and "mu" to you too

[Rick Vosper]

At 05:45 PM 7/10/97 -0400, Will Karlin wrote, among other interesting things:

> It's probably time for me to wade in and give my two cents....

>   My claim that mercy is the "answer" was overstated...mercy is certainly
>a possible interpretation, however.  My understanding of koans is that
>they suggest ways of thinking about the world and don't really have an
>answer (though, admittedly I have not read Barthes on this -- or much of
>anything  on this, for that matter).  But, "mu" and "mu" appearing within
>40 pages of one another suggests (to me and Vaska at least -- if I may be
>presumptuous enough to speak for her) that there *is* a connection.  This
>is certainly not to say that this is only connection, the only "answer",
>but it is one.  I agree with Vaska that this suggestion of the koan's
>meaning fits with P's views, as I understand them, and this further
>*suggests* to me that "mercy" is part of this metaphoric equation.

Your understanding of koans accords with my own. 


>   I agree that it was too wonderful to pass up.  I thought the scene with
>L.E.D. telling the koan was great.  When I saw "mu" later bells rang.
>Something was up.  The koan scene was memorable...mu would probably have
>stuck in a reader's head for 40 pages.  Pynch would have been aware that
>these two divergently-pronounced "mu"s were close together suggesting
>(again!) that he had something in mind.  What he had in mind is open to
>discussion (and I hope to hear more)...but I stand by "mercy" as an
>"answer."

"Mercy" most certainly is "an" answer, if not traditionaly a "correct" one.
It may even be Pynchon's. 

Lest someone accuse me again of holding out on the group (pasimonious
barstid, that Rick), let me explain I'm not claiming to be in posession of
the (or even "an") answer. But commentaries on Joshu's Mu are pretty clear
that when it comes to correct reponses, in the conventional sense of the
phrase, there aren't any.

The classic commentary on this occurs in the _Mumonkoan _ in which Master
Mumon deals with Joshu's Mu as the first of forty-eight cases, or koans.
(And he ought to know, having sweated Mu for six years before cracking that
particular nut.)

Among other tidbits, Mumon offers: "Do not construe Mu as nothingness and
do not conceive it in terms of existence or non-existence" and finishes up
with a poem that doubtlessly sounds better in Chinese:

A dog, Buddah-nature! --
This is the presentation of the whole, the absolute imperative!
Once you begin to think "has" or "has not"
You are as good as dead.

The translated text of the koan itself reads: A monk in all seriousness
asked Joshu: Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?" Joshu retorted "Mu!"

So the puzzle -- as presented to the zen student, anyway -- is not so much
to answer the monk's question about dogs as it is to come to grips with
Joshu's reply. Which is why the koan is often phrased as "What is Mu?",
that is, what is it that neither is nor is not?

Combine that with the fact that Shakyamuni Buddha specifically said "all
sentient beings are endowed from the very first with Buddha-nature" a
millenium previous (but let's not start that thread again) and it's even
more clear that the dog question is not the topic of the koan.

Of course, the deeper one gets into all this, the funnier it is coming from
the mouth of the LED...who is displaying his own (common) misunderstanding
of the koan by mis-stating it...all of which forms a large part of my own
suspicion that Pynchon is not seriously proposing the µ-stuff as an answer
to the mu-stuff .  

Then again, maybe I'm just listening for the wrong punchline. 

--rick