| Mu (negative) | |||||||||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 無 | ||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 无 | ||||||||||||||
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| Korean name | |||||||||||||||
| Hangul | 무 | ||||||||||||||
| Hanja | 無 | ||||||||||||||
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| Japanese name | |||||||||||||||
| Kanji | 無 | ||||||||||||||
| Hiragana | む | ||||||||||||||
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Mu (無?) (in Japanese/Korean) or Wu (simplified Chinese: 无; traditional Chinese: 無; Mandarin Pinyin: wú; Jyutping: mou2), is a word which has been translated variously as "not",[1][2] "nothing",[1][2] "without",[1] "nothingness",[2] "non existent",[3] "non being",[3] or evocatively simply as "no thing". In Chinese, Japanese and Korean it is commonly used in combination words as a prefix to indicate the absence of something, e.g., Chinese: 无线; pinyin: wúxiàn / musen (無線) / 무선 museon for "wireless".[4]
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The word mu is central to the following well-known Zen Buddhist koan, which is also known as the Mu koan[1]:
A monk asked Zhaozhou Congshen, a Chinese Zen master (known as Jōshū in Japanese), "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?" Zhaozhou answered, "Wú" (in Japanese, Mu)—The Gateless Gate, koan 1, translation by Robert Aitken [5]
This koan is one of several traditionally used by Rinzai school to initiate students into Zen study,[1] and interpretations of it vary widely. Some earlier Buddhist thinkers maintained that animals did have Buddha nature, others believed that they did not. Zhaozhou's answer, which literally means that dogs do not have Buddha nature, has been interpreted to mean that such categorical thinking is a delusion, that yes and no are both right and wrong. Alternatively, Yasutani Haku'un of the Sanbo Kyodan maintained that "the koan is not about whether a dog does or does not have a Buddha-nature because everything is Buddha-nature, and either a positive or negative answer is absurd because there is no particular thing called Buddha-nature."[6]
The koan originally comes from the Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi Yulu (Chinese: 趙州真際禪師語錄). An English translation of the koan, with the original Chinese, follows.
| Chinese | English translation |
|---|---|
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僧問：狗子還有佛性也無？ 師云：無。 問：上至諸佛，下至螻蟻皆有佛性，狗子為什麼卻無？ 師云：為伊有業識在。 |
A monk asked, "Does a dog have a Buddha-nature or not?" The master said, "Not [Mu]!" The monk said, "Above to all the Buddhas, below to the crawling bugs, all have Buddha-nature. Why is it that the dog has not?" The master said, "Because he has the nature of karmic delusions". |
The term is often used or translated to mean that the question itself must be "unasked" - "mu" in this sense means to "unask" the question or that no answer can exist in the terms provided. In Robert M. Pirsig's 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, mu is translated as "no thing", saying that it meant "unask the question". He offered the example of a computer circuit using the binary numeral system, in effect using mu to represent high impedance:
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.
[8]
The word features prominently with a similar meaning in Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 book, Gödel, Escher, Bach, where it is used fancifully in discussions of symbolic logic, particularly Gödel's incompleteness theorems, to indicate a question whose "answer" is to un-ask the question, indicate the question is fundamentally flawed, or reject the premise that a dualistic answer can or will be given.[9]
In the same vein, according to the Jargon File (a collection of hacker jargon and culture) mu is considered by Discordians to be the correct answer to the classic logical fallacy of the loaded question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"[10] 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, some Discordians proposed "mu" as the correct answer, which to them means, "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions."[10] For the same reason, "mu" may be used similarly to "N/A" or "not applicable," a term often used to indicate the question cannot be answered because the conditions of the question do not match the reality.