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Human Relations
[0018-7267(200308)56:8]
Volume 56(8): 953–981: 036987
Copyright © 2003
The Tavistock Institute ®
SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com

From knowledge-creation to the

perfecting of action: Tao, Basho and pure
experience as the ultimate ground of
knowing
Robert Chia

A B S T R AC T The idea of knowledge-creation and knowledge management has

become an important area of research in management studies. This
preoccupation with the creation and accumulation of knowledge in
its explicit representational form is underpinned by the epistemo-
logical priorities of an alphabetic-literate1 culture that takes written
knowledge as the only reliable basis for effective action. Documented
knowledge necessarily precedes and hence determines action and
performance. Such a metaphysical orientation precludes the possi-
bility of attaining a form of direct unmediated knowing through the
relentless perfecting of action. In traditionally based oral–aural
communities or in non-alphabetic East Asian cultures knowing is
more often achieved directly through the immediate engagement of
tasks rather than through the acquisition of abstract written signs and
symbols: learning by direct observation and doing is the order of the
day. Consequently, there is little systematic documenting and record-
ing of knowledge in the written form that one finds in abundance in
contemporary western cultures. Yet this apparent lack has not
prevented such predominantly non-alphabetic eastern cultures from
achieving outstanding levels of performance in the arts, sport and in
business. This would suggest that the current obsession with knowl-
edge-creation and the presumed route of knowledge-
creation–application–performance is a peculiarly western pre-
occupation and that it represents only one avenue of possibility for

953

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954 Human Relations 56(8)

achieving effective action. This has significant implications for our

understanding of the relationship among knowledge, action and
performance.

KEYWORDS absolute nothingness  Ba  correlative thinking  pure

experience  sinism  theory-in-use  trans-individual 
unlearning

He who knows does not speak

He who speaks does not know
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 56, in Chan, 1963: 166)

Therefore, the Taoist teaches without words, transmitting through

non-explanation
(Chang, Creativity and Taoism, 1963: 42)

It is frequently asserted that we live in a knowledge economy and that infor-

mation and knowledge have become the basic building blocks of modern
capitalism. Knowledge and information are considered critical to all modes
of economic development because ‘the process of (economic) production is
always based on some level of knowledge and in the process of information’
(Castells, 1996: 17). Moreover, it is generally assumed that the attainment
of higher levels of knowledge is what will inevitably lead to higher levels of
performance, output and productivity, and this is what fuels the current
preoccupation with knowledge-creation and knowledge management,
particularly within management and organization studies. By knowledge is
meant: ‘a set of organized statement of facts or ideas, presenting a reasoned
judgement or an experimental result, which is transmitted to others through
some communication medium in some systematic form’ (Castells, 1996: 17n,
my emphasis). In other words knowledge is that which has been produced
through the process of observation, reflection and reasoning, and which has
then been systematically articulated in a written form through the medium
of language.
This idea that knowledge is only so when it is made explicit can be
traced back to Aristotle who insisted that the ability to articulate the cause
of things is what clearly distinguishes the knowledgeable person from the
experienced one. For, he/she who knows the cause can teach and ‘the ability
to teach is a distinguishing mark between the knowledgeable and the
ignorant man’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1998: 5). To know is to have the
answer to the question ‘Why?’ and not just the ‘What?’ of a phenomenon.

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The assumption within the western tradition ever since Aristotle is that it is
not about the ability to perform a task that really distinguishes a know-
ledgeable person, but one who has grasped the underlying causes of events
and can provide a compelling explanation of the latter.
Such a privileging of explanation over action has meant that the art of
doing has been overshadowed by the art of reasoning, justification and the
corresponding mastery of language required to achieve the latter. The articu-
late individual who is able to express him/herself well and to communicate
effectively is often held up as the exemplar of a knowledgeable person. The
history of progress in the western world has therefore been a history of
rendering articulate and explicit, and frequently in a written alphabetic form
our knowledge and understanding of the underlying causes of phenomena in
the world. The impressive achievements of modern western science testify to
the effectiveness of this approach and it is clear we would not be where we
are today without the outstanding progress that science has made. However,
within the East and within the realm of the arts, and the performing arts in
particular, such a systematized mode of knowledge-acquisition is actively
resisted. Here, instead, a process of sustained apprenticeship, discipleship or
understudy is emphasized. In large measure learning, knowing and perform-
ing in the arts come not so much by way of the detached acquisition of
abstract causes via the written word, but through direct, sustained, experi-
mental practice. Action is perfected through application and often without
the need for intervention by the written word.
Such contrasting priorities and approaches can help us begin to under-
stand the fundamental difference in attitudes between eastern2 and the
dominant western attitudes towards knowledge, action and performance.
This article seeks to develop the argument that knowledge of causes expressed
via the written word is not the only avenue for achieving understanding and
effective performance. In the terms of the Heideggerian philosopher Hubert
Dreyfus, abstract explanations can be helpful in bringing us from a novice
status to one of competence. But proficiency and mastery cannot be attained
without direct unmediated involvement. Such proficiency and mastery seem
to develop only if direct experience is assimilated in an ‘embodied, atheoret-
ical way’ (Dreyfus, 2001: 40, my emphasis). This is the approach favoured
by the arts in general, and the eastern arts in particular. In such artistic activi-
ties, the world is encountered in a non-thematic circumspective mode that
Heidegger (1962) calls ‘being-in-the-world’. Although it is often assumed that
practical activity presupposes a theoretical understanding of the world,
Heidegger, like a number of other philosophers, regards our ways of dealing
with the world as more basic than theoretical. At the heart of Heidegger’s
approach to human behaviour is a phenomenology of ‘mindless’ everyday

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956 Human Relations 56(8)

coping that forms the basis of all intelligibility. For this reason he coined the
term being-in-the-world to refer to a state of non-reflective absorption in
which the world around us is experienced as so much a part of us that it is
not viewed as an object for us to apprehend. Instead, we ‘dwell’ in it. Such a
view would privilege a directness of experiencing and it is this unmediated
directness that encapsulates what we mean here by the broad term ‘eastern’.
For this reason alone, Heidegger remains an important reference point for
serious eastern intellectuals (Parkes, 1987).
This essay begins by first noting the rise of China and the East Asian
countries in the global economy and its implications for our understanding
of contrasting cultural attitudes towards self, knowledge, action and
performance. We then return to chart the metaphysical traditions shaping
contemporary western thought and the epistemological lines of debate that
have emerged within this western tradition. The core assumptions underlying
the current preoccupation with knowledge-creation and management will
then be examined. An attempt is then made to contrast this preoccupation
with the priorities of an eastern mindset which is essentially pragmatic and
existential in orientation. By revisiting these issues it becomes much clearer
what an alternative practice-oriented attitude can really offer to our under-
standing of the relationship between knowing, action and performance.

The diverse global context of business

Rapid and revolutionary changes in the global political, social and techno-
logical landscapes have transformed the rules of competition for businesses
around the world. Amidst the diversity that economic globalization brings
are multiple shades of capitalism that co-exist uneasily and often in tension
with each other (Hampden-Turner & Trompenaars, 1996). To take a
common example, western business people generally refrain from mixing
business with ‘friendship’, but in the East friendship is an important aspect
of doing business because it carries with it a set of implicit obligations which
may be ‘cashed’ in terms of favours at a convenient time. Chu (1995) writes
of the experience of a certain Mr Jones, an American businessman who was
courting a Japanese businessman for a multimillion dollar agricultural
commodity deal amidst stiff competition from one other Midwestern broker.
For a variety of reasons Jones felt that he and the Japanese buyer had devel-
oped a strong rapport and the deal was all but sewn up when the buyer asked
him for a favour. He wanted his son to study in the United States and
wondered if the boy could be put up in the Jones family household during
this period. Mr Jones was, however, unable to do the latter. Soon after, his

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 957

Japanese client signed a contract with his Midwestern competitor, who, not
coincidentally, had some room in his house to put up the client’s son. This
is not an uncommon situation that westerners find themselves in when doing
business in the East. Giving a business contract is equated with doing a
favour and such favours require returning at some point in time.
Such significant differences in business attitudes within the broad
umbrella of capitalism are attributable to deep underlying metaphysical
assumptions that shape notions of self and its relationship with others, as
well as the idea of knowledge and its relationship to decision-making and
action. This divergence of attitude signals the necessity for developing
alternative conceptualizations and practical understandings of the strategic
priorities, decisional imperatives and modes of management operating in
diverse geographical locations throughout the world, and in particular within
the emerging economies of the Asia-Pacific countries and China. Although
America and western Europe have registered impressive economic revivals
over the last decade, it is clear that such continued strengthening of the
western economies is inextricably linked to the economic fortunes of other
global trading partners such as Japan, South Korea and the Asia-Pacific coun-
tries. This, together with the immense potential of China as an economic
superpower this century, necessitates an urgent conceptual re-assessment of
the underlying metaphysical outlook and cultural formations shaping mana-
gerial attitudes towards self, knowledge, and performative action in these
East Asian countries. Here, despite their apparent cultural diversities and
ideological differences,3 the invisible, the tacit, the spoken and the implied
are inevitably privileged over the visible, the explicit, the written and the
articulate. The term ‘Sinism’ (a ‘back-hand’ compliment since Sinism derives
from the word ‘sinister’) has been used to accentuate this peculiarly eastern
quality ‘and was formulated to encompass the important aspects of philo-
sophical, religious, and ethical thought of both Japan and Korea as well as
the Chinese language’ (Hwa, 1987: 218).
Unlike most alphabetic-literate cultures, which put a ‘premium on visu-
alist qualities such as sharp outlines and clear-cut sequences (and) is likely
to regard the literal meaning . . . as something altogether wholesome and
altogether desirable’ (Ong, 1967: 47), communication in the East is often
indirect, suggestive and symbolic (Abe, 1990). This is because in non-
alphabetic languages like Chinese, meaning is never literal since the Chinese
writing system:

provides no literae or letters on which the concept literal can be built,

the roughly equivalent concepts are ‘according to the surface of the
word’. . . . ‘according to the dead character’. These are hardly laudatory

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expressions. . . . The rich suggestiveness of Chinese characters favours a

sense of fuller meaning lying much deeper than the literal.
(Ong, 1967: 47)

It is this epistemological reversal and the privileging of the invisible, the tacit
and the unspeakable over the literal, the visible and the articulated that
marks out the East from that dominant in the West. This deeply ingrained
eastern predisposition relates to an ‘unconscious metaphysic’ (Whitehead,
1933) that elevates flux and change over order and stability. For, only if it is
believed that ultimate reality is relatively stable and orderly can there be
confidence of the capacity of language to capture precisely the condition of
things. In a world that believes ultimate reality to be perpetually in flux,
however, linguistic terms are construed as always inadequate to the task.
Hence they are not to be used literally but metaphorically as mere vehicles4
to ‘point to’ an ultimate reality that is inaccessible to language. As a result
of this ‘eastern’ perception of the inadequacy of language, a pragmatic
attitude towards language predominates and hence issues of meaning,
identity, self, knowing, action and performance are conceived in essentially
relational terms. Meaning, action and utterances must be understood not
literally, but always in the context of specific situations.
A heightened awareness of such fundamental differences in meta-
physical attitudes has led to recent attempts by some leading Japanese
management scholars to introduce local notions such as ‘Ba’ to account for
the perceived differences in knowledge-management practices in Japanese
organizations (Nonaka & Konno, 1998; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). ‘Ba’,
suggests a place or epistemological platform for advancing individual and
collective knowledge. It is a ‘shared space for emerging relationships. It can
be physical, virtual, or mental space’ (Nonaka & Konno, 1998: 40).
Moreover, ‘Ba exists at many levels and these levels may be connected to
form a greater Ba known as a Basho’ (Nonaka & Konno, 1998: 41). In their
important article, Nonaka and Konno also introduce the concept of ‘Pure
Experience’ and have importantly related it to Zen learning although they
have not sufficiently showed how these concepts are existentially connected.
The introduction of novel concepts such as ‘Ba’ into a predominantly
western-inspired management discourse is to be much welcomed. However,
it is argued here that a full appreciation of their implications for under-
standing action and performance can only be grasped against the backdrop
of what is clearly an alternative set of ontological priorities (Heidegger, 1971;
Needham, 1962; Nishitani, 1982). By rendering these metaphysical assump-
tions more transparent, it becomes more possible to demonstrate how radi-
cally they differ from the dominant western mindset of knowledge-creation,

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 959

dissemination and application. Moreover, as I emphasize here, such a form

of ‘eastern’ thinking is not entirely alien to the West. For, even in the latter,
there is much evidence of a subsidiary epistemological tradition that derives
from Heraclitus, which has long appreciated the value of the tacit, the
invisible and the inarticulate in the order of things. As Parkes (1987) writes,
quoting Heraclitus: ‘Harmoniê aphanês phranerês kreittôn. . . The hidden
harmony is deeper, the invisible connection stronger, the inconspicuous corre-
spondence more interesting than the apparent’ (p. 106). For this reason, the
‘eastern’ must not be simply viewed as a geographical site, but also as a
suppressed mentality that has persisted in the West that finds its expression
more fully in the arts in general and the performing arts in particular. What
this suggests is that the current preoccupation with explicit knowledge-
creation and management may need to be tempered by an equally import-
ant emphasis on direct experimental action as a valuable source of meaning,
innovation, productivity and enhanced performance.

Representationalism: The epistemological tradition in

western thought

. . . it is not only with a view to action but also when we have no inten-
tion to do anything that we choose . . . . sight rather than all the others
. . . sight is the sense that especially produces cognition in us and
reveals many distinguishing features of things.
(Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Alpha 1, trans. Lawson-Tancred,
1998: 4)

Modern western thought owes much of its dominant method of knowledge-

creation to the long-held Aristotelian-inspired belief that vision provides the
most reliable basis for knowledge, and that linguistic signs are eminently
suited to the task of representing reality. Aristotle, with his insistence on
visual observation and linguistic precision, tended to take articulated
language as the only real route to knowledge (sophía). His description of
what counts as knowledge assumed that ‘the world lends itself to the grasp
of language, it has a “logical” or “discursive” character, (and) a systematic
structure’ (Randall, 1960: 7). So much so that, on this view, knowledge is
ultimately a linguistic matter and not one of empirical experience. To know
is to be able to define and say precisely ‘what’ a thing is, hence giving it an
identity, and then to locate it in a system of causal relations. Naming, locating
and the attribution of causal relations constitute the key steps in the know-
ledge-creation process. One consequence of this epistemological attitude is

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that only the fixed within the flow of living experience and the universal
aspects of the individual are given a valid ontological status. For, that which
is fluxing and changing, by definition cannot be given a stable identity, and
hence cannot be named, differentiated and compared for their universal
qualities. Flux, change, process and the individual particularities of event-
happenings are thereby relegated to an epi-phenomenal status in the Aris-
totelian scheme of things. There is ‘no place for the flow to be known as
flow, nor the individual as individual’ (Carter, 1990: 26). Aristotle’s emphasis
on fixity, ‘simple location’ (Whitehead, 1985) and universality can be attrib-
uted to his Parmenidean ‘thirst’ for the eternal and the unchanging as essen-
tial features of ultimate reality. This Aristotelian metaphysics underpins the
enterprise of modern knowledge-creation and management. Its three key
philosophical assumptions are that:

(i) the alphabetic language is strictly adequate to representing accurately

the fundamental elements of reality;
(ii) that which is knowable is always the general or universal, never the
particular; and
(iii) knowledge is always about knowing the identity and the underlying
causes of things not their empirical manifestations.

Thus, the ability to identify phenomena, to locate them in a hierarchical

system of classification and then to establish and verify their causes and
effects in precise linguistic terms constitutes what we mean by proper know-
ledge.
Within this framework of thinking the idea of explicit knowledge
production and accumulation seems eminently appropriate. The task of
research is therefore to render explicit the tacit dimensions of knowing and
then to make these accessible and communicable to others in a written form.
It also sets in place a sequential logic whereby knowledge-creation and
accumulation precede dissemination, application and ultimately effective
performance. In an applied field such as management studies, therefore, the
central task is to first make empirical observations of practice, theorize these
practices in terms of established conceptual schemas and systems of expla-
nations, verify these principles empirically, and then offer them as written
recipes to an eager practitioner audience. The literature on management
theory is replete with terminologies, typologies, factor analyses, conceptual
proliferations and even ethnographic studies that purport to explain the
goings-on in organizational life. Such explanations are formulated, often in
a causal language, written up and published in prestigious western journals
such as Human Relations for a primarily western-based academic audience.

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 961

What is not recorded, not identified and given a causal explanation, and
hence not subsequently published in established journals or books is not
considered proper knowledge.
Unsurprisingly, many of these academic concepts and causal expla-
nations often appear abstract and remote from the lived experiences of the
practitioner world. For, within the world of the latter, it is not so much the
ability to name phenomena and establish their causal relations that matters,
but how they can be manipulated so as to generate the desired response that
forms the primary concern. What works is more important that what is true.
Pragmatism is the natural orientation of the practitioner world. The result is
a typical epistemological rupture between academic tendencies and prac-
titioner priorities. On the one hand, academic theories purport to explain
retrospectively ‘why’ things are as they are and how they have come to be
and, on the other hand, practitioners are more concerned with ‘what’ needs
to be done prospectively to ensure a desired outcome.
This has led to the creation of an epistemological gap between what is
commonly called ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. It is probably more useful in this
context to refer to this gap as the difference between what Argyris and Schon
(1974) perceptively called ‘espoused theory’ and ‘theory-in-use’. But,
contrary to Argyris and Schon’s contention that the former and the latter
ought to be more consistent and aligned with each other, the gap between
these two is never bridgeable as they serve rather different functions.
‘Espoused theories’ and explanations are part of the retrospective sense-
making process that is infused with justificatory overtones. They enable us
to lay out a logically consistent pathway between the past and the future;
between what has happened and what will happen. This is important. For
within the context of the western mindset, the transparency and account-
ability of actions and intentions are major concerns and preoccupations in
their own right. Actions, intentions and outcomes have to be rendered
explicit and made accountable in order to appease the various stakeholders
involved.
‘Theories-in-use’, however, are essentially embodied, performative
actions. They are inarticulate and often inarticulatable forms of tacit know-
ledge (Dreyfus, 1999; Heidegger, 1962; Polanyi, 1962). Or better still they
are a kind of knowing-in-action. In the former, little is done in terms of
performative action but much is said by way of justification. In the latter,
nothing is said but many things are done!!! This is the real meaning of the
quote at the beginning of this paper from Lao Tzu:

He who knows does not speak

He who speaks does not know

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962 Human Relations 56(8)

The ability to perform and the ability to explain persuasively are two entirely
different skills. In an alphabetic-literate culture the ability to do the latter is
privileged over the former, whereas in non-alphabetic cultures, it is direct
performative action not elaborate explanations that is valued. This priori-
tizing of action over words is deeply ingrained in the eastern mindset.

The non-representational eastern mindset

. . . there is a deep-seated awareness of the incompetence of utterance

as the mode of man’s being in regard to that which should remain
unspoken, and the insight that utterance and human thinking can
return to and rest in its own nature only when that awareness of incom-
petence is truly gained, have been, I think, common tenets throughout
Indian Brahaminism, Chinese Taoism and Japanese Shinto.
(Nishitani, 1982: 31)

The East has always remained sceptical or suspicious of the capacity of

language in general, and rational analysis in particular, to capture adequately
the deeper aspects of the human condition. For the Chinese, in particular,
‘reason is for questions of means; for your ends in life listen to aphorism,
examples, parable and poetry’ (Graham, 1989: 7). Thus, in place of the
insistence on straight-line clarity and distinctiveness in logical argumenta-
tion, the eastern mind prefers to ‘circumnavigate an issue, tossing out subtle
hints that permit only a careful listener to surmise where the unspoken core
of the question lies’ (van Bragt, in Nishitani, 1982: xl). Communication of
thought, as indicated earlier, is suggestive and symbolic rather than descrip-
tive and precise. This is because the eastern mind has opted to privilege as
more fundamental and profound that which lies beyond the ordinary grasp
of language and logic. The latter can only be approached through a complex,
spiralling, form of seemingly paradoxical utterances that allude to the exist-
ence of an ultimate reality beyond the realms of intellection. Words are mere
pointers to what lies beyond. As the eminent Buddhist monk Kao-seng
Chuan puts it:

Symbols are to express ideas. When ideas have been understood,

symbols should be forgotten. Words are to interpret thoughts. When
thoughts have been absorbed, words stop. . . Only those who can take
the fish and forget the net are worthy to seek the truth.
(Kao-seng Chuan, in Chang, 1963: 43)

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In matters of deep comprehension one must be able to grasp the absolute by

arriving at an unmediated penetration into the heart of things: a primitive
state of pure unself-conscious experiencing in which the boundaries between
knower and known, subject and object have been completely dissolved.
A number of eminent sinologists and philosophical commentators have
noted such significant differences between the western and eastern mindsets.
Needham (1962), for instance, in his monumental treatise on Science and
civilisation in China observed that, while the Aristotelian world-view domi-
nates western thought, the East, and China in particular, developed a phil-
osophy more akin to what Whitehead calls a ‘philosophy of Organism’
(Whitehead, 1929). According to this organismic way of thinking, things do
not so much react externally to one another in a system of causal relations,
but rather are moved by internal resonances and the correlative harmonis-
ing of wills. Chinese correlative thinking (Hwa, 1987) differs from the essen-
tially Greek-inspired linear causal thinking of the West that, in turn, derives
its impetus from the influence of the phonetic alphabet (McLuhan, 1962;
Ong, 1967). The former emphasized iterative movement, change and trans-
formation, the latter, stasis, form and permanence. As Ong (1967) writes:

Operation with the alphabet implies that words . . . can somehow be

dissected into little spatial parts called letters of the alphabet which are
independent of the one-directional flow of time and which can be
handled and reassembled independently of this flow. . . . The sense of
order and control which the alphabet thus imposes is overwhelm-
ing. . . . When the alphabet commits the verbal and conceptual worlds
. . . to the quiescent and obedient order of space, it imputes to language
and to thought an additional consistency of which preliterate persons
have no inkling. . . . It appears no accident that formal (i.e., Aris-
totelian) logic was invented in an alphabetic culture.
(Ong, 1967: 42–5, my emphasis)

For the Aristotelian-inspired western mind, what matters is ‘a world of static

form which remained when the world of crude reality was dissolved away’.
For the Chinese, however, the real world is ‘dynamic and ultimate, an
organism made of an infinity of organisms, a rhythm harmonising an infinity
of lesser rhythms’ (Needham, 1962, Vol. 2: 292).
Correlative thinking is emphatically dynamic, non-discrete and urges the
‘harmonizing of internal wills’ through concrete–existential engagement rather
than external causal relations. It is intimately linked to the ideographic char-
acter of its writing. Ideography, and calligraphy in particular, is a kinetic art
consisting of the choreography of human gestures. Chinese calligraphy is not

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so much a system of representation or a medium for capturing thought as it is

a performing art (Hwa, 1987). Calligraphy is a pastime performed by millions
in China both indoors and outdoors. For this reason, if one were to go to the
Forbidden City in Beijing one would see countless numbers of elderly men
‘writing’ on the pavements with a brush and a bucket of water. As soon as the
calligraphic characters have dried in the sun, they disappear and the process is
repeated interminably. Writing thus, takes on the semblance of performance
rather than static representation. The fleeting, transient calligraphic characters
are aesthetically pleasing in themselves, not what they represent.
Speaking and writing in eastern cultures are performances in them-
selves, forms of exploratory self-expression, not necessarily attempts to
capture or represent an external reality. Such performances are mere
‘pointers’ to an unspeakable yet knowable world that lies beyond utterance.
There is a clear acknowledgement of the utter futility of words in attempt-
ing to reach into the depths of the human condition. The eastern systems of
knowing, therefore, cannot be fully understood without a deeper awareness
of this inextricable relationship between ontology and utterance/inscription
as performance. Such reticence towards overt expressions and articulate
explanations stem from a tradition which elevates the invisible and the inar-
ticulate over the visible and the literal. This is something that often puzzles
the western mind. As Carter (1990) observes:

It may be that a tradition of analysis and verbalization finds it less

obvious that preconceptual and prelinguistic awareness is possible, and
that a tradition of meditative silence and skepticism with regards to the
adequacy of language, would find the preconceptual and prelinguistic
necessary to a correct understanding of any and all discursive activities.
(R. Carter, 1990: 14)

Yet, such preconceptual and prelinguistic awareness is not entirely alien to

all of the western culture as we have consistently emphasized. A number of
philosophers, poets, literary critics and art critics including William James,
Henri Bergson and John Ruskin have been acutely aware of the need to begin
from prelinguistic experience in the development of knowledge: a form of
radical empiricism that is grounded on pure unadulterated experience.

The method of radical empiricism

The whole technical power of painting depends on our recovery of

what may be called the innocence of the eye; . . . a sort of childish

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 965

perception of these flat stains of colour, merely as such, without

consciousness of what they signify, – as a blind man would see them if
suddenly gifted with sight.
(John Ruskin, Works, 1927, Vol. XV: 27, emphasis added)

Radical empiricism is based upon the insistence that proper knowing, spon-
taneous action, and hence inspired performances, issue from being open and
in touch with the ground of ‘pure experience’ (James, 1912/1996; Nishida,
1921/1990), ‘pure duration’ (Bergson, 1913) or ‘pure intuition’ (Chang,
1963). For James, as for Bergson, Nishida and Chang, what we generally
call empiricism is actually a kind of ‘false empiricism’ as it relies on pre-
established linguistic categories as the starting point for recording obser-
vations and not on direct lived experience itself. James criticized this
‘orthodox’ empiricism for a priori reducing experience to a succession of
stable, distinct elements – ideas, images, percepts, sensations, etc., that can
be held before the mind and introspectively examined. For him, ‘this punc-
tuate, discontinuous, view of experience’ overlooks immense tracts of our
inner life. They ‘falsify as well as omit’ (James, 1911/1996: 79). They are
like maps and as with maps display only the surfaces of things that in them-
selves are ‘concrete bits of experience’ (p. 74). Orthodox empiricism
attempts to substitute static cuts in place of the fullness of experience and
this is misleading since: ‘All real units of experience overlap . . . you falsify
if you treat it conceptually, or by the law of dots’ (James, 1909/1996: 287–8,
emphasis in original). To be truly radical and to know in its pristine sense,
therefore, we must begin from the flux of experience and encounter reality
before conscious thought intervenes, and before the separation of subject
from object.
It is this concern for starting from the ground of pure experience that
unites the concerns of Bergson, James and Nishida. Thus for James, pure
experience is a ‘plain, unqualified actuality . . . a simple that’ (James,
1912/1996: 23, emphasis in original). Likewise, for Nishida to experience
truly is ‘to know facts just as they are . . . by completely relinquishing one’s
own fabrications. What we usually refer to as experience is adulterated with
some sort of thought’ (Nishida, 1921/1990: 3). Although there are signifi-
cant differences in the approach taken by these philosophers, it is the insist-
ence on the primacy of immediate experience as the starting point for genuine
knowing that unites their philosophical concerns. To know and to be able to
act in harmony, in its deepest, richest sense, therefore, is to experience reality
– directly, immediately and purely. Pure experience is the only reliable empiri-
cal basis for a genuine empiricism and in proposing radical empiricism as an
alternative approach to knowledge, James was merely giving voice to what

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966 Human Relations 56(8)

was already well understood by western poets, artists and literary critics as
well as by much of eastern thought.
The art critic John Ruskin, for instance, understood the importance of
starting from pure experience when he insisted that developing the ability to
see clearly was what was quintessential to any form of training or education
in the arts and crafts.

To be taught to read – what is the use of that, if you know not whether
what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak – but
what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught
to think – nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have
nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought
at once, and both true.
(Ruskin, Works, 1927, Vol. XVI: 180)

Ruskin consistently emphasized that outstanding works and flawless

products and performances can only be produced in the arts and crafts if we
are able to see reality for what it is without the interference of our preju-
dices. Many would argue that it is impossible to attain this objectivity of
vision. But for Ruskin, as for a whole range of western poets and artists, as
well as eastern sages, this is a condition that is eminently approachable, albeit
with great difficulty and after relentless and persistent effort. The eye needs
to be re-educated to regain its ‘innocence’ and naivety; to be de-cluttered
from the cultural norms, imperatives, dictates and established dogma that
drive us in our daily lives. As the philosopher Otto Pöggler (1987) observed:

We have too much culture! . . . Europeans in general have no univocal,

common, simple relationship to reality and to themselves. This great
lack in the Western world is the ground of confused opinions in various
areas, and it is clearly also the reason for the turn towards Asia.
(p. 58)

The idea that there can actually be too much culture, too many layers of
representations that generate ideological pluralism and hence too many
confusing views and opinions in the West is an interesting insight. For it
suggests how easily those who live in the West can be seduced and distracted
by the regimes of signifiers generated by the media on a daily basis. They
serve to clutter up the minds and to prevent the ability to see with an
‘innocent eye’ what is actually going on. For Ruskin, however, it is only
through regaining this purity of sight that we can really begin truly to
produce great works in every field of endeavour:

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 967

[T]here is an art of making machinery; there is an art of building ships;

an art of making carriages. . . . There is but one right way of doing any
given thing . . . farther, not only is there but one way of doing things
rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the
whole of them, without any choice . . . owing to our special idiosyn-
crasies.
(Ruskin, Works, 1927, Vol. XVI: 294–7, emphasis original)

For this reason, proper teaching in any art or craft must fundamentally
emphasize the powers of observation.

we shall obtain no satisfactory results . . . unless we set ourselves to

teaching the operative, however employed – be he farmer’s labourer,
or manufacturer’s; be he mechanic, artificer, shopman, sailor, or
ploughman – teaching (them) . . . one and the same thing . . . namely
Sight.
(Ruskin, Works, 1927, Vol. XVI: 179)

For Ruskin, as for James, Bergson and Nishida, to arrive at the ability to see
and experience directly and purely in an unmediated manner is a vital
precondition for the ultimate mastery of one’s art. And, it is only on the basis
of this clarity of vision that great works of art, outstanding action and the
flawless performances that we instinctively recognize as special, can be
attained.
The need to attain such a clear and uncluttered vision in the conduct
of business is also emphasized in the philosophical outlook of Konosuke
Matsushita, one of the most outstanding industrialists and businessmen of
the 20th century. For Matsushita a vital quality for good management is the
possession of a sunao mind. Sunao is a Japanese word that is used to denote
meekness, tractability or an open-hearted innocence and naivety; an
untrapped mind that is free to adapt itself effectively to new circumstances.
As Matsushita (1978) writes:

A person with this mind looks at things as they are at that moment
and colours them with no special bias, emotionalism, or preconception
. . . when a person looks at things with the sunao mind he is open to
experience them as they are. . . . Zen training with its austere life-style
and stress on meditation, seeks to free the mind from material concerns
and prejudices, and in this sense the Zen mind bears a certain resem-
blance to the sunao mind.
(pp. 63–5)

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968 Human Relations 56(8)

Such a concrete form of open-mindedness produces a kind of profound

knowing that is prior to the creation of the subject/object distinction. In this
pristine state, there is no separation of knower and known. Separation of
knower and known occurs only when a given ‘bit’ is abstracted from the flow
of experience and retrospectively considered in the context of other
categories. This form of radical empiricism with its insistence on a return to
the immediacy of experience as the starting point for human comprehension
provides us with an alternative metaphysical foundation or Weltanschauung
for understanding eastern attitudes towards self, knowing and performative
action.

Tao and Basho as the ultimate field of knowing

In his seminal work An inquiry into the good, Nishida Kitaro, arguably the
foremost modern eastern philosopher, sought to develop a unique philo-
sophical system synthesizing both eastern and western forms of logic and
understanding beginning from the primacy of lived experience. Nishida was
acutely aware of James’s work and also wrote approvingly of Bergson’s
attempts at starting from the immediacy of experience:

From the first there were those whose philosophies took their start
from reason and those who took their start from experience. Bergson
belongs to the latter. But while those who claim to be starting from
experience (i.e., orthodox empiricism) do not usually mean true pure
experience. . . . Bergson strove to eliminate everything dogmatic and to
penetrate deeply to the true form of experience itself.
(Nishida, in Nishitani, 1991: 83)

For Nishida, however, most attempts to theorize the idea of pure experience,
including those of William James (see especially Nishida, 1921/1990: 13, 33,
52), are predicated upon the common-sense assumption that experience is
something that an individual possesses rather than something that transcends
individual identity. Such an assumption, Nishida argues, does not, however,
truly reflect our direct experience since experience, in its real form, is not
such that first the self exists and then it experiences something as an object.
Rather the self itself is only realized through the act of experiencing. The
individual is not an a prior entity but an emergent property of experience
itself. True pure experience is therefore ‘trans-individual’ rather than a
property of individuals.

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 969

. . . it is not that there is experience because there is an individual, but

that there is an individual because there is experience . . . experience is
more fundamental than individual differences.
(Nishida, 1921/1990: 19)

This idea of trans-individuality is not something that comes easily to the

western mind because for most in the West the conscious, intentional indi-
vidual is the ultimate building block of society. The idea of the autonomous
individual acting in his/her own self-interest has been the basic organizing
principle of modernity and especially of modern capitalism (Smith,
1776/1991). Such an idea of individualism can be traced to the effect of
alphabetic writing and the invention of print on the western psyche. As Ong
(1967) writes:

. . . the development of writing and print ultimately fostered the

breakup of feudal societies and the rise of individualism. Writing and
print created the isolated thinker . . . and downgraded the network of
personal loyalties which oral cultures favour as matrices of communi-
cation and as a principle of social unity. . . . Inevitably record keeping
enhanced the sense of individual as against communal property and
the sense of individual rights.
(p. 54)

For the East, however, it is quite easily acceptable to think that the individual
is only a secondary effect of social relations and not the basic unit of society.
For this reason, the term ‘collectivism’ has been popularly used to describe
such a ‘trans-individualistic’ orientation in cross-cultural studies (Hofstede,
1980). What such studies fail to do, however, is to excavate and render more
transparent the underlying metaphysical attitudes shaping this view of self,
identity and the world. For, if experience is more fundamental than the indi-
vidual and if such experience is one of flux and transformation, then it
follows that the identity of the individual is the effect of the arresting and
abstracting of experience. The individual self is only a by-product of per-
petually shifting constellations of relations, never a fundamental stable unity
in its own right.
In presenting the individual as an ‘effect’ of experience and hence
relationships, Nishida was expressing a deeply held eastern assumption that
the individual self is a secondary social construction and not a primary unity
of reality. What is primary is pure experience. This eastern formulation of
pure experience harbours three essential characteristics. First, pure experi-
ence is realized prior to self-awareness and the subject/object distinctions.

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970 Human Relations 56(8)

Second, pure experience is active and constructive not passive, discrete and
static as is generally understood in ordinary empiricism. Such experience
grasped from within is systematically self-developing and self-unfolding – the
self in ceaseless construction and reconstruction. Third, in pure experience,
knowledge, feeling and volition remain undifferentiated. Ultimate reality is
not merely registered cognitively but also felt emotionally and volitionally.
These three propositions provide the necessary philosophical grounding for
understanding the kind of intuitive metaphysics that underpins the eastern
system of self, knowing and performance.
Nishida identifies three progressively more encompassing fields of
reflexive awareness or Basho that through sustained meditation ultimately
returns us from our everyday encounters with popular representations to this
aboriginal ground of pure experience as the genuine basis for knowing and
insight. First, there is the everyday Basho of Being. In this Basho, ordinary
empirical judgements are made unreflectively. For instance, we may make an
observation that ‘this table is brown’. Such a statement seems to express pure
objectivity because the observer making this judgement has been so neutral-
ized in that statement that he/she is not even aware of his/her presence
entering into the judgement itself. It assumes an unproblematic subject/object
distinction. Statements only refer to the object of observation and not the
observer him/herself. These are statements of what ‘is’ and what ‘is not’ that
form the basis of Aristotelian logic. However, as Nishida points out to
neutralize the role of the observer in this way is to implicitly say something
about the observer – that his/her role can be ignored. This is actually an arbi-
trary judgement to make, because what is really being said is ‘I see a brown
table and since what I see is real and external to my self, I can ignore any
reference to myself’. This arbitrary denial of a subjective presence allows a
seemingly objective statement to be made. Nishida points out that this Basho
of Being, within which such common-sense empirical judgements are made,
itself stands implicitly within a wider field of judgement about the signifi-
cance and role of the self. This is the Basho of Relative Nothingness in which
the act of exclusion of self-involvement is progressively raised into our
awareness.
From the standpoint of this Basho of Relative Nothingness the self is
very much something. In fact the very thing that orthodox empiricism
ignores. This insight, when taken literally, becomes the basis for idealism and
subjectivism where the self is now given an exaggerated prominence. The ‘I’
is now deemed to pre-exist any existential encounter hence ‘experience’ is
thought of as something individuals ‘have’. Such a form of thinking resides
in this Basho of Relative Nothingness and is characteristic of western indi-
vidualism. Thus, Sartre’s ‘nothingness’ (in Being and nothingness, 1966) is

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 971

one example of this form of extreme subjectivism which insists on the

primacy of the ‘I’ and which remains thereby glued to the ego. Sartre’s noth-
ingness even if it initially appears to be a negation of Being in fact makes
itself present as ‘an object of consciousness in representative form’ (Nishi-
tani, 1982: 33, emphasis in original). Nothingness for Sartre is immanent to
the ego. It is what Buddhism and Zen repudiates as the ‘emptiness perversely
clung to’ (Nishitani, 1982: 33). It is nothingness conceptualized within the
Basho of Relative Nothingness. According to Nishida, the mistake of the
idealists such as Sartre is that they tend to think of the self or ‘I’ as ‘some-
thing’ that is ‘substance-like’, an ‘agent’. For Nishida, however, the ‘I’ that
makes the judgement ‘I see a brown table. . . .’ is not a thing or an agent but
an action or acting intuition. This acting intuition is never objectifiable or
representable because it is always at the background of consciousness. It is
the ground of the self as ‘no-self’ that sees but itself cannot be seen. This
idealistic Basho of Relative Nothingness is, therefore, itself encompassed by
a third and ultimate Basho, the Basho of Absolute Nothingness or pure
experience. This is the originary ground on which all judgements, including
distinctions such as subject/object, truth, beauty, and the good are grounded.
It is the ‘place, the openness, the emptiness in which all particular occur-
rences are to be found, and yet is known only through their very occurrence’
(Carter, 1990: 45).
Basho is therefore not so much a physical space or place or anything
locatable as Nonaka and Konno (1998) seem to imply, but rather a poten-
tially fecund and pro-generative field of primordial knowing that inspires
intervention, consciousness and understanding. It is an ‘open field’ (Cooper,
1976) of pure living experience where facts are encountered just as they are
prior to our own conceptual fabrications. Contrary to Nonaka and Konno’s
(1998) claim, terms such as Basho do not so much refer to a ‘shared space’
as a realm of ultimate potentiality arising from our encounter and fusion
with the field of pure experience. The idea of a shared space presupposes
meaning and identity, and meaning and identity are predicated upon
conscious thought and symbols. Meaning and identity are always already
consequent effects of the subject/object division that Nishida, James and
Bergson strove to overcome. As Nishitani (1991) insists, ‘In direct experi-
ence there is no self, no thing, nothing separate or individual at all’ (p. 54).
True immediacy is that metaphysical ground of pure experience from which
consciousness and thought, identity and difference, individuality and
meaning, self and other emerges.
Such an open field of Absolute Nothingness is not something that can
be readily conceptualized or empirically verified as it is prior to conscious-
ness and words. It forever eludes our conceptual grasp yet is somehow

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972 Human Relations 56(8)

known or revealed as that background ‘lining’ of everything known and

knowable. Nishida likens it to the hidden lining of a kimono that serves to
keep form and shape yet itself always remains unseen and unsayable. It is
none other that what the Chinese call Tao or the Way.

Infinite and boundless, it cannot be given any name;

It reverts to nothingness. . .
It is the Vague and Elusive. . .
Hold on to the Tao of old in order to master the things of the present . . .
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, in Chan, 1963: 146)

Within this field of Absolute Nothingness, or Tao, ultimate realty is grasped

in direct action as a unified pristine encounter with the here-and-now. It is
that moment of the sublime where the knower, the actor and the acted-upon
are fused in a moment of spontaneous action that transcends time, space,
individuality and performance. This is the elusive and ultimate Zen-like
experience craved for and sought by many within the eastern tradition.
The possibility and desirability of attaining this moment of pristine
encounter is what motivates and drives the relentless search for self-
purification and self-improvement within the eastern psyche. Such an onto-
logical restlessness helps to explain the sometimes overly harsh and uncom-
promising attitude towards one’s own self and social responsibility in the
East. The term ‘Kaizen’ for instance does not so much mean ‘continuous
improvement’ as it does relentless ‘self-criticism’. Self-criticism and self-
denigration are very much built into the instincts of the East Asians and the
Chinese in particular. Shame and the loss of face, not guilt is the most abject
of experience. A culture involving the widespread practice of public self-
criticism and a willing acceptance of blame and a genuine display of remorse
on the part of those in authority exists and persists in the East. This is
exemplified by the very public apology and resignation of Japan Airline’s
president after an air crash some years ago, and the more recent well-tele-
vised public apologies of a number of bank presidents after the collapse of
their banks in Japan as a result of financial mismanagement. Such public
recantations also exist in other parts of East Asian including China, Taiwan,
Singapore and Thailand. The sometimes unrealistic self-demands that are
placed on those holding positions of responsibility because of their high
social profile and hence obligations, and the consequent commitment to self-
betterment is what drives the ‘can do’ mentality that one often encounters in
the East. Failure cannot be countenanced. It is a phenomenon that some have
labelled Asian or ‘Confucian Dynamism’ (Hofstede, 1991).
The belief that self-mastery through reconciliation with the ultimate

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 973

is the overarching goal of life and that this is only attainable once the
distractions and material trappings of everyday life have been peeled away
is an underlying presupposition of East Asian people. The reasoning is
simple. If you believe that ultimately reality is in flux and that encounter
with this ultimate flux represents a complete re-unification and hence disso-
lution of your fabricated self and a rediscovery of your true self, then all
forms of human endeavour are implicitly or explicitly directed towards this
ultimate goal. Life is seen as an interminable search for a glimpse of that
ultimate moment of pure encounter. In this regard, the irresistible urge to
return to that primordial state of being drives all human activities and it is
an attitude well exemplified in the practice of eastern arts including the art
of archery.

Pure knowing through direct unmediated action

In his introduction to Eugene Herrigel’s Zen in the art of archery, D.T. Suzuki
writes: ‘One of the most significant features we notice in all the arts as they
are studied in Japan and probably also in other Far Eastern countries, is that
they are not intended for utilitarian purposes only or for purely aesthetic
enjoyment, but are meant to train the mind . . . to bring it into contact with
the ultimate reality’ (Suzuki, in Herrigel, 1953/1985: 5). One could extend
this observation by maintaining that all productive activities in eastern life,
including the conduct of business, are means intended for this same purpose
of making contact with ultimate reality. Winning, personal success and
profits, important though they be, are secondary matters.
The widespread practice of rigorous training and the perfecting of
action in all the arts, whether it be calligraphy, martial arts, flower arrange-
ment, origami or the art of tea pouring are all viewed as alternative means
that could potentially lead to a Zen-like encounter with reality. To be a
master of any eastern art, including the art of management, one has to tran-
scend technique and arrive at that Tao or Basho of Absolute Nothingness
where art becomes seemingly effortless: an ‘artless art’.
Thus, in the case of archery, for example, the relentless perfecting of
action through practice and repetition is aimed at attaining that moment
when the archer and the target are no longer experienced as two opposing
objects, but form one reality. ‘Bow, arrow, goal and the ego, all melt into one
another, so that I can no longer separate them. And even the need to separate
has gone. For as soon as I take the bow and shoot, everything becomes so
clear and straightforward and so ridiculously simple’ (Herrigel, 1953/1985:
86). As the Zen Master advised Herrigel, it is not ‘I’ the archer that shoots,

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974 Human Relations 56(8)

rather ‘it’ shoots!!! The ‘it’ signifies that moment of trans-individuality when
performance is no longer conscious or purposeful but directed by a spon-
taneous outpouring of unthought action.
This example in Zen archery illustrates the underlying motivation,
discipline and training involved in perfecting the arts and in seeking directly
that moment of pure encounter. Here, ‘Even the thought of emptiness is no
longer there’ and from whence ‘comes the most wonderous unfoldment of
doing’ (Takuan, in Herrigel, 1953/1985: 101). For the eastern world, attain-
ment of that moment of pure absolute encounter which conjoins us with a
fecund and pro-generative reality constitutes the ultimate aspiration of any
and all human activity. It is believed that great works of art, flawless perform-
ances and timeless events take place in this moment of encounter where all
mediation of words and knowledge are rendered irrelevant and the immer-
sion of the self in a seamless flow of actions is all there is.
Contrary to the widely held view that better decisions and enhanced
performances can only be achieved by the acquisition of more and more
knowledge, information and conceptual understanding, within the eastern
tradition it is the purging of all such mediated forms of knowing that consti-
tutes the ultimate aim of learning. Indeed, it is unlearning that is elevated as
the highest form of learning. As Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching says:

The pursuit of learning is to increase day after day

The pursuit of Tao is to decrease day after day
It is to decrease and further decrease until one reaches the point of
taking no action
No action is undertaken, and yet nothing is left undone
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 48, in Chan, 1963: 162)

How is it possible for understanding to be achieved by decreasing learning

and equally, how is it possible for ‘non action’ to achieve anything? What is
meant here is first, that information and knowledge can often clutter our
minds and paralyse us from the ability to respond to the immediacy of a
given situation. Too much information and knowledge can de-sensitize us
from the realities of what is actually going on because knowledge, in its legiti-
mate form directs our attention to that which is general and universal as we
have seen, rather than to the particularities of a given situation. As anyone
who has had to learn a skill such as driving a car will know from personal
experience, when all the information and knowledge required to drive a car
are consciously adhered to and deliberately applied the result is invariably
awkward and hesitant. Fluency, proficiency and mastery is only attained
when action takes place at a tacit level involving what Polanyi (1962) calls

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 975

‘subsidiary awareness’. Thus, when an accomplished pianist, for instance,

starts to focus consciously on his/her finger movements instead of being
absorbed in the music he/she is playing it becomes impossible for him/her to
perform. This is because once learning/knowing is embodied, they are:

. . . placed beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be

touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made
explicit.
(Bourdieu, 1977: 94)

T.S. Eliot understood this need for de-cluttering our minds well when he
lamented about the condition of our modern world:

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the Wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the Knowledge we have lost in information?
(T.S. Eliot, The rock, 1934)

Information flushes out knowledge and knowledge flushes out wisdom-in-

practice. From this understanding, only when information and knowledge
have been purged from our system can pure unmediated action be possible.
Unlearning, therefore, becomes the genuine path towards truly effec-
tive and insightful action. Action is internally motivated by an existential
urge for the ‘harmonizing of will’ rather than the need to control. Perfect
action, for the eastern mind, is undirected action that flows from the
immediacy of the body and transcends all thought processes. The body
reacts instinctively and spontaneously to each concrete situation without
any prior distinction and discrimination because it has been systematically
emptied of idiosyncrasies and conceptual biases. This is something quite
familiar in sports and leisure pursuits. As one rock climber remarks, ‘You
are so involved in what you doing you aren’t thinking of yourself as separate
from the immediate activity . . . You don’t see yourself as separate from
what you are doing’ (Mitchell, 1983: 43). This is also a common under-
standing amongst participants in sports who talk, for example, about being
‘in the groove’: an intensity of engagement where every movement seems to
be effortlessly coordinated and in place without much thought or delibera-
tion. Golfers, for instance, know instinctively if they have had a good strike
on the ‘sweet spot’ because they can feel the flawless and effortless flow of
movement up to and beyond the point of contact. The psychoanalyst and
popular writer Scott Peck (2000) makes this point well in a recent book
entitled Golf and the spirit. In such rare moments of Zen-like encounter, the

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976 Human Relations 56(8)

actor and the acted upon are fused in a process of mutual transformation
well exemplified in Chuang Tzu’s vivid description of the master butcher.

A good cook changes his knife once a year – because he cuts. A

mediocre cook changes his knife once a month – because he hacks. I’ve
had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of
oxen with it. . . . What I care about is the Way which goes beyond skill.
When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself.
After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now – now I go
at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and under-
standing have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants.
(The complete works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson,
1968: 51)

Such obsessive aspirations to achieve that moment of unconscious perfection

where the self loses itself in an uninterrupted flow of activity is well under-
stood in the perfecting of art, martial arts, archery, swordsmanship, callig-
raphy, origami, the tea-pouring ceremony, and even in such an apparently
mundane activity as cutting up oxen. Here the trainee or disciple is expected
initially to perform endless repetitive tasks that seem totally unrelated to the
field of endeavour. For instance, in the traditional martial arts, it is not un-
typical for a trainee or disciple who has been taken in under a master’s wing
to be asked to do menial tasks such as carry water long before he is ever
given any formal instruction. The preparatory process involves a kind of
‘ego-breaking’ in which the trainee is required to relinquish his own self and
to make way for the kind of trans-individual experience that comes with the
perfection of an art.
To those in the modern West who are less than familiar with the
extreme hardship and seemingly austere, soulless discipline and the endless
repetition of menial tasks required in preparation for this encounter it must
seem almost an inhumane demand. However, in truth, this is but a more
extreme version of what used to be the apprenticeship system that prevailed
in Britain up until the 1960s and indeed in military training when recruits
were ‘broken up’ in preparation for their military vocation. The author
himself has had personal experience of undergoing a four-year apprentice-
ship in the air force which began with performing menial tasks such as
serving coffee and polishing the boots of his seniors. It is also important to
note that the relentless repetition of menial tasks, although often deemed
inhumane and associated with alienation and meaninglessness, is also the
basis for achieving self-enlightenment. For, repetition is the process of
exhausting meaning: a task, word or phrase repeated over and over again

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 977

soon loses its meaning and significance. In effect it is an ‘emptying-out’

process that often causes existential angst. However, it is precisely this tran-
sitory phase of meaninglessness, emptiness and self-doubting that one is
required to endure and pass through before sudden dramatic insights can
occur. This process is not unlike the new insights that chaos and complexity
theories are bringing to our understanding of phenomena in the world.
Thanks to these new theories, we now know that small iterative and seem-
ingly mundane and endless repetitive steps can lead to surprisingly dramatic
transformations (Holland, 1998; Wolfram, 2002).
In summary, the dominant cultural attitude in the East is that all
human activity, including work, leisure, physical labour and business activi-
ties, are potential avenues for self-transformation and self-actualization.
They are only secondarily economic, purposeful activities. Even the most
mundane activities have an evocational quality that can serve to awaken us
to an ultimate reality beyond the realms of intellection. Nor is this idea of
repetitive activity as self-transformational entirely alien to the West as we
have seen. Rather they have become submerged in the wake of a ‘conse-
quentialist theology’ (March, 1996) that dominates the West where action
is invariably seen as choice; and choice is seen as driven by anticipations,
incentives, and desires, not by a need for self-discovery and self-
transformation.
Paradoxically, however, history shows us time and again that when
outcomes are by-products of the search for expression and self-fulfilment
rather than as a consequence of calculative action, they inevitably gain an
inerasable depth of quality that seems to withstand the test of time. Genuine
outpourings of achievement cannot be understood by a restricted conception
of calculative action. Instead they are extravagant gifts offered to us in a
system of ‘immaculate commerce’ (Derrida, 1981: 9). For this reason Ruskin
admonishes those who would take the easy route.

The very primary motive which we set about the business, makes the
business impossible. The first and absolute condition of the thing’s ever
becoming saleable is, that we shall make it without wanting to sell it;
nay, rather with a determination not to sell it at any price, if once we
get hold of it. Try make your Art popular, cheap – a fair article for
your foreign trade; and the foreign market will always show something
better. But make it only to please yourselves, and ever be resolved that
you won’t let anybody else have any; and forthwith you will find every-
body else wants it. . . . Art has only been produced by nations who
rejoice in it; fed themselves with it, as if it were bread; basked in it, as
if it were sunshine; shouted at the sight of it; danced with the delight

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978 Human Relations 56(8)

of it; quarrelled for it; fought for it; starved for it; did, in fact precisely
the opposite with it of what we want to do with it.
(Ruskin, Works, 1927, Vol. XVI: 184)

It is this uncompromising attitude of perfecting action for its own sake and
not for its consequences that encapsulates the eastern approach towards
knowledge, action and performance.

Concluding remarks

Eastern attitudes towards business and management, despite much recent

interest, have remained an enigma in much of the West. There have been
numerous attempts to trace the roots of this difference. In this article I have
argued that a fundamental reason is a basic ontological commitment to flux
and transformation as the basis of life and the concomitant subscription to
a non-representationalist view of language. This means that the idea of
knowledge-creation and accumulation, particularly in its written form as
widely practised in the dominant West, is far less evident in eastern coun-
tries. Instead, what is privileged as being of supreme importance is the direct
perfecting of action as the real basis for knowing. To know, in the East, is
not so much to be able to explain the cause of things but to be able to effect
a flawless and effortless performance. And, this can only be achieved through
direct sustained engagement with the task itself as a basis for self-
enlightenment. Absolute knowledge and hence outstanding performance are
only attainable in a moment of Zen-like pure experience in which the actor
and the acted-upon are fused together in a spontaneous outflow of undirected
action.
What unites eastern attitudes towards life, business and the arts and
leisure is an attitude that takes as axiomatic the need for such a relentless
perfecting of action. For the eastern mind, the interminable search for perfec-
tion through an encounter with absolute nothingness provides the raison
d’être for any and all activities. Life is all about the ceaseless and relentless
perfecting of actions, products and services, nothing more. It is this onto-
logical restlessness which underpins the eastern attitude towards work and
leisure. Such a deeply imbibed spirit honed by a relentless disciplining
mentality provides a more convincing explanation for the rise of East Asian
economies in the last three decades and for some to comment that this 21st
century will be an Asia-Pacific century in economic terms.

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Chia The ultimate ground of knowing 979

Notes

1 By an alphabetic-literate culture I mean a predominantly lettered culture in which

reading and writing are widely practised.
2 By ‘eastern’ here I mean much more than the East as a geographical site but also
the eastern as symbolic of a widespread but suppressed mentality that has existed
in the West since the dawn of the western civilization but that has been denied
epistemological legitimacy by the dominant orthodoxy.
3 It is undoubtedly true that on the surface each of these East Asian countries appear
to be culturally distinct and different from the others in terms of their manifest
behaviours and traditions, but despite this they all share a common suspicion of the
efficacy of the written word. Indirect, elliptical and nuanced communication is
preferred over direct assertion.
4 The Greek word for transport is metaphorikos. Hence metaphors are vehicles that
‘transport’ us along.

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Robert Chia is Professor of Strategy and Organization at the School of

Business and Economics, University of Exeter. Prior to entering academia,
he worked for 16 years in aircraft maintenance engineering, manufactur-
ing management and human resource management, and was Group
Human Resource Manager of Metal Box Asia Pacific based in Singapore.
He has remained actively engaged with the practitioner world of manage-
ment particularly through consultancy work and executive training and
education. His main research interests revolve around the issues of a
processual mode of thought and their implications for strategic vision and
foresight; as well as complexity and creativity; contrasting East–West
metaphysical attitudes; and critical cultural studies and postmodernism.
He is the author/editor of three books and a significant number of journal
articles on Organization Theory and Management and has presented
numerous conference papers at the American Academy of Management,
the British Academy of Management and other international conferences
in Management and Organization Studies.
[E-mail: r.chia@exeter.ac.uk]

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