and "mu" to you too

[Vaska]

Rick, Will, Parke and the rest of the gang:  what Rick has just given us is
too beautiful to pass by without a comment.  Here's what Rick says:

>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.

Now what is the likelihood of Pynchon not having read this and not having
kept it in mind for the LED scene in _M&D_?  

And the more I learn, as just now for example, the more I feel that Pynchon
was having a friendly dig at Barthes, too -- who, in his gloss on "mu,"
mentions violence but forgets compassion.  The whole joke may be a tad
sophomoric, but it's the sort of thing that makes me heart sing.

Vaska






>
>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
>