For the philosophical schools best known in the west– Chinese Daoism and Neo-Confucianism, and Japanese Buddhism–the world is a dynamic force-field of energies known as qi or bussho¯ (buddha-nature) and classi- fiable in Western terms as ‘psychophysical.’ The topic is vast, but a rough idea can be conveyed through a consideration of the Chinese and Japanese understandings of the phenomena that to Western eyes seem least capable of awareness: namely, rocks and stones.

According to Shinto, the whole world is pervaded by awe-inspiring forces known as kami. Large and powerfully shaped rocks, as conduits of high intensities of kami, were experienced as generating a kind of sacred space around them–an effect that could be enhanced by grouping them together in appropriate ways.

Readers operating on the Cartesian dichotomy between mind and matter will tend to regard (and perhaps dismiss) much of the content of this text as naïve anthropomorphism; but they would do well to reflect on just how recent and parochial the Cartesian worldview is–no matter how much it has enabled human manipulation of the world by means of technology. By endorsing Cartesian dualism, natural science gave itself permission to deflate the ‘world soul’ of antiquity, as it were, draining the anima mundi and bottling up of all soul within human beings alone. It is only after such operations that any apparent animation of nonhuman phenomena has to be seen as a result of anthropomorphic projection.

For those who do not espouse a Cartesian dualism, the term ‘panpsychism’ is an appropriate name for worldviews that have humans embedded in an unbroken continuum of ‘animation’ pervading all natural phenomena.

As in the Chinese qi cosmology that is behind these Japanese conceptions, the underlying idea is that all phenomena are manifestations of the same cosmic energies, correlated in a multiplicity of different ways that can be understood through appropriate attention and reflection.

Rather than dismissing this kind of talk as betraying a naïve animism, we do better to see it as employing tropes akin to personification in poetry, figurative speech that reflects a rather sophisticated understanding of the relationships between the denizens of what we distinguish as the human, animal, and mineral realms.

the perspective of modern science is only one among many– effective for certain practical purposes, but not one that much enhances our understanding or appreciation of rocks.

In several of his writings Kukai radicalizes Mahayana Buddhist thinking by revisioning the ‘Dhar- ¯ makaya,’ which had been previously understood as some formless and timeless Absolute, as the “reality embodiment” of the cosmic Buddha Mahavairochana (Dainichi Nyorai in Japanese) and nothing other than the physical universe. This means that natural phenomena such as rocks and stones are to be included among sentient beings and revered as constituting the supreme embodiment of the Buddha.

Dogen develops the idea that even “insentient beings expound the ¯ teachings”–although in a different way from the sentient. To help his listeners or readers understand how insentient beings manage this, he recommends practicing zazen, or ‘just sitting,’ which gradually takes one beyond the usual anthropocentric understanding of the insentient as utterly ‘other’ than the human.

it takes practice motivated by a desire for understanding to read this natural text, but the notion of nature as scripture certainly does justice to the sense one often has that there is something ‘inscribed’ in natural phenomena–and that patterns in stone especially have some kind of meaning.

the Chinese tradition reveres rocks for their age and beauty, for their being expressive of the fundamental energies of the earth on which we live, and for their role in vitalizing human activities. Japanese Buddhism adds pedagogic and soteric dimensions by inviting us to regard rocks (and other natural phenomena) as sources of wisdom, and moreover as companions on the path to profounder awareness.

mind understood as radically relational and external rather than internal and inherent, and therefore multiple and plural. There is “Big Mind,” the whole field with its patterning, the structured totality, and lesser minds, particulars as foci within the patterning of the field which construe the totality each from its own particular perspective, and where a sense of the whole through experiential relations with other particulars requires a multiplicity of views and angles. This is the basic idea, from Chinese Daoism to Japanese Buddhism.

there is no doubt that radical Cartesianism, whereby one thinks of oneself as being essentially mind and thus totally other than non-human (mindless) beings, has contributed significantly to the development of

those peculiarly Western forms of technology that are designed to control and exploit all other beings for human benefit. Such a Cartesian view also provides moral sanction for such exploitation, since if other beings are essentially different in kind from humans, this precludes the possibility of any moral responsibility toward them.

Insofar as panpsychism understands humans and other beings as being interrelated by virtue of participating in a continuum of degrees of awareness, it tends to promote a respect for other forms of life and existence. The strength of this tendency would depend in part on whether the panpsychism is subscribed to only in theory, as an intellectual commitment, or whether it’s experientially based as a result of some kind of (somatic) practice like Daoist or Buddhist meditation. In the former case a gap between belief and actions, good intentions and failed practice, is likely to open up. One might be a practicing Christian, for example, who believes that the natural world as God’s creation is worthy of respect, and yet if there’s an opportunity for vast financial gain through ruthless exploitation of natural resources, that belief may easily be relegated to the back of one’s mind for the time being. On the other hand, if one follows a thinker like Dogen and engages in the practi ¯ ce of sitting zazen, one gradually comes to experience a mental or psychical kinship with other beings; and as this experience becomes incorporated, one’s activities are naturally transformed thereby. Here we have the Buddhist idea of the intimate link between the twin virtues ‘insight and compassion’: as one comes to realize one’s interrelations with others, selfishness is correspondingly reduced, and increasing compassion is a natural consequence.