John Dunne kicks off the Varela talks by discussing the symposium’s theme of inaction and sense-making, drawing parallels to organisms making sense of their environments and constructing categories based on survival and reproduction. John introduces the Buddhist concept of emptiness, emphasizing the absence of a categorical identity. Such as in the comparison of two mugs which highlights the notion that although objects may be labeled similarly, there is no physical essence that is exactly identical between them. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.