#ISSS2016 Boulder

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Wholeness could be explained from an oriental point of view, but in the end it seems to coincide with modern western systems thinking. It starts from the concentration on the parts in Reductionistic thinking, to the concentration on wholeness in Systems thinking. The second step involved the combination of the observer and decision maker with the teaching of Buddha. Finally last step would be to investigate the structure of the environment.

The application of system theory requires the understanding of ourselves, each other, the nature,  the past and future possibilities in a systemic way. That is, we need to understand both the structure and dynamics of our physical body systems, and of our mental observers. Research shows that the composition of our body and that of our mind may be explained by the same system theory relating energy, matter, life and information. We employed this simple ancient system theory as taught by Buddha to investigate how our naturally systemic-structured mind artificially developed all this non-systemic and problematic thinkings.  We use our body to experience the world around us but our mind is the one who is observing and making the decisions to change the world. System theory sees the world composed of observers,decision makers, systems, the environment, the boundaries and the relationships among them. And there are two opposite forces in the world that constantly interacting with each other, creating the flow of energy, matter and information between systems and the environment. On one hand we have the disorder force governed by the second law of thermodynamics that drive everything into a equilibrium state with maximum entropy. On the other hand we have the organizational force governed by the constrains of a system that drive the system into a particular desired  steady state with a low entropy.
 
Our mind are both the observer and the decision maker with a major problem. Throughout our life we have been looking for satisfaction that brings happiness. Our government have been relying on economics to achieve this but 80% of the time we are dis-satisfied with the people and situations around us, bringing craving, aversion and ignorance into our minds and creating all sorts of problems in our society. This is called suffering in the teaching of Buddha, and he offered us with a three step solution for our mind. In this workshop we investigate the systemic view of these three steps namely self protection, concentration and purification of our mind. We also investigate a 10 days Vipassana mental healthcare program for people of all religions including scientific communities. It is believed such a program could bring happiness, peacefulness and harmony for our community. 

Death is the end of our lives or just the beginning of another new life? A system undergoes a transition of system state upon death, but will the system continue in other forms at other places? Or will it just terminate totally? What are the possible new system states and are they sustainable? In this workshop we will investigate the sustainability of Heaven, Hell, Earth and Nibbana (null). And we investigate the way to prepare ourselves to transit into these states.   

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The systemic thinking of the unification of nature and man has been the fundamental concept in traditional Chinese culture since around 500BC. The concept is also embedded in the teaching of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. The traditional Chinese system theories under investigation include the Taichi yin-yang system theory, the Five systems theory of the human mind, and the Traditional Chinese Medicine differential diagnosis-cure process. These theories are found to be related to different modern system theories compared including Viable system model.

Taichi yin-yang system theory describes the relationship between any two entities (element/process) at any level of interest. It concerns the quantitative and qualitative changes between the entities. This is related to causal loop diagram (CLD) in system dynamics which uses reinforcing loop and balancing loop. The observer is not specified in the theories, but the perspectives of the observer actually determine the entities, the unit of quantitative changes, and the ratio of qualitative changes.The Five systems theory of the human mind is one of the important concepts developed in the teaching of Buddha. The Five systems are: awareness, perspective, sensation, action and physical object. These five systems are able to describe the properties of the observer and the decision maker.

The Traditional Chinese Medicine differential diagnosis-cure process is a practical systemic process that has been used daily for more than 2000 years. It is believed that the whole macroscopic-microscopic spectrum of systems is suitable. The system state identification involves three pairs of direction-forming spectrums. The Superficial and Internal spectrum gathers information between the boundary and the system. The Cold and Hot spectrum gathers information between the form and function, or matter and energy within the system. The Deficient and Excess spectrum gathers information between the environment and the system. Strategy can then be formulated to regulate and maintain the system.

Keywords:
Reuniting Nature and Humanity, Buddhism, Causal loop diagram CLD, Confucianism, Five systems of human mind, General System Theory, Health and system thinking, quantitative and qualitative changes, Spirituality and Systems, System dynamics, Taichi Yin-Yang System Theory, Taoism, Buddha's teaching, Traditional Chinese Medicine differential diagnosis-cure process, Unification of nature and man, Viable system model VSM. 

Supporting Agencies:
Ancient Balance Medicine Research and Education Fund Foundation Ltd. 

Background: Borne of the practical turn in social science epistemology, action research typically espouses claims of personal, team, organizational, and community improvement/ transformation. It is also widely promoted as an effective framework of empowerment and emancipation to improve a social situation or condition (Reason & Bradbury, 2008; Stringer, 2007): an intent which appeals to leaders wishing to create improvement, particularly in low socio-economic and disadvantaged communities (Sankaran 2016). Validity of such espousals has been substantially unexplored, and where evaluations have occurred they have been focused more on process than impact. A group of international researchers are engaged in an evaluative study of over 100 action research initiatives (ESAR study) using a variety of methods, tools and conceptual frameworks. The Maturity Model is one of the conceptual frameworks adopted in the ESAR study. 
Maturity models have their origins in the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) developed through research to address the poor performance of software projects delivered to the US department of defence in the 1980’s. The purpose of the CMM model was to help contractors increase capability to improve their software engineering processes from an ad-hoc state to more formal and repeatable state and eventually to optimise the processes to be able to deliver consistent outcomes. Maturity models have found their way into many other organisational contexts such as project management, knowledge management, process management, research capability and even for information systems action research project management.
A typical maturity model consists of a sequence of levels that form a path to follow to move from an initial to an advance stage of maturity. These models help organisations to evaluate their current level of maturity of a process and set goals to move towards a higher maturity level.
While maturity models often use ‘business speak’ in their definition and terms used to describe  levels of maturity the authors feel that they can be made palatable and useful to action researchers to improve the ways in which they can manage their projects to deliver sustainable outcomes. This resulted in the development of the maturity profile.
The international ESAR research team have developed a framework of process and outcome indicators to represent stages of implementation and accomplishment for AR initiatives.  Data from pilot case studies were used to develop a maturity profile for AR initiatives, representing levels of maturity and evaluative outcomes at different stages of a project.  A questionnaire has also been developed for key attributes of a maturity profile that will be used at the proposed workshop to be validated and trialled by action researchers..The proposed workshop will be conducted using a ‘World Café’ format with the following schedule (Overall 90 minutes)
• Welcome and Introductions (10 minutes)• Welcome to the workshop –• Key Question to discuss today• Introduction of the facilitators• Allocation of participants to tables• Introduction to the process – (5 minutes)• World Café Rounds (50 minutes)• Break (10 minutes)• Prioritization (15 minutes)• Close 
The results from this workshop will be compared with similar workshop s that were held at the ALARA World Congress held in Pretoria in November 2015 and a workshop proposed at the next ALARA World Congress being held in November 2016 held in Adelaide.
The data from the three workshops will be analyzed and submitted as a journal paper by the authors in Systemic Practice and Action Research.

References:
Reason, P. & Bradbury, H. (EDs.) 2008. The SAGE handbook of action research, 2nd. ed., London: Sage.
Sankaran, S. (in press). Taking action using systems research. In M. C. Edson, P. Buckle Henning, & S. Sankaran (Eds.), A guide to systems research: Philosophy, processes and practice. Singapore: Springer.
Stringer, E. T. (2013). Action research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

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