of consciousness as ulti- mate realities, and (2) the external world had been left in a relatively unproblematic, objectivist, independent state.

The Mahayana tradition talks about not just one but two senses of ego-self: ego of self and ego of phenomena (dharmas). Ego of self is the habitual grasping after a self that we have been discussing. Mahayanists claim that the earlier traditions attacked this sense of self but did not challenge the reliance on an independently existing world or the mind's (momentary) relations to that world. Nagarjuna attacks the independent existence of all three terms the subject, the relation, and the object. What follows will be a (synthetically constructed) example of the kind of argument that Nagarjuna makes.

What is it that we mean when we say that the one who sees exists independently or when we say that that which is seen exists independently? Surely we mean that the one who sees exists even when she is not seeing the sight; she exists prior to and/or after seeing the sight. And likewise we mean that the sight exists prior to and/or after it is seen by the seer. That is, if I am the seer of a sight and I truly exist, it means that I can walk away and not see that sight-I can go hear something or think something instead. And if the sight truly exists, it should be able to stay there even when I am not seeing it-for example, it could have someone else see it at a future moment.

Upon closer examination, however, Nagarjuna points out that this makes little sense. How can we talk about the seer of a sight who is not seeing its sight? Conversely how can we speak of a sight that is not being seen by its seer? Nor does it make any sense to say that there is an independently existing seeing going on somewhere with- out any seer and without any sight being seen. The very position of a seer, the very idea of a seer, cannot be separated from the sights it sees. And vice versa, how can the sight that is being seen be separated from the seer that sees it?

We might try a negative tack and reply that all this is true and that the seer does not exist prior to the sight and the seeing of it. But then how can a nonexistent seer give rise to an existing seeing and an existing sight? Or if we try to argue the other way round and say that the sight didn't exist until the seer saw it, the reply is, How can a nonexistent sight be seen by a seer?

Let us try the argument that the seer and the sight arise simulta- neously. In that case, they are either one and the same thing, or they are different things. If they are one and the same thing, then this cannot be a case of seeing, since seeing requires that there be one who sees, a sight, and the seeing of the sight. We do not say that the eye sees itself. Then they must be two separate, independent things. But in that case, if they are truly independent things, each existing in its own right independently of the relations in which it happens to figure, then there could be many relations beside seeing between them. But it makes no sense to say that a seer hears a sight; only a hearer can hear a sound.

We might give in and agree that there is no truly existent indepen- dent seer, sight, or seeing but claim that all three put together form a truly existent moment of consciousness that is the ultimate reality. But if you add one nonexistent thing to another nonexistent thing, how can you say that that makes a truly existent thing? Indeed, how can you say that a moment of time is a truly existent thing when to be truly existent, it would have to exist independently of other mo- ments in the past and future? Furthermore, since one moment is but an aspect of time itself, that moment would have to exist indepen- dently of time itself (this is an argument about the codependence of things and their attributes); and time itself would have to exist independently of that one moment.

At this point, we might be seized with the terrible feeling that indeed these things do not exist. But surely it makes even less sense to assert that a nonexistent seer either sees or does not see a nonex- istent sight at a nonexistent moment than to make these claims about an existent seer. (That this argument has actual psychological force is illustrated by an Israeli joke: Man 1 says, "Things are getting worse and worse; better never to have existed at all." Man 2 says, "How true. But who should be so lucky?-one in ten thousand!") Nagar- juna's point is not to say that things are nonexistent in an absolute way any more than to say that they are existent. Things are codepend- ently originated; they are completely groundless.

Nagarjuna's arguments for complete codependence (or more properly his arguments against any other conceivable view than code- pendence) are applied to three main classes of topics: subjects and their objects, things and their attributes, and causes and their effects. By these means, he disposes of the idea of noncodependent existence for virtually everything-subject and object for each of the senses; material objects; the primal elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space); passion, aggression, and ignorance; space, time, and motion; the agent, his doing, and what he does; conditions and outcomes; the self as perceiver, doer, or anything else; suffering; the causes of suffering, cessation of suffering, and the path to cessation (known as the Four Noble Truths); the Buddha; and nirvana. Nagarjuna finally concludes, "Nothing is found that is not dependently arisen. For that reason, nothing is found that is not empty."

It is important to remember the context within which these argu- ments are employed. Nagarjuna's arguments fasten on psychologi- cally real habits of mind and demonstrate their groundlessness within the context of mindfulness/awareness meditation and Abhidharma psychology. A modern philosopher might believe himself able to find faults with Nagarjuna's logic. Even if this were the case, however, it would not overturn the epistemological and psychological force of Nagarjuna's argumentation within the context of his concerns. In fact, Nagarjuna's arguments can be summarized in a way that makes this point apparent:

1. If subjects and their objects, things and their attributes, and

causes and their effects exist independently as we habitually take them to, or exist intrinsically and absolutely as basic ele- ment analysis holds, then they must not depend on any kind of condition or relation. This point basically amounts to a phil- osophical insistence on the meanings of independent, intrinsic,

and absolute. By definition, something is independent, intrinsic, or absolute only if it does not depend on anything else; it must have an identity that transcends its relations.

2. Nothing in our experience can be found that satisfies this criterion of independence or ultimacy. The earlier Abhidharma

tradition had expressed this insight as dependent coarising: nothing can be found apart from its conditions of arising, for- mation, and decay. In our modern context this point is rather obvious when considering the causes and conditions of the material world and is expressed in our scientific tradition. Nagarjuna took the understanding of codependence consider- ably further. Causes and their effects, things and their attri- butes, and the very mind of the inquiring subject and the objects of mind are each equally codependent on the other. Nagarjuna's logic addresses itself penetratingly to the mind of the inquiring subject (recall our fundamental circularity), to the ways in which what are actually codependent factors are taken by that subject to be the ultimate founding blocks of a sup- posed objective and a supposed subjective reality.

3. Therefore, nothing can be found that has an ultimate or independent existence. Or to use Buddhist language, everything is "empty" of an independent existence, for it is codepen- dently originated.

We now have a context for understanding emptiness with respect to codependent origination: all things are empty of any independent intrinsic nature. This may sound like an abstract statement, but it has far-ranging implications for experience.

We explained in chapter 4 how the categories of the Abhidharma were both descriptions and contemplative directives for the way the mind is actually experienced when one is mindful. It is important to realize that Nagarjuna is not rejecting the Abhidharma, as he is sometimes interpreted as doing in Western scholarship. His entire analysis is based on the categories of the Abhidharma: what sense would arguments such as that of the seer, the sight, and the seeing have except in that context? (If the reader thinks that Nagarjuna's argument is a linguistic one, that is because he has not seen the force of the Abhidharma.) It is a very precise argument, not just a general handwaving that everything is dependent on everything. Nagarjuna is extending the Abhidharma, but that extension makes an incisive difference to experience.

Why should it make any difference at all to experience? One might say, So what if the world and the self change moment to moment- whoever thought that they were permanent? And so what if they are mutually dependent on each other-whoever thought they were iso- lated? The answer (as we have seen throughout the book) is that as one becomes mindful of one's own experience, one realizes the power of the urge to grasp after foundations-to grasp the sense of founda- tion of a real, separate self, the sense of foundation of a real, separate world, and the sense of foundation of an actual relation between self and world.

It is said that emptiness is a natural discovery that one would make by oneself with sufficient mindfulness/awareness natural but shock- ing. Previously we have been talking about examining the mind with meditation. There may not have been a self, but there was still a mind to examine itself, even if a momentary one. But now we discover that we have no mind; after all, a mind must be something that is separate from and knows the world. We also don't have a world. There is neither an objective nor subjective pole. Nor is there any knowing because there is nothing hidden. Knowing sunyata (more accurately knowing the world as sunyata) is surely not an intentional act. Rather (to use traditional imagery), it is like a reflection in a mirror-pure, brilliant, but with no additional reality apart from itself. As mind/ world keeps happening in its interdependent continuity, there is nothing extra on the side of mind or on the side of world to know or be known further. Whatever experience happens is open (Buddhist teachers use the word exposed), perfectly revealed just as it is.

We can now see why Madhyamika is called the middle way. It avoids the extreme of either objectivism or subjectivism, of absolutism or nihilism. As is said by the Tibetan commentators, "Through ascertaining the reason-that all phenomena are dependent arisings-the extreme of annihilation (nihilism) is avoided, and realization of de- pendent-arising of causes and effects is gained. Through ascertaining the thesis-that all phenomena do not inherently exist-the extreme of permanence (absolutism) is avoided, and realization of the empti- ness of all phenomena is gained."10

But what does all this mean for the everyday world? I still have a name, a job, memories, and plans. The sun still rises in the morning, and scientists still work to explain that. What of all this?.

The Abhidharma analysis of the mind into basic elements and mental factors already contained within it the distinction between two kinds of truth: ultimate truth, which consisted of the basic elements of existence into which experience could be analyzed, and relative or conventional truth, which was our ordinary, compounded (out of basic elements) experience. Nagarjuna invoked this distinction, gave it new meaning, and insisted on its importance.

The teaching of the doctrine by the Buddha is based upon two truths: the truth of worldly convention (samvrti) and the ulti- mate, supreme truth (paramartha).

Those who do not discern the distinction between these two truths, do not understand the profound nature of the Buddha's teaching (XXIV: 8-9).

Relative truth (samvrti, which literally means covered or concealed) is the phenomenal world just as it appears with chairs, people, species, and the coherence of those through time. Ultimate truth (paramartha) is the emptiness of that very same phenomenal world. The Tibetan term for relative truth, kundzop, captures the relation between the two imagistically; kundzop means all dressed up, out- fitted, or costumed-that is, relative truth is sunyata (absolute truth) costumed in the brilliant colors of the phenomenal world.

By now it should be obyious that the distinction between the two truths, like the analysis of the Abhidharma, was not intended as a metaphysical theory of truth. It is a description of the experience of the practitioner who experiences his mind, its objects, and their rela- tion as codependently originated and thus as empty of any actual, independent, or abiding existence. Like the Abhidharma categories the description also functions as a recommendation and contempla- tive aid. This can be seen very clearly in the discourse of Buddhist communities. For example, many of the forms that Westerners take as poetry or irrationality in Zen are actually contemplative exercises directing the mind toward codependent emptiness.

The term for relative truth, samvrti, is also often translated as "convention" (within Buddhism as well as by academic scholars), which gives rise to much interpretative confusion. It is important to under- stand in what sense convention is meant. "Relative" or "conven- tional" should not be taken in a superficial sense. Convention does not mean subjective, arbitrary, or unlawful. And relative does not mean culturally relative. The relative phenomenal world was always taken to operate by very clear laws regardless of the conventions of any individual or society, such as the laws of karmic cause and effect.

Furthermore, it is very important to understand that the use of convention here is not an invitation to decenter the self and/or world into language as is so popular at present in the humanities. As the founder of the Gelugpa lineage in Tibetan Buddhism puts it, since nominally designated things are artificial, that is, established as existent in conventional terms, there is no referent to which names are attached which (itself) is not established as merely conventionally existent. And since that is not to say that in general there is no phenomenal basis for using names, the statement of the existence of that (conventional referent) and the statement that (all things) are mere nominal designations are not contradictory."11 Thus in Bud- dhism one can perfectly well make distinctions in the relative world between true statements and false ones, and it is recommended that one make true ones.

The sense in which the things designated, as well as the designa tions, are only conventional may be explained by an example: when I call someone John, I have the deep assumption that there is some abiding independent thing that I am designating, but Madhyamika analysis shows there to be no such truly existing thing. John, how- ever, continues to act just the way a perfectly good designatum is supposed to, so in relative or conventional truth he is indeed John. This claim may remind the reader of our discussion of color. Although the experience of color can be shown to have no absolute ground either in the physical world or the visual observer, color is nonetheless

a perfectly commensurable designable. Thus such scientific analysis can perfectly well be joined by the far more radical presentation of groundlessness in the Madhyamika.

Because this relative, conventional, codependently originated world is lawful, science is possible-just as possible as daily life. In fact, perfectly functional pragmatic science and engineering are pos- sible even when they are based on theories that make unjustifiable metaphysical assumptions-just as daily life continues coherently even when one believes in the actual reality of oneself. We offer the vision of enactive cognitive science and of evolution as natural drift neither as a claim that this is the only way science can be done nor as a claim that this is the very same thing as Madhyamika. Concepts such as embodiment or structural coupling are concepts and as such are always historical. They do not convey that at this very moment personally one has no independently existing mind and no indepen- dently existing world.

This is a crucially important point. There is a powerful reason why some Madhyamika schools only refute the arguments of others and refuse to make assertions. Any conceptual position can become a ground (a resting point, a nest), which vitiates the force of the Madhyamika. In particular, the view of cognition as embodied action (enaction), although it stresses the interdependence of mind and world, tends to treat the relationship between those (the interaction, the action, the enaction) as though it had some form of independent actual existence. As one's mind grasps the concept of enaction as something real and solid, it automatically generates a sense of the other two terms of the argument, the subject and object of the em- bodied action. (As we shall discuss, this is why pragmatism is also not the same as thing as the middle way of Madhyamika.) We would be doing a great disservice to everyone concerned-mindfulness/ awareness practitioners, scientists, scholars, and any other interested persons-were we to lead anyone to believe that making assertions about enactive cognitive science was the same thing as allowing one's mind to be experientially processed by the Madhyamika dialectic, particularly when this is combined with mindfulness/awareness train- ing. But just as the Madhyamika dialectic, a provisional and con- ventional activity of the relative world, points beyond itself, so we might hope that our concept of enaction could, at least for some cognitive scientists and perhaps even for the more general milieu of scientific thought, point beyond itself to a truer understanding of groundlessness.

We began this chapter by evoking the sense of loss of foundations in contemporary science and philosophy. In particular, we cited one important trend in contemporary Anglo-American thought based on a revival of pragmatist philosophy. In Europe-particularly France, Germany, and Italy-an analogous critique of foundations has been pursued, largely as a result of the continuing influence of Nietszche and Heidegger-a trend that includes both poststructuralism¹3 and postmodern thought. The Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo de- scribes this trend as "weak thought" (pensiero debole) that is, a kind of thought that would give up the modernist quest for foundations, yet without criticizing this quest in the name of another, truer foundation. Vattimo defends the positive possibilities of this trend in the introduction to a recent work: (Vattimo, The End of Modernity.) The ideas of Nietzsche and Heidegger, more than any others, offer us the chance to pass from a purely critical and negative description of the post-modern condition... to an approach that treats it as a positive possibility and opportunity. Nietzsche mentions all of this although not altogether clearly-in his theory of a possibly active, or positive, nihilism. Heidegger al- ludes to the same thing with his idea of a Verwindung of meta- physics which is not a critical overcoming in the 'modern' sense of the term.... In both Nietzsche and Heidegger, what I have elsewhere called the "weakening" of Being allows thought to situate itself in a constructive manner within the post-modern condition. For only if we take seriously the outcome of the "de- struction of ontology" undertaken by Heidegger, and before him by Nietzsche, is it possible to gain access to the positive oppor- tunities for the very essence of man that are found in post- modern conditions of existence. It will not be possible for thought to live positively in that truly post-metaphysical era as long as man and Being are conceived of-metaphysically, Pla- tonically, etc.-in terms of stable structures. Such conceptions require thought and existence to "ground" themselves, or in other words to stabilize themselves (with logic or with ethics), in the domain of non-becoming and are reflected in a whole-scale mythization of strong structures in every field of experience. This is not to say that everything in such an era will be accepted as equally beneficial for humanity; but the capacity to choose and discriminate between the possibilities that the post-modern condition offers us can be developed only on the basis of ananalysis of post-modernity that captures its own innate charac- teristics, and that recognizes post-modernity as a field of possi- bility and not simply as a hellish negation of all that is human.16

It is thus clear that our contemporary world has become highly sensitized to the issue of groundlessness for a number of reasons in history, politics, art, science, and philosophical reflection. We cer- tainly cannot delve into these developments here. We do find remark- able, however, the extent to which the Western tradition, based on the reasoning of philosophy and scientific practices, and the Buddhist tradition and thought, based on experiencing the world with mind- fulness/awareness, have converged. Nevertheless this convergence might be a trompe l'oeil; indeed many meditation practitioners would argue that the very appearance of similarity of the two traditions is spurious. In this regard, we wish to point out what we believe are three major differences between the contemporary sense of ground- lessness and that of Madhyamika. Then in the next and final chapter we will consider the ethical dimensions of groundlessness.

In the first place, contemporary Western views have been unable to articulate together the loss of foundations for the self and for the world. There is no methodological basis for a middle way between objectivism and subjectivism (both forms of absolutism). In cognitive science and in experimental psychology, the fragmentation of the self occurs because the field is trying to be scientifically objective. Pre- cisely because the self is taken as an object, like any other external object in the world, as an object of scientific scrutiny-precisely for that reason-it disappears from view. That is, the very foundation for challenging the subjective leaves intact the objective as a foundation. In an exactly analogous fashion, challenges to the objective status of the world depend upon leaving the subjective unproblematical. To espouse that an organism's (or scientist's) perception is never entirely objective because it is always influenced by past experience and goals the scientist's top-down processes-is precisely the result of taking an independent subject as given and then discovering and arguing from the subjective nature of his representations.

Nowhere is slight of hand between the inner and the outer more evident than in the work of David Hume, whose classic passage on his inability to observe a self we have already quoted. Hume also noted that there was a contradiction between his idea that outer bodies (the outer world) have a "continued and distinct existence" and his sense impressions of bodies that were discontinuous. In his contemplation of this issue, he suggests that the idea of a continuous external world (like that of a continuous self) is a psychological construction: "There being here an opposition betwixt the notion of the identity of resembling perceptions, and the interruption of their appearance, the mind must be uneasy in that situation, and will naturally seek relief from the uneasiness.... In order to free our- selves from this difficulty, we disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, or rather remove it entirely, by supposing that these interrup- ted perceptions are connected by a real existence, of which we are insensible."17 The interesting point for our present purposes is that there is no evidence that Hume ever thought to put together his empiricist doubts about the self and about the world. He had all the intellectual materials needed for an entre-deux, but with neither an intellectual tradition to suggest it nor an experiential method to discover it, he never considered the possibility.

Our final example is a particularly telling one as it comes from the heart of cognitive science itself. What does a modern cognitivist do if his experience does lead him to approach the entre-deux-the fact that lived experience of the world is actually between what we think of as the world and what we think of as the mind? He takes flight into theory-the current scientific milieu gives him no other option. We are thinking of Jackendoff, a sensitive phenomenologist who seemed led to construct the pièce de résistance of his book, the intermediate-level theory of consciousness, out of his perception of the betweenness of the phenomenological mind:

On the one hand, intuition suggests that awareness reveals what is going on in the mind, including thought. On the other hand, intuition suggests that awareness reveals what is going on out in the world, that is, the result of sensation or perception. Ac- cording to the Intermediate-Level Theory, it reveals neither. Rather, awareness reflects a curious amalgam of the effects on the mind of both thought and the real world, while leaving totally opaque the means by which these effects come about. It is only by developing a formal theory of levels of representation that we could have come to suspect the existence of a part of the compu- tational mind that has these characteristics [our emphasis].

One of the most seductive forms of subjectivism in contemporary thought is the use made of the concepts of interpretation, whether by pragmatists or hermeneuticists. To its credit, interpretationism pro- vides a penetrating critique of objectivism that is worth pursuing in some detail. To be objective, the interpretationist points out, one would have to have some set of mind-independent objects to be designated by language or known by science. But can we find any such objects? Let us look at an extended example from the philoso- pher Nelson Goodman.

A point in space seems to be perfectly objective. But how are we to define the points of our everyday world? Points can be taken either as primitive elements, as intersecting lines, as certain triples of inter- secting planes, or as certain classes of nesting volumes. These defi- nitions are equally adequate, and yet they are incompatible: what a point is will vary with each form of description. For example, only in the first "version," to use Goodman's term, will a point be a primitive element. The objectivist, however, demands, "What are points re- ally?" Goodman's response to this demand is worth quoting at length:

If the composition of points out of lines or of lines out of points is conventional rather than factual, points and lines themselves are no less so.... If we say that our sample space is a combina- tion of points, or of lines, or of regions, or a combination of combinations of points, or lines, or regions, or a combination of all these together, or is a single lump, then since none is identical with any of the rest, we are giving one among countless alterna- tive conflicting descriptions of what the space is. And so we may regard the disagreements as not about the facts but as due to differences in the conventions adopted in organizing or de- scribing the space. What, then, is the neutral fact or thing de- scribed in these different terms? Neither the space (a) as an undivided whole nor (b) as a combination of everything involved in the several accounts; for (a) and (b) are but two among the various ways of organizing it. But what is it that is so organized? When we strip off as layers of convention all differences among ways of describing it, what is left? The onion is peeled down to its empty core.

The appearance of the word empty here is of interest. Contemporary philosophy is replete with such examples of how things are empty of any intrinsic identity because they depend on forms of designation.

Hilary Putnam has even devised a theorem in formal semantics to show that there can be no unique mapping between words and the world: even if we know the conditions under which sentences are true, we cannot fix the way their terms refer.20 Putnam concludes that we cannot understand meaning if we hold on to the idea that there is some privileged set of mind-independent objects to which language refers. Instead, he writes, "'Objects' do not exist independently of conceptual schemes. We cut up the world into objects when we introduce one or another scheme of description. Since the objects and the signs are alike internal to the scheme of description, it is possible to say what matches what."21

Interestingly, Putnam argues not only that we cannot understand meaning if we suppose language refers to mind-independent objects; he also argues against the very notion of properties that exist intrin- sically (i.e., nondependently), a notion that lies at the basis of objec- tivism: "The problem with the 'Objectivist' picture of the world [t]he deep systemic root of the disease, I want to suggest, lies in the notion of an 'intrinsic' property, a property something has 'in itself,' apart from any contribution made by language or the mind."22 Putnam argues that this classical idea, combined with contemporary scientific realism, leads to the complete devaluation of experience, for virtually all of the features of our life-world become mere "projec- tions" of the mind. The irony of this stance-which we should none- theless expect from our discussion of the Cartesian anxiety-is that it becomes indistinguishable from idealism, for it makes the lived world a result of subjective representation.

Yet despite this thorough critique of objectivism, the argument is never turned the other way round. Mind-independent objects are challenged, but object-independent minds never are. (It is actually more obvious and psychologically easier to attack the independence of objects than of minds.) The interpretationists-pragmatist or oth- erwise also do not challenge the groundedness of the concepts and interpretations themselves; rather, they take these as the ground on which they stand. This is far from an entre-deux and far from Madhyamika.

When contemporary traditions of thought discover groundlessness, it is viewed as negative, a breakdown of an ideal for doing science, for establishing philosophical truth with reason, or for living a meaningful life. Enactive cognitive science and, in a certain sense, con- temporary Western pragmatism require that we confront the lack of ultimate foundations. Both, while challenging theoretical founda- tions, wish to affirm the everyday lived world. Enactive cognitive science and pragmatism, however, are both theoretical; neither offers insight into how we are to live in a world without foundations. In the Madhyamika tradition, on the other hand, as in all Buddhism, the intimation of egolessness is a great blessing; it opens up the lived world as path, as the locus for realization. Thus Nagarjuna writes, "Ultimate truth cannot be taught apart from everyday practices. With- out understanding the ultimate truth, freedom (nirvana) is not at- tained," (XXIV: 10). On the Buddhist path, one needs to be embodied to attain realization. Mindfulness, awareness, and emptiness are not abstractions; there has to be something to be mindful of, aware of, and to realize the emptiness of (and as we will see in chapter 11, to realize the intrinsic goodness of and to be compassionate for). One's very habitual patterns of grasping, anxiety, and frustration are the contents of mindfulness and awareness. The recognition that those are empty of any actual existence manifests itself experientially as an ever-growing openness and lack of fixation. An open-hearted sense of compassionate interest in others can replace the constant anxiety and irritation of egoistic concern.

In early Buddhism, freedom was equated with escape from samsara (the everyday lived world of fixation, habit, and suffering) to the unconditional realm of nirvana. With the teaching of emptiness in the Mahayana, a radical change occurred. Nagarjuna puts it,

There is no distinction at all between the everyday world (sam- sara) and freedom (nirvana). There is no distinction at all be- tween freedom and the everyday world.

The range of the everyday world is the range of freedom. Between them not even the most subtle difference can be found. (XXV: 19, 20)

Freedom is not the same as living in the everyday world condi- tioned by ignorance and confusion; it is living and acting in the everyday world with realization. Freedom does not mean escape from the world; it means transformation of our entire way of being, our mode of embodiment, within the lived world itself. This stance is not an easy one for anyone to understandin cultures where Buddhism flourishes let alone in the modern world. We think that the denial of an ultimate ground is tantamount to the denial of there being any ultimate truth or goodness about our world and experience. The reason that we almost automatically draw this con- clusion is that we have not been able to disentangle ourselves from the extremes of absolutism and nihilism and to take seriously the possibilities inherent in a mindful, open-ended stance toward human experience. These two extremes of absolutism and nihilism both lead us away from the lived world; in the case of absolutism, we try to escape actual experience by invoking foundations to supply our lives with a sense of justification and purpose; in the case of nihilism, failing in that search, we deny the possibility of working with our everyday experience in a way that is liberating and transformative.

Science and Experience in Circulation

In the preface we announced that the theme of this book would be the circulation between cognitive science and human experience. In this final chapter we wish to situate this circulation within a wider contemporary context. In particular we wish to consider some of the ethical dimensions of groundlessness in relation to the concern with nihilism that is typical of much post-Nietzschean thought. This is not the place to consider the many points that animate current North American and European discussions; our concern, rather, is to indi- cate how we see our project in relation to these discussions and to suggest further directions for investigation.

The back-and-forth communication between cognitive science and experience that we have explored can be envisioned as a circle. The circle begins with the experience of the cognitive scientist, a human being who can conceive of a mind operating without a self. This becomes embodied in a scientific theory. Emboldened by the theory, one can discover, with a disciplined, mindful approach to experience, that although there is constant struggle to maintain a self, there is no actual self in experience. The natural scientific inquisitiveness of the mind then queries, But how can there seem to be a coherent self when there is none? For an answer one can turn to mechanisms such as emergence and societies of mind. Ideally that could lead one to pen- etrate further into the causal relationships in one's experience, seeing the causes and effects of ego grasping and enabling one to begin to relax the struggle of ego grasping. As perceptions, relationships, and the activity of mind expand into awareness, one might have insight into the codependent lack of ultimate foundations either for one's mind or for its objects, the world. The inquisitive scientist then asks, How can we imagine, embodied in a mechanism, that relation of codependence between mind and world? The mechanism that we have created (the embodied metaphor of groundlessness) is that of enactive cognition, with its image of structural coupling through a history of natural drift. Ideally such an image can influence the sci- entific society and the larger society, loosening the hold of both objectivism and subjectivism and encouraging further communication between science and experience, experience and science.

The logic of this back-and-forth circle exemplified the fundamental circularity in the mind of the reflective scientist. The fundamental axis of this circulation is the embodiment of experience and cognition. It should be recalled that embodiment in our sense, as for Merleau- Ponty, encompasses both the body as a lived, experiential structure and the body as the context or milieu of cognitive mechanisms. Thus in the communication we have portrayed in this book between cog- nitive science and the tradition of mindfulness/awareness, we have systematically juxtaposed the descriptions of experience taken from mindfulness/awareness practice with descriptions of cognitive archi- tecture taken from cognitive science.

Like Merleau-Ponty, we have emphasized that a proper apprecia- tion of this twofold sense of embodiment provides a middle way or entre-deux between the extremes of absolutism and nihilism. Both of these two extremes can be found in contemporary cognitive science. The absolutist extreme is easy to find, for despite other differences, the varieties of cognitive realism share the conviction that cognition is grounded in the representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven subject. The nihilist extreme is less apparent, but we have seen how it arises when cognitive science uncovers the nonunity of the self yet ignores the possibility of a transformative approach to human experience.

So far we have devoted less attention to this nihilist extreme, but it is in fact far more indicative of our contemporary cultural situation. Thus in the humanities-in art, literature, and philosophy-the grow- ing awareness of groundlessness has taken form not through a con- frontation with objectivism but rather with nihilism, skepticism, and extreme relativism. Indeed, this concern with nihilism is typical of late-twentieth-century life. Its visible manifestations are the increasing fragmentation of life, the revival of and continuing adherence to a variety of religious and political dogmatisms, and a pervasive yet intangible feeling of anxiety, which writers such as Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being depict so vividly. It is for this reason (and because nihilism and objectivism are actually deeply connected) that we turn to consider in more detail the nihilistic extreme. We have reserved this issue until now because it is both general and far reach- ing. Our discussion must accordingly become more centrally con- cerned with the ethical dimension of groundlessness than it has been so far. In the final section of this chapter we will be more explicit about this ethical dimension. Before doing so, however, we wish to examine in more detail the nihilist extreme.

Let us begin not by attempting to engage nihilism directly but rather by asking how nihilism arises. Where and at what point does the nihilist tendency first manifest itself?

We have been led to face groundlessness or the lack of stable foundations in both enactive cognitive science and in the mindful, open-ended approach to experience. In both settings we began na- ively but were forced to suspend our deep-seated conviction that the world is grounded independently of embodied perceptual and cogni- tive capacities. This deep-seated conviction is the motivation for ob- jectivism-even in its most refined philosophical forms. Nihilism, however, is in a sense based on no analogous conviction, for it arises initially in reaction to the loss of faith in objectivism. Nihilism can, of course, be cultivated to a point where it takes on a life of its own, but in its first moment its form is one of response. Thus we can already see that nihilism is in fact deeply linked to objectivism, for nihilism is an extreme response to the collapse of what had seemed to provide a sure and absolute reference point.

We have already provided an example of this link between objec- tivism and nihilism when we examined the discovery within cognitive science of selfless minds. This deep and profound discovery requires the cognitive scientist to acknowledge that consciousness and self- identity do not provide the ground or foundation for cognitive proc- esses; yet she feels that we do believe, and must continue to believe, in an efficacious self. The usual response of the cognitive scientist is to ignore the experiential aspect when she does science and ignore the scientific discovery when she leads her life. As a result, the nonexistence of a self that would answer to our objectivist represen- tations is typically confused with the nonexistence of the relative (practical) self altogether. Indeed, without the resources provided by a progressive approach to experience, there is little choice but to respond to the collapse of an objective self (objectivism) by asserting

the objective nonexistence of the self (nihilism). This response indicates that objectivism and nihilism, despite their apparent differences, are deeply connected-indeed the actual source of nihilism is objectivism. We have already discussed how the basis of objectivism is to be found in our habitual tendency to grasp after regularities that are stable but ungrounded. In fact, nihilism too arises from this grasping mind. Thus faced with the discovery of ground- lessness, we nonetheless continue to grasp after a ground because we have not relinquished the deep-seated reflex to grasp that lies at the root of objectivism. This reflex is so strong that the absence of a solid ground is immediately reified into the objectivist abyss. This act of reification performed by the grasping mind is the root of nihilism. The mode of repudiation or denial that is characteristic of nihilism is actually a very subtle and refined form of objectivism: the mere absence of an objective ground is reified into an objective groundless- ness that might continue to serve as an ultimate reference point. Thus although we have been speaking of objectivism and nihlism as op- posed extremes with differing consequences, they ultimately share a common basis in the grasping mind.

An appreciation of the common source of objectivism and nihilism lies at the heart of the philosophy and practice of the middle way in Buddhism. For this reason, we are simply misinformed when we as- sume that concern with nihilism is a modern phenomenon of Greco- European origin. To appreciate the resources offered by these other traditions, however, we must not lose sight of the specificity of our present situation. Whereas in Buddhism, as anywhere else, there is always the danger of individuals experiencing nihilism (losing heart, as it is called in Buddhism) or of commentators straying into nihilistic errors of interpretation, nihilism has never become full blown or embodied in societal institutions.

Today nihilism is a tangible issue not only for our Western culture but for the planet as a whole. And yet as we have seen throughout this book, the groundlessness of the middle way in Mahayana Bud- dhism offers considerable resources for human experience in our present scientific culture. The mere recognition of this fact should indicate that the imaginative geography of "West" and "East" is no longer appropriate for the tasks we face today. Although we can begin from the premises and concerns of our own tradition, we need no longer proceed in ignorance of other traditions, especially of those that continually strived to distinguish rigorously between the ground- lessness of nihilism and the groundlessness of the middle way. Unlike Richard Rorty, then, we are not inspired in our attempt to face the issue of groundlessness and nihilism by the ideal of simply "continuing the conversation of the West."1 Instead, our project throughout this book owes far more to Martin Heidegger's invocation of "planetary thinking." As Heidegger wrote in The Question of Being,

We are obliged not to give up the effort to practice planetary thinking along a stretch of the road, be it ever so short. Here too no prophetic talents and demeanor are needed to realize that there are in store for planetary building encounters for which the participants are by no means equal today. This is equally true of the European and of the East Asiatic languages and, above all, for the area of a possible conversation between them. Neither one of the two is able by itself to open up this area and to establish it.

Our guiding metaphor is that a path exists only in walking, and our conviction has been that as a first step we must face the issue of groundlessness in our scientific culture and learn to embody that groundlessness in the openness of sunyata. One of the central figures of twentieth-century Japanese philosophy, Nishitani Keiji, has in fact made precisely this claim.3 Nishitani is exemplary for us because he was not only raised and personally immersed in the Zen tradition of mindfulness/awareness but was also one of Heidegger's students and so is thoroughly familiar with European thought in general and Heidegger's invocation of planetary thinking in particular. Nishitani's endeavor to develop a truly planetary form of philosophical yet em- bodied, progressive reflection is impressive. Let us pause to examine a few of the essențial points of his thinking.

In our discussion of the Cartesian anxiety, we saw that there is an oscillation between objectivism and subjectivism that is linked to the concept of representation. Thus representation can be construed ei- ther as the "projection" (subjectivism) or "recovery" (objectivism) of the world. (Usually, of course, both aspects of representation are incorporated in accounts of perception and cognition.)

For Nishitani, this oscillation between subjectivism and objectivism arises for any philosophical stance that is based on what he calls "the field of consciousness." With this phrase Nishitani refers to the philosophical construal of the world as an objective or pregiven realm and of the self as a pregiven knowing subject that somehow achieves contact with this pregiven world. Since consciousness is here under- stood as subjectivity, the problem arises of how to link consciousness with the supposedly objective realm in which it is situated. As we have already discussed, however, the subject cannot step outside of its representations to behold the pregiven world as it really is in itself. Therefore given this basically Cartesian stance, the objective becomes what is represented as such by the subject. In Nishitani's words, "The mode of being which is said to have rid itself of its relationship to the subjective has simply been constituted through a covert inclusion of a relationship to the subjective, and so cannot, after all, escape the charge of constituting a mode of being defined through its appearanceto us.”

When the notion of objectivity becomes problematic in this way, so too does the notion of subjectivity. If everything is ultimately specified through its appearance to us, then so is the knowing subject. Since the subject can represent itself to itself, it becomes an object for representation but is different from all other objects. Thus in the end the self becomes both an objectified subject and a subjectified object. This predicament discloses the shiftiness, the instability of the entire subjective/objective polarity.

Nishitani's next move, however, displays the deep influence of the Buddhist philosophical tradition and mindfulness/awareness practice on his thinking. He argues that to realize the fundamental instability or groundlessness of the subjective/objective dualism is in a sense to slip out of the "field of consciousness." We do not "overcome" or "step out" of this dualism as if we knew in advance where we are going, but we do see the arbitrariness and futility of going back and forth between the poles of a fundamentally groundless opposition. Instead our concern shifts to the very disclosure of this groundless- ness. Nishitani then follows the pragmatic intention of mindfulness/ awareness by emphasizing the existential role that this disclosure plays. The realization that we do not stand on solid ground, that things incessantly arise and pass away without our being able to pin them down to a stable objective or subjective ground, affects our very life and being. Within this existential context, we can be said to realize groundlessness not only in the sense of understanding but also in the sense of actualization: human life or existence turns into a question, doubt, or uncertainty.

In Zen Buddhism, the Japanese adaptation of mindfulness/aware- ness in which Nishitani was raised, this uncertainty is called the "Great Doubt." This doubt is not about any particular matter but is rather the basic uncertainty that arises from the disclosure of ground- lessness. Unlike the hyperbolic and hypothetical doubt of Descartes, which is merely entertained by the subject on the field of conscious- ness, the Great Doubt points to the impermanence of existence itself and so marks an existential transformation within human experience. This transformation consists of a conversion away from the subjective/ objective standpoint to what is called in the English translation of Nishitani's work the "field of nihility." Nihility is a term used to refer to groundlessness in relation to the subjective/objective polarity; it is a relative, negative notion of groundlessness that Nishitani wishes to distinguish from the groundlessness of the middle way.

Nishitani distinguishes between these two kinds of groundlessness because his fundamental point is that European thought in its largely successful critique of objectivism has become trapped in nihilism. Here Nishitani's assessment of our situation actually follows Nietzsche's. As we mentioned in chapter 6, nihilism arises for Nietzsche when we realize that our most cherished beliefs are unten- able and yet we are incapable of living without them. Nietzsche devoted considerable attention to the manifestation of nihilism in our discovery that we do not stand on solid ground, that what we take to be an absolute reference point is really an interpretation foisted on an ever-shifting impersonal process. His famous aphorism announc- ing "the death of God" is a dramatic statement of this collapse of fixed reference points. Njetzsche also understood nihilism to be rooted in our craving for a ground, in our continual search for some ultimate reference point, even when we realize that none can be found: "What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; 'why' finds no answer."5 The philosophical chal- lenge that Nietzsche faced, which has come to characterize the task of postmodern thought, is to lay down a path of thinking and practice that gives up foundations without transforming itself into a search for new foundations. Nietzsche's attempt is well known: he tried to undercut nihilism by affirming groundlessness through his notions of eternal return and the will to power.

Nishitani deeply admires Nietzsche's attempt but claims that it actually perpetuates the nihilistic predicament by not letting go of the grasping mind that lies at the souce of both objectivism and nihlism. Nishitani's argument is that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimi- lating groundlessness to a notion of the will-no matter how de- centered and impersonal. Nishitani's diagnosis is even more radical than Nietzsche's, for he claims that the real problem with Western nihilism is that it is halfhearted: it does not consistently follow through its own inner logic and motivation and so stops short of transforming its partial realization of groundlessness into the philo- sophical and experiential possiblities of sunyata. The reason why Western nihilism stops short is that Western thought in general has no tradition that works with cognition and lived experience in a direct and pragmatic way. (The one possible exception is psychoanalysis, but in most of its current manifestations it has been unable to confront the basic contradictions in our experience of the self or to offer a transformative reembodiment.) Indeed, our scientific culture has only just begun to consider the possibility of pragmatic and progressive approaches to experience that would enable us to learn to transform our deep-seated and emotional grasping after a ground. Without such a pragmatic approach to the transformation of experience in everyday life especially within our developing scientific culture human exis- tence will remain confined to the undecidable choice between objec- tivism and nihilism.

We should note that Nishitani's point when he claims that Western nihilism stops short of the groundlessness of the middle way is not that we should adopt Buddhism in the sense of a particular tradition with various cultural trappings. It is, rather, that we must achieve an understanding of groundlessness as a middle way by working from our own cultural premises. These premises are largely determined by science, for we live in a scientific culture. We have therefore chosen to follow Nishitani's lead by building a bridge between cognitive science and mindfulness/awareness as a specific practice that em- bodies an open-ended approach to experience. Furthermore, since we cannot embody groundlessness in a scientific culture without recon- ceptualizing science itself as beyond the need of foundations, we have followed through the inner logic of research in cognitive science to develop the enactive approach. This approach should serve to dem- onstrate that a commitment to science need not include as a premise a commitment to objectivism or to subjectivism.

Objectivist science, by its very ideals as well as its historical context in our society, has maintained a role of ethical neutrality. This neu- trality has been increasingly challenged in the social discourse of our time. The need for planetary thinking behooves us to consider groundlessness, whether evoked by cognitive science or experience, in its full light in the total human context. Is it not the self that has been considered the bearer of moral and ethical potency? If we chal- lenge the idea of such a self, what have we loosed on the world? Such a concern, we feel, is the result of the failure in Western discourse to analyze the self and its product, self-interest, with experiential acu- men. In contrast, the ethical dimension of ego and egolessness are at the very heart of the Buddhist tradition. We turn now to take up, as our final consideration, the issue of what the mindfulness/awareness tradition might have to offer social science for a vision of humanaction at its best.

The View from Social Science

A parable called "The Tragedy of the Commons" haunts social re- search on ethical concerns.? The parable describes a situation in which a number of herdsmen graze their herds on a common pasturage. Each herdsman knows that it is in his self-interest to increase the size of his herd because, whereas each additional animal brings profit to him, the cost of grazing the animal and the damage done to the pasturage is shared by all the herdsmen. As a result, each of the herdsmen rationally increases his herd size until the commons is destroyed and, with it, all of the herds that grazed on it. The concern of the social scientist is how one can get a group of rationally self-interested herdsmen to cooperate in maintaining the vanishing commons.

This disarmingly disingenuous metaphor for our world situation embodies a long tradition of modern thought about the self and its relation to others, which may be called the economic view of the mind. The goal of the self is assumed to be profit-getting the most at least cost. The unconstrained economic man,8 such as Hobbes's despot, continues his acquisitions until there is nothing left for any- one else. Therefore, constraints are needed: overt social force, inter- nalized socialization, subtle psychological mechanisms. A general theory called social exchange theory, widely used in social psychology, decision theory, sociology, economics, and political science, views all of human activity, individually and in groups, in terms of input and output calculations, paying and receiving. We believe that this implicit vision of motivation underlies not only social science but many contemporary people's views of their own action. Even altruism is defined in terms of an individual obtaining (psychological) utility from benefiting another.

Is such a view experientially validated? Practitioners in the mind- fulness/awareness tradition, as they begin to become mindful, are often amazed to discover the extent of their egotism, the increasingly subtle levels at which they find themselves operating with just such a business-deal mentality. They are also led to question whether such a stance toward the world makes sense.

We believe that the view of the self as an economic man, which is the view the social sciences hold, is quite consonant with the unex- amined view of our own motivation that we hold as ordinary, non- mindful people. Let us state that view clearly. The self is seen as a territory with boundaries. The goal of the self is to bring inside the boundaries all of the good things while paying out as few goods as possible and conversely to remove to the outside of the boundaries all of the bad things while letting in as little bad as possible. Since goods are scarce, each autonomous self is in competition with other selves to get them. Since cooperation between individuals and whole societies may be needed to get more goods, uneasy and unstable alliances are formed between autonomous selves. Some selves (altru- ists) and many selves in some roles (parents, teachers) may get (im- material) goods by helping other selves, but they will become disappointed (even disillusioned) if those other selves do not reciprocate by being properly helped.

What does the mindfulness/awareness tradition or enactive cogni- tive science have to contribute to this portrait of self-interest? The mindful, open-ended approach to experience reveals that moment by moment this so-called self occurs only in relation to the other. If I want praise, love, fame, or power, there has to be another (even if only a mental one) to praise, love, know about, or submit to me. If I want to obtain things, they have to be things that I don't already have. Even with respect to the desire for pleasure, the pleasure is something to which I am in a relation. Because self is always codependent with other (even at the gross level we are now discussing), the force of self-interest is always other-directed in the very same respect with which it is self-directed.

What, then, are people doing who appear so self-interested as opposed to other-interested? Mindfulness/awareness meditators sug- gest that those people are struggling, in a confused way, to maintain the sense of a separate self by engaging in self-referential relation- ships with the other. Whether I gain or lose, there can be a sense of I; if there is nothing to be gained or lost, I am groundless. If Hobbes's despot were actually to succeed in obtaining everything in the uni- verse, he would have to find some other preoccupation quickly, or he would be in a woeful state: he would be unable to maintain his sense of himself. Of course, as we have seen with nihilism, one can always turn that groundlessness into a ground; then one can maintain oneself in relation to it by feeling despair.

We believe that this insight is important to the social sciences if they are to explain the egoistic behavior of individuals and groups. Even more important, however, is what the mindful, open-ended approach to experience has to contribute to the transformation of that egotism.

If planetary thinking requires that we embody the realization of groundlessness in a scientific culture, planetary building requires the embodiment of concern for the other with whom we enact a world. The tradition of mindfulness/awareness offers a path by which this may actually be brought about.

The mindfulness/awareness student first begins to see in a precise fashion what the mind is doing, its restless, perpetual grasping, moment to moment. This enables the student to cut some of the automaticity of his habitual patterns, which leads to further mindful- ness, and he begins to realize that there is no self in any of his actual experience. This can be disturbing and offers the temptation to swing to the other extreme, producing moments of loss of heart. The philosophical flight into nihilism that we saw earlier in this chapter mir- rors a psychological process: the reflex to grasp is so strong and deep seated that we reify the absence of a solid foundation into a solid absence or abyss.

As the student goes on, however, and his mind relaxes further into awareness, a sense of warmth and inclusiveness dawns. The street fighter mentality of watchful self-interest can be let go somewhat to be replaced by interest in others. We are already other-directed even at our most negative, and we already feel warmth toward some people, such as family and friends. The conscious realization of the sense of relatedness and the development of a more impartial sense of warmth are encouraged in the mindfulness/awareness tradition by various contemplative practices such as the generation of loving-kind- ness. It is said that the full realization of groundlessness (sunyata) cannot occur if there is no warmth.

For this reason, in the Mahayana tradition, which we have so far presented as being centrally concerned with groundlessness as sun- yata, there is an equally central and complementary concern with groundlessness as compassion.11 In fact, most of the traditional Mahayana presentations do not begin with groundlessness but rather with the cultivation of compassion for all sentient beings. Nagarjuna, for example, states in one of his works that the Mahayana teaching has "an essence of emptiness and compassion."12 This statement is sometimes paraphrased by saying that emptiness (sunyata) is full of compassion (karuna), 13

Thus sunyata, the loss of a fixed reference point or ground in either self, other, or a relationship between them, is said to be inseparable from compassion like the two sides of a coin or the two wings of a bird. Our natural impulse, in this view, is one of compassion, but it has been obscured by habits of ego-clinging like the sun obscured by a passing cloud.

This is by no means the end of the path, however. For some traditions, there is a further step to be made in understanding beyond the sunyata of codependent origination-that is, the sunyata of naturalness. Up to now, we have been talking about the contents of realization in primarily negative terms: no-self, egolessness, no world, nonduality, emptiness, groundlessness. In actual fact, the majority of the world's Buddhists do not speak of their deepest concerns in negative terms; these negatives are preliminaries necessary to re- move habitual patterns of grasping, unsurpassably important and precious, but nonetheless premlinaries-that are pointing toward the realization of a positively conceived state. The Western world-for example, Christianity-although pleased to engage in dialogue with the negating aspects of Buddhism (perhaps as a way of speaking to the nihilism in our own tradition), steadfastly (at times even self-con- sciously) tends to ignore the Buddhist positive.

To be sure, the Buddhist positive is threatening. It is no ground whatsoever; it cannot be grasped as ground, reference point, or nest for a sense of ego. It does not exist-nor does it not exist. 15 It cannot be an object of mind or of the conceptualizing process; it cannot be seen, heard, or thought-thus the many traditional images for it: the sight of a blind man, a flower blooming in the sky. When the concep- tual mind tries to grasp it, it finds nothing, and so it experiences it as emptiness. It can be known (and can only be known) directly. It is called Buddha nature, no mind, primordial mind, absolute bodhicitta, wisdom mind, warrior's mind, all goodness, great perfection, that which cannot be fabricated by mind, naturalness. It is not a hair's breadth different from the ordinary world; it is that very same ordi- nary, conditional, impermanent, painful, groundless world experi- enced (known) as the unconditional, supreme state. And the natural manifestation, the embodiment, of this state is compassion-unconditional, fearless, ruthless, spontaneous compassion. "When the rea- soning mind no longer clings and grasps,... one awakens into the wisdom with which one was born, and compassionate energy arises without pretense."

We need to back- track and consider the development of compassion from the more mundane point of view of the student. The possibility for compas- sionate concern for others, which is present in all humans, is usually mixed with the sense of ego and so becomes confused with the need to satisfy one's own cravings for recognition and self-evaluation. The spontaneous compassion that arises when one is not caught in the habitual patterns when one is not performing volitional actions out of karmic cause and effect is not done with a sense of need for feedback from its recipient. It is the anxiety about feedback-the response of the other-that causes us tension and inhibition in our action. When action is done without the business-deal mentality, there can be relaxation. This is called supreme (or transcendental) generosity.

If this seems abstract, the reader might try a brief exercise. We usually read books like this with some heavy-handed sense of pur- pose. Imagine for a moment that you are reading this solely in order to benefit others. Does that change the feeling tone of the task?

When discussing wisdom from the point of view of compassion, the Sanskrit term often used is bodhicitta, which has been variously translated as "enlightened mind," "the heart of the enlightened state of mind," or simply "awakened heart." Bodhicitta is said to have two aspects, one absolute and one relative. Absolute bodhicitta is the term applied to whatever state is considered ultimate or fundamental in a given Buddhist traditionthe experience of the groundlessness of sunyata or the (positively defined) sudden glimpse of the natural, awake state itself. Relative bodhicitta is that fundamental warmth toward the phenomenal world that practitioners report arises from absolute experience and that manifests itself as concern for the wel- fare of others beyond merely naive compassion. As opposed to the order in which we have previously described these experiences, it is said that the development of a sense of unproblematical warmth toward the world leads to the experience of the flash of absolute bodhicitta.

Buddhist practitioners obviously do not realize any of these things (even mindfulness) all at once. They report that they catch glimpses that encourage them to make further efforts. One of the most important steps consists in developing compassion toward one's own grasping fixation on ego-self. The idea behind this attitude is that confronting one's own grasping tendencies is a friendly act toward oneself. As this friendliness develops, one's awareness and concern for those around one enlarges as well. It is at this point that one can begin to envision a more open-ended and nonegocentric compassion.

Another characteristic of the spontaneous compassion that does not arise out of the volitional action of habitual patterns is that it follows no rules. It is not derived from an axiomatic ethical system nor even from pragmatic moral injunctions. It is completely responsive to the needs of the particular situation. Nagarjuna conveys this attitude of responsiveness:

“Just as the grammarian makes one study grammar, A Buddha teaches according to the tolerance of his students; Some he urges to refrain from sins, others to do good, Some to rely on dualism, others on non-dualism; And to some he teaches the profound, The terrifying, the practice of enlightenment,

Whose essence is emptiness that is compassion.”

Unrealized practitioners, of course, cannot dispense with rules and moral injunctions. There are many ethical rules in Buddhism whose aim is to put the body and mind into a form that imitates as nearly as possible how genuine compassion might become manifest in that situation (just as the meditative sitting posture is said to be an imita- tion of enlightenment).

With respect to its situational specificity and its responsiveness, this view of nonegocentric compassion might seem similar to what has been discussed in certain recent psychoanalytic writings as "ethical know-how."20 In the case of compassionate concern as generated in the context of mindfulness/awareness, this know-how could be said to be based in responsiveness to oneself and others as sentient beings without ego-selves who suffer because they grasp after ego-selves. And this attitude of responsiveness is in turn rooted in an ongoing concern: How can groundlessness be revealed ethically as nonego- centric compassion?

Compassionate action is also called skillful means (upaya) in Buddhism. Skillful means are inseparable from wisdom. It is interesting to consider the relationship of skillful means to ordinary skills such as learning to drive a car or learning to play the violin. Is ethical action (compassionate action) in Buddhism to be considered a skill-perhaps analogous to the Heidegger/Dreyfus account of ethical action as a non-rule-based, developed skill?21 As we discussed at some length with respect to meditation practice, in some ways skillful means in Buddhism could be seen as similar to our notion of a skill: the student practices ("plants good seeds") that is, avoids harmful actions, per- forms beneficial ones, meditates. Unlike an ordinary skill, however, in skillful means the ultimate effect of these practices is to remove all egocentric habits so that the practitioner can realize the wisdom state, and compassionate action can arise directly and spontaneously out of wisdom. It is as if one were born already knowing how to play the violin and had to practice with great exertion only to remove the habits that prevented one from displaying that virtuosity.

It should by now be obvious that the ethics of compassion has nothing to do with satisfying some pleasure principle. Fom the stand- point of mindfulness/awareness, it is fundamentally impossible to satisfy desires that are born within the grasping mind. A sense of unconditional well-being arises only through letting go of the grasp- ing mind. There is, however, no reason for ascetism. Material and social goods are to be employed however the situation warrants. (The middle way between the extremes of ascetism and indulgence is actually the historically earliest sense in which the term middle way was employed in Buddhism.)

Open-ended learning are profoundly transformative. Instead of being embodied (more accurately, reembodied moment after moment) out of struggle, habit, and sense of self, the goal is to become embodied out of compassion for the world. The Tibetan tradition even talks about the five aggregates being transformed into the five wisdoms. Notice that this sense of transformation does not mean going away from the world-getting out of the five aggregates. The aggregates may be the constituents on which the inaccurate sense of self and world are based, but (more properly and) they are also the basis of wisdom. The means of trans- forming the aggregates into wisdom is knowledge, realizing the aggregates accurately-empty of any egoistic ground whatsoever yet filled with unconditional goodness (Buddha nature, etc.), intrinsically just as they are in themselves.

How can such an attitude of all encompassing, decentered, respon- sive, compassionate concern be fostered and embodied in our culture? It obviously cannot be created merely through norms and rationalistic injunctions. It must be developed and embodied through a discipline that facilitates letting go of ego-centered habits and enables compas- sion to become spontaneous and self-sustaining. The point is not that there is no need for normative rules in the relative world-clearly such rules are a necessity in any society. It is that unless such rules are informed by the wisdom that enables them to be dissolved in the demands of responsivity to the particularity and immediacy of lived situations, the rules will become sterile, scholastic hindrances to com- passionate action rather than conduits for its manifestation.

Perhaps less obvious but even more strongly enjoined by the mind- fulness/awareness tradition is that meditations and practices under- taken simply as self-improvement schemes will foster only egohood. Because of the strength of egocentric habitual conditioning, there is a constant tendency, as practitioners in all contemplative traditions are aware, to try to grasp, possess, and become proud of the slightest insight, glimpse of openness, or understanding. Unless such tenden- cies become part of the path of letting go that leads to compassion, then insights can actually do more harm than good. Buddhist teachers have often written that it is far better to remain as an ordinary person and believe in ultimate foundations than to cling to some remembered experience of groundlessnes without manifesting compassion.

Finally, talk alone will certainly not suffice to engender sponta- neous nonegocentric concern. Even more than experiences of insight, words and concepts can be easily grasped at, taken as ground, and woven into a cloak of egohood. Teachers in all contemplative tradi- tions warn against fixated views and concepts taken as reality. In-deed, our promulgations of the concept of enactive cogntive science give us some pause. We would surely not want to trade the relative humility of objectivism for the hubris of thinking that we construct our world. Better by far a straightforward cognitivist than a bloated and solipsistic enactivist.

We simply cannot overlook the need for some form of sustained, disciplined practice. This is not something that one can make up for oneself-any more than one can make up the history of Western science for oneself. Nothing will take its place; one cannot just do one form of science rather than another and think that one is gaining wisdom or becoming ethical. Individuals must personally discover and admit their own sense of ego in order to go beyond it. Although this happens at the individual level, it has implications for science and for society.

Let us restate why we think ethics in the mindfulness/awareness tradition, and indeed, the mindfulness/awareness tradition itself, are so important to the modern world. There is a profound discovery of groundlessness in our culture in science, in the humanities, in society, and in the uncertainties of people's daily lives. This is generally seen as something negative-by everyone from the prophets of our time to ordinary people struggling to find meaning in their lives. Taking groundlessness as negative, as a loss, leads to a sense of alienation, despair, loss of heart, and nihilism. The cure that is gen- erally espoused in our culture is to find a new grounding (or return to older grounds). The mindfulness/awareness tradition points the way to a radically different resolution. In Buddhism, we have a case study showing that when groundlessness is embraced and followed through to its ultimate conclusions, the outcome is an unconditional sense of intrinsic goodness that manifests itself in the world as spon- taneous compassion. We feel, therefore, that the solution for the sense of nihilistic alienation in our culture is not to try to find a new ground; it is to find a disciplined and genuine means to pursue groundlessness, to go further into groundlessness. Because of the preeminent place science occupies in our culture, science must be involved in this pursuit.

Although late-twentieth-century science repeatedly undermines our conviction in an ultimate ground, we nonetheless continue to seek one. We have laid down a path in both cognitive science and human experience that would lead us away from this dilemma. We repeat that this is not a merely philosophical dilemma; it is also ethical, religious, and political. Grasping can be expressed not only individually as fixation on ego-self but also collectively as fixation on racial or tribal self-identity, as well as grasping for a ground as the territory that separates one group of people from another or that one group would appropriate as its own. The idolatry of supposing not only that there is a ground but that one can appropriate it as one's own acknowledges the other only in a purely negative, exclusionary way. The realization of groundlessness as nonegocentric responsive- ness, however, requires that we acknowledge the other with whom we dependently co-originate. If our task in the years ahead, as we believe, is to build and dwell in a planetary world, then we must learn to uproot and release the grasping tendency, especially in its collective manifestations.

When we widen our horizon to include transformative approaches to experience, especially those concerned not with escape from the world or the discovery of some hidden, true self but with releasing the everyday world from the clutches of the grasping mind and its desire for an absolute ground, we gain a sense of perspective on the world that might be brought forth by learning to embody groundless- ness as compassion in a scientific culture. Since we have been most affected by the Buddhist tradition and its approach to experience through mindfulness/awareness, we were naturally led to rely on this tradition in relation to the task of scientific and planetary building. Science is already deeply embedded in our culture. Buddhism from all the world's cultures is now taking root and beginning to develop in the West. When these two planetary forces, science and Buddhism, come genuinely together, what might not happen? At the very least, the journey of Buddhism to the West provides some of the resources we need to pursue consistently our own cultural and scientific prem- ises to the point where we no longer need and desire foundations and so can take up the further tasks of building and dwelling in worlds without ground.

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