This is the first of three volumes of essays, to be followed by Orienting Philosophy 2: Towards China and Orienting Philosophy 3: Towards Japan. The project involves an initial orientation of philosophy toward Asia so as to gain a distance perspective on the Western tradition, and in the process directs philosophical attention to our situation on the Earth and our bodily interactions with what we encounter here. In this volume, Nietzsche is the main point of departure for engagements with Indian Buddhist ideas, and then Chinese and Japanese philosophies. Compatibilities emerge between Nietzsche’s understanding of “the worlds as will to power” and various forms of “panpsychism” to be found in Europe as well as Asia. This prompts a rethinking of the relationship between the natural world and the divine, as well as our assumptions concerning time and mortality, the so-called “dead” world of rocks and stone, and the lives of “inanimate” things.