 The annihilation of the self, as the negation of negation “constitutes the basis of every selfless morality since ancient times,” asserts Watsuji (Watsuji 1996, 225). The negating of the group or society, and the emptying of the individual in Watsuji’s sense of the negation of each by the other pole of ningen, makes evident that both are ultimately ‘empty,’ causing one to reflect upon that which is ultimate, and at the base of both one’s individuality and the groups with which one associates. The losing of self is a returning to one’s authenticity, to one’s home ground as that source from which all things derive, and by which they are sustained. It is the abandonment of the self as independent which paves the way for the nondual relation between the self and others that terminates in the activity of benevolence and compassion through a unification of minds. The ethics of benevolence is the development of the capacity to embrace others as oneself or, more precisely, to forget one’s self such that the distinction between the self and other does not arise in this nondualistic awareness. One has now abandoned one’s self, one’s individuality, and become the authentic ground of the self and the other as the realization of absolute totality. Ethics is now a matter of spontaneous compassion, spontaneous caring, and concern for the whole. This is the birth of selfless morality, for which the only counterparts in the West are the mystical traditions and perhaps some forms of religiosity in which it is God who moves in us, and not we ourselves. The double negation referred to earlier whereby the individual is negated by the group aspect of self, and the group aspect is in turn negated by the individual aspect, is not to be taken as a complete negation that obliterates that which is negated. The negated are preserved, else there would be no true self-contradiction. This robust sense of the importance of self-contradiction shares much with the more developed sense of the identity of self-contradiction about which Nishida said so much (see the entry on  Nishida Kitarō).  What is stressed by both thinkers is that some judgments of logical contradiction are at best penultimate judgments, which may point us in the direction of a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of our own experience. Watsuji refers to ‘wakaru ’ (to understand), which is derived from ‘wakeru ’ (to divide); and in order to understand, one must already have presupposed something whole, that is to say, a system or unity. For example, in self-reflection, we make our own self, other. Yet the distinction reveals the original unity, for the self is other as objectified and of course is divided from the originally unified self. To think of a thing is to distinguish it from something else, and yet in order to make such a distinction, the two must already have had something in common. Thus, to emphasize the contradiction is to plunge into the world as many; to emphasize the context, or background, or matrix is to plunge into the world as one. Readers will be familiar with the logical formulation, often encountered in Zen but ubiquitous in Buddhism generally, that A is A; and A is not-A; therefore, A is A. There is a double negation in evidence here: an individual is an individual, and yet an individual is not individual unless one stands opposed to other individuals. That an individual stands opposed to others means that one is related to others as a member of a group or groups. Because an individual is a member of a group, one is both a member as an individual, and an otherwise isolated individual as a member of a group. We are both, in mutual interactive negation, and as such we are determined by the group or community, and yet we ourselves determine and shape the group or community. As such we are living self-contradictions, and, therefore, living identities of self-contradiction. 