Being Present to the World Differently
A Buddhist Path for the Evolution of Consciousness
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“The universe is a creative advance into novelty,” says Alfred North Whitehead. Indeed, it is a creative advance in which things emerge out of their relationships with one another—an advance in which relationships are constitutive, not accidental.

This creative advance can—though it need not—become a creative advance into cooperative forms of consciousness, in which we recognize that our lives emerge through our relationships and that our richest possibility is to grow together, collaboratively, for the good of each and all. We can learn to be present to one another in ways that are just, loving, creative, playful, and tender.

It can be helpful to cultivate practices—meditation, for example—that soften the hardened edges of our consciousness. But we need community as well. Other people can help us in this process, as can other creatures, both visible and invisible. We can help them, too. Some of these “creatures” may even include machines. Intelligent technologies might assist us—if we stop using them to capture and fragment our attention and instead allow them to cultivate and deepen it.

None of this is predetermined. All is contingent. Yet we can turn to wisdom traditions from the past and let them teach us. Buddhism, for example.
Peter D. Hershock makes a compelling case for this possibility.

​- Jay McDaniel
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Consciousness Mattering (Bloombury, 2023) presents a contemporary Buddhist theory in which brains, bodies, environments, and cultures are relational infrastructures for human consciousness. Drawing on insights from meditation, neuroscience, physics, and evolutionary theory, it demonstrates that human consciousness is not something that occurs only in our heads and consists in the creative elaboration of relations among sensed and sensing presences, and more fundamentally between matter and what matters. Peter Hershock argues that without consciousness there would only be either unordered sameness or nothing at all. Evolution is consciousness mattering.
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Shedding new light on the co-emergence of subjective awareness and culture, the possibility of machine consciousness, the risks of algorithmic consciousness hacking, and the potentials of intentionally altered states of consciousness, Hershock invites us to consider how freely, wisely, and compassionately consciousness matters.


​Interview with Peter Hershock on
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Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis

Key Takeaways


  • Relational Consciousness: Hershock argues that consciousness arises through the relational infrastructure of bodies, environments, and cultures, not just within the skull.
  • Evolution as "Mattering": Evolution is interpreted as the process of consciousness "mattering"—both having significance and constituting matter.
  • Buddhist Metaphysics: The book draws on Buddhist relational metaphysics to contrast with atomistic, materialistic views of the universe.
  • Technology and AI: The work addresses the risks of algorithmic "consciousness hacking" and the rise of machine intelligence, proposing a "karmic" approach to digital evolution.
  • Alternatives to Materialism: It challenges the view that consciousness is merely a byproduct of physical machinery.

Excerpts From Review by Edward Arnold

Assistant Editor with the American Institute of Buddhist Studies,
Columbia University Center for Buddhist Studies

Strength of the Book:
Buddhist Relational Metaphysics and Modern Science

The difference between the atomistic metaphysics of Western scientific assumptions about consciousness (and reality, more generally) and Buddhist relational metaphysics could not be overstated. Hershock does an excellent job of unpacking those differences, which constitute entirely different ways of engaging the world."
The Underlying Concern:
​Helping the World with help from Meditation

"The book’s underlying concern is the possibility of directing such a continuity of consciousness toward ethical betterment through the first-person methods of Buddhist meditation, which, he argues, must occur at both individual and social levels."
More than Private Enligtenment:
The Social and the Individual

This relational perspective, as he also attempts to clarify carefully, entails that the social and the individual are profoundly inseparable, which should disrupt the persistent pop culture myth that Buddhism, particularly Ch’an/Zen, valorizes radical self-expression. Hershock writes from a Ch’an-adjacent perspective, so this is a welcome emphasis. 


​About Peter Hershock
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Peter Hershock is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the East-West Center. Previously, he was Manager of the Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP). In his work with ASDP, he designed and directed higher education faculty and institutional development programs that seek to mainstream the study of Asian cultures and societies in the undergraduate classroom. In connection with his work, he has collaborated in designing and hosting international education leadership programs and seminars that critically examine issues of national and global concern. He also helped launch the Center’s initiative on Humane Artificial Intelligence, with a focus on the societal impacts of emerging technologies.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.
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Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

To Be Present Differently


Peter D. Hershock’s Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis invites readers to be present to the world differently—differently from the ways many of us are habituated: anxiously, competitively, and fearfully.

He situates this aspirational ideal of being present differently within the arc of evolutionary history, arguing—very much in the spirit of process philosophy—that something like “consciousness” or “awareness” has been present from the very beginning. Not as a self-contained substance with a fixed essence, but as a form of relational sentience that evolves along with the material unfolding of the universe.

In Alfred North Whitehead’s terms, this sentience can be understood in terms of a universe composed of acts of creative prehensionality—moments of feeling and creative responding in which each actual entity takes account of its world. Consciousness, in this sense, is not an all-or-nothing property possessed only by humans, but a more complex and intensified form of this more basic relational activity.

Whitehead’s notion of hybrid prehensions further suggests that such acts of feeling can, in certain respects, traverse the usual restrictions of time and space, allowing for modes of relatedness that are not confined to immediate, local interactions. This resonates with the Yogācāra idea of vijñāna—often translated as “consciousness,” but better understood as a dynamic, relational process of awareness that is always already shaped by and responsive to conditions. Like prehension, vijñāna is not a static substance but an ongoing activity of world-involvement.

In human life, Hershock adds, this evolving consciousness is influenced by—but not reducible to or localized in—the brain. It includes attention and intention, awareness and purpose. It is clearly present in non-human life on our planet, and, he suggests, some form of it may even be found—albeit in very different ways—in machines. Drawing deeply on Yogācāra Buddhism, he develops this account while bringing it into conversation with contemporary developments in AI and psychedelic therapies.

The responsibility, then, is not so much to have faith in a transcendent power, but to cultivate forms of consciousness that are wiser, more compassionate, and more responsive to the needs of the world. This is one of the quiet yet powerful attractions of Buddhism in the world today. It does not require agreement on questions of divinity; instead, it invites a shared commitment to the cultivation and transformation of consciousness itself. In this way, it can speak to people of many faiths as well as to those with no religious affiliation at all. This, perhaps, names one of our deepest needs in the present moment.

- Jay McDaniel


​Additional Essays by Peter Hershock
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Open Horizons