and "mu" to you too

[William Karlin]

Thanks for this info, Rick.  Your analysis is quite compelling...I think
I'll ride the Dirk's edge of mercy *being* and *not-being* an "answer" to
this business.  Probably best for me to hang between if choosing either
path makes me "as good as dead!"

cheers,

will


On Fri, 11 Jul 1997, Rick Vosper wrote:

> "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
>