 The other species of understanding characterizes those who personally engage reality, transforming themselves and reality together into a coherent and harmonious whole. That more traditional Japanese sense of understanding transcends mere skill or know-how, it should be noted. To be a Confucian sage or a master calligrapher is not simply to be proficient in technique (any more than being a logician in the West is simply knowing how to construct a syllogism). Although rigorously disciplined in their early training, the members of the engaged knowing family of philosophers eventually go beyond fixed templates and regimens to respond creatively to what-is. When engaged understanding prevails, the knower and known collaborate in an act of innovation rather than simple discovery. From the Japanese standpoint, in their praxis as philosophers, the tetsugakusha are akin to how geologists understand clay whereas the tetsujin are akin to how master potters understand clay. The geologist acquires scientific knowledge (geology) to forge an external relation between the knower and the clay, each of which preexists the knowledge and basically remains unchanged by the knowledge (a Wissenschaft is typically grounded in the descriptive). By contrast, the knowledge of the potter is expressed in, by, and with the clay as an interactive project (the masterwork of pottery). Both the clay and the “bodymind” of the potter are transformed in the act of engaged wisdom. For the tetsugakusha, philosophy bridges the philosopher’s connection with reality; for the tetsujin, on the other hand, philosophy is the Way the philosopher and reality are purposively engaged with each other and transform each other. For the tetsugakusha philosophy is a link the self creates to connect with the world; for the tetsujin philosophy is a product created out of the mutual engagement between self and world. The distinction parallels what Henri Bergson characterized in the opening pages of Introduction to Metaphysics as two ways of knowing: “moving around” an object as contrasted with “entering it” (Bergson 1955, 21).