Mu (negative)
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Mu (Japanese/Korean), Wu (Chinese traditional:無, simplified: 无 pinyin:Wú) is a word which can be roughly translated as "none" or "without". While typically used as a prefix to imply the absence of something (e.g., 無線 musen for "wireless"), it is more famously used as a response to certain koans and other questions in Zen Buddhism, intending to indicate that the question itself was wrong.
The 'Mu' koan is as follows: A monk asked Zen master Zhaozhou, a Chinese Zen Master (in Japanese, Jōshū): "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?", Zhaozhou answered: "Wú" (in Japanese, Mu).
Some earlier Buddhist thinkers had maintained that creatures such as dogs did have the Buddha-nature; others, that they did not. Therefore, to answer "no" is to deny their wisdom, whereas to say "yes" would appear to blindly follow their teachings. Zhaozhou's answer has subsequently been used by generations of zen students as their initiation into the zen experience.
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[edit] Mu in English
In his 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig translated "mu" as "no thing", saying that it meant "unask the question". He offered the example of a computer circuit using the binary numeral system:
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For example, it's stated over and over again that computer circuits exhibit only two states, a voltage for "one" and a voltage for "zero". That's silly! Any computer-electronics technician knows otherwise. Try to find a voltage representing one or zero when the power is off! The circuits are in a mu state. |
According to the Jargon File, a collection of hacker jargon and culture, Mu (here pronounced "moo") is considered by Discordians to be the correct answer to the classic logical fallacy of the loaded question "Have you stopped beating your wife?"[1] Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. As a result, various Discordians proposed "mu" as the correct answer, alleged by them to mean "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions". An equivalent English reply would be 'not', instead of 'yes' or 'no', as 'not' is one possible meaning of 'mu'.
The word features prominently in Douglas R. Hofstadter's 1979 book, Gödel, Escher, Bach, where it is used fancifully in the context of discussions on symbolic logic, particularly Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- MAN AND MU: The Cradle of Becoming and Unbecoming. Desiderata For Human Science. By Stacey B. Day. Published by Int Foundation for Biosoc. Dev & Human Health, N.Y. 1997. LCCat Card No 97-072905. ISBN 0-934314-00-4.
- The book Gödel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter, 1979) makes extensive use of this term.
- The manga 3x3 Eyes has immortal companions of the Sanjiyan race marked by the sign Wú (无).
[edit] External links
- Regarding Mu
- Mu Machinery: The Mu of Non-Identity
