Panel:
“Decentering with Dōgen—and engaging in embodied, relational, responsive co-creation” at the SACP conference in San Francisco
We looked at different ways in which we —self and others, different from each other— emerge from fields/dynamic contexts that pre-exist us and that we continuously reshape with our actions. From this assumption, the urgency emerges to cultivate relations across differences that shape our character, life, community —sometimes through co-creation of an art piece, sometimes through theatrework, sometimes through sharing stories with each other, sometimes through sharing an educational space while valuing diversity —always by embodying responses which are never neutral or unimpactful, and that continuously co-create self, other and world.
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Details:
“Decentring with Dōgen —and engaging in embodied, relational, responsive co-creation”
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Description of the panel
Each of our five papers contributes to redefining the concepts of decentring and co-creation, in dialogue with the Japanese philosopher Dōgen and other thinkers.
We characterise decentring as “being authenticated” by multiple phenomena with which we are intertwined (Dōgen, Genjōkōan), staying present during our encounter with others, ready to leave the centre to them, at the right time. Decentring involves switching from one’s perspectives to the perspectives of the other, and requires finding oneself in a place: aware to be “here”, connected to the place we share with others, as embodied beings. Decentring involves realising that there is no neutral way to be in a place.
We argue that decentring makes it possible to engage in co-creation, which is relational, responsive and dynamic.
Chiara Robbiano appropriates some of Dōgen’s insights to develop a concept of decentring as an attitude needed to navigate multiple worlds of meaning, in a diverse community. She reflects on how embodied practices can help educators and students decentre —by finding themselves in a shared place, alternating the role of host and guest—, and engage in a responsive co-creative process.
Yuki Imoto focuses on the role of decentring within the framework and practice of mindfulness and compassion-based programs in schools. Reflecting on the translation and implementation of such programs in Japan, she considers how to make sense of the seeming paradox of bringing mindfulness and compassion into skills-oriented, techno-individualizing school contexts.
Masaki Matsubara focuses on the notion of ’'おのずから(emergence from self by 場(Ba)), みずから(expressed from oneself into 場(Ba))' in the co-creation situation. Through first-person’s view description of his experience, he reflects on the role of embodied practices, e.g. theatrework, towards collaborations across differences.
Kiene Brillenburg Wurth focuses on perspectivism in the Zhuangzi and Dōgen and proposes a decentered and posthuman approach to creativity. She critiques dominant notions of creativity in the global north centred on individuality, achievement, and technology. Focusing on the artist duo Heringa/Van Kalsbeek she explores co-creation within an ‘interthing’ critical framework. Co/creative work boils down to an absorption of ‘self’ into the dynamism of matter.
Anton Sevilla-Liu and Catherine Sevilla-Liu begin by highlighting the relational nature of awakening, as discussed within the Kyoto School of Philosophy. They then turn to the examination of narrative practice such as the tree of life, where individuals are progressively decentered through realization of their relational existence.
(3) title and abstract of each paper
Chiara Robbiano.
Title:
“Decentred
co-creation in a place — reframing education in dialogue with
Dōgen”.
Abstract:
Dōgen explains that to cultivate oneself means to become actualised by multiple phenomena, after letting go of the assumption of a permanent self, of mind-body separation and self-and-other
separation (Genjōkōan).
I call this process
decentring,
and I argue that it is necessary towards academic excellence and social justice, both of which are enhanced when a multiplicity of
frameworks are brought together by different people. Decentring involves becoming aware of the habitual frameworks
not only
of one’s discipline,
but also
of one’s own body-and-mind;
not only
appreciating frameworks of
other disciplines,
but also
learning to travel to other worlds (Lugones 1987) of meanings, valuing, and experiencing, and practising to look through the eyes of others: “You should study the green mountains, using numerous
worlds as your standards. You should clearly examine the green mountains’ walking and your own walking” (Dōgen,
Sansui-kyō,
Tanahashi 1985: 98) and learn “in practice of water seeing water” (Dōgen,
Sansui-Kyō,
Nishijima and Cross 1994: 145).
Decentring facilitates co-creation, which always happens in a place, together with other beings. It is by
responding
to the calls of others, in the place we share with them, that we can develop shared practices and insights.
Dōgen gives examples of creative exchanges between teacher and students that seem unrestricted by any rule (Bukkōjōji),
and of seemingly unrestricted movement of fish and birds (Genjōkōan).
However, the question and the place to which they respond are the starting points that frame and allow their seemingly unrestricted and creative responses.
What embodied practices might help different people with different styles of movement
(Krueger 2021)
find themselves together in a place
experienced “as a place for the hosting of others, the hosting and weaving of difference” (Job and Vazquez 2023),
and
engage in co-creation, as a dynamic process of collaboration and negotiation across differences?
Yuki Imoto.
Title:
“Decentring
Mindfulness and Compassion-Based Learning”
Abstract:
This paper will consider the notion of decentring from multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives, and explore its role in the process of implementing mindfulness and compassion-based school
programs. I focus on the SEE Learning Program, a K-12 comprehensive holistic program developed by scientists and Buddhist scholars at Emory University in the US, and currently being implemented
in the Japanese context. The SEE Learning Program is based upon a framework, comprised of three domains - the personal, social and systemic, and three dimensions - attention, compassion and
engagement. The domains and dimensions together form a grid with nine components - each component representing a competency to be cultivated through study, reflection and embodied practice. I
consider how decentring facilitates this framework into practice, through first and second-person reflection as teacher, administrator, translator and anthropologist.
Reflecting on the implementation of such programs in Japan, I consider how to make sense of the seeming paradox of bringing mindfulness and compassion into skills-oriented,
techno-individualizing school contexts and the possibility for a decentred,
mu-shin
(no-mind)-based learning space to emerge.
Masaki Matsubara.
Title:
“When
expression is emerged from oneself by 'Ba': First-person view of co-creative embodied practice”
Abstract:
Co-creative body movements, such as Kokido's Theatrework and Steiner's Eurythmy, bring about unconscious body interactions. As a result, the physical expressions naturally emerge from the
co-creative space, allowing one to become aware of one's own way of being and the perspectives of others. Based on my own experiences of theatrework and eurythmy, this paper adopts a first-person
research (Suwa 2013) approach to describe how my body resonates with others, how my expression is naturally emerged by the power of the field, and how I have reached self-integration. The
discussion will reconsider notions "場(Ba)", "おのずから(emergence from self by Ba)," and "みずから(expressed from oneself into Ba)" based on ancient Japanese language, and reflect on the role of embodied
practices towards collaborations across differences.
Kiene Brillenburg Wurth.
Title:
“Creativity
beyond a self: an interthing perspective”
Abstract:
This paper focuses on perspectivism in the
Zhuangzi
en Dōgen in order to propose a decentered and posthuman approach to creativity. She critiques dominant notions of creativity in the global north centred on individuality, achievement, and
technology and develops an ‘interthing’ critical framework that she derives from Daoist and Zen Buddhist thought. This framework is built on 4 intersecting concepts: impermanence,
inter/intrarelationality, interdependent arising, and self/no-self. Focusing on the artist duo Heringa/Van Kalsbeek she explores co-creation within the bounds of this framework. More
specifically, she explores how ‘’things”, material, act and interact in the setting of—what Heringa/VanKalsbeek call—a controlled accident, a clearing for something to occur, in whatever way.
Co/creative work, in this specific instance, boils down to the question: how to act on indeterminacy; how to move with nature—and: who/what acts? It boils down to an absorption of ‘self’ into the
dynamism of matter.
Anton Sevilla-Liu & Catherine Sevilla-Liu
Title:
"The
Kyoto School of Philosophy and Interpersonal Awakening as Seen in Collective Narrative Practice"
Abstract:
Kyoto School philosophers like Nishitani Keiji, Tanabe Hajime, and Watsuji Tetsuro regularly draw on Dogen. In
Religion and Nothingness,
Nishitani articulates Dogen's structure of "forgetting the self" and "awakening to the ten thousand things" via the transition from the standpoint of nihility to the standpoint of emptiness. What
is less often discussed is the relational and interpersonal nature of this awakening. While suffering is often depicted as existential and solitary, samsara suggests collective suffering where
attachments and limit situations are shared. Thus, awakening is not of a solitary sage, but an awakening to a circuminsessional relationship where self and other relate in a manner that is beyond
"self." We see a similar logic in Tanabe's idea of shared metanoia and Watsuji's ideas of ethics and group creativity. But how can this theory be practiced? And what might practice look like in
the contemporary world of laypersons with its cultural difference and plurality of values? This presentation draws from David Denborough's
Collective Narrative Practice
(2019) and the more overtly interpersonal practices of Michael White's narrative therapy, which are grounded in a social constructionist view of the self that is relational and anti-essentialist.
Examining practices like the tree of life, it considers how closed identities are destabilized and individuals are progressively decentered through their realization of their relational
existence, and how this relational existence is further affirmed in collective practices like the forest of life.