This dissertation investigates the self and its relation to reality within three different schools of thought: Gilles Deleuze's postmodern thinking, the Kyoto School of Zen Buddhism and G.H. Mead's social theory. The focus is explication of ideas, examination of parallels and differences, and synthesis of similar concepts, ultimately arguing for an understanding of self as creative and non-essential, empty and full, resulting in the creation of a novel and open process/field philosophy: Creative Vitality.

Chapter one examines Deleuze and his concepts of creative ontology and the self as assemblage, using the example of the rhizome. Chapter two analyzes ideas of the self and world from the Kyoto School and discusses the concepts of śunyātā, co-dependent origination, and tathātā with a corresponding section on the self as skandas. Chapter two also includes an explication of the Zen understanding of the no-self, or Formless Self. The third chapter examines G.H. Mead's concept of the self as socially constructed and emergent within a field of sociality. Chapter four compares/contrasts the systems within three categories. First, a similarity throughout each system is a structural parallel of the self to the world; the understanding of the self/world relationship as a process/field relationship is shared by all three systems. Second, a major difference between the systems, with Zen on one side and Deleuze and Mead on the other, is the differing understanding of actuality and the relationship between transcendence and immanence; this difference stems from the Zen understanding of time and the present. Third, I argue that there lies a possible synthesis of ideas from each system through the category of creativity. Finally, in chapter five, I propose an open system, Creative Vitality, paired with an explanation of the creative, non-essential self. The chapter concludes with a presentation of a diagnostic field guide for stylized, creatively vital self.