Mu (negative)
Encyclopedia
Prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the root of a word. Particularly in the study of languages,a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed.Examples of prefixes:...
to indicate the absence of something, e.g., / / 무선 museon for "wireless".
The "Mu" koan
The word mu is central to the following well-known ZenZen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
Buddhist koan, which is also known as the Mu koan:
This koan is one of several traditionally used by Rinzai school
Rinzai school
The Rinzai school is , one of three sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism.Rinzai is the Japanese line of the Chinese Linji school, which was founded during the Tang Dynasty by Linji Yixuan...
to initiate students into Zen study, 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
Delusion
A delusion is a false belief held with absolute conviction despite superior evidence. Unlike hallucinations, delusions are always pathological...
, that yes and no are both right and wrong. Alternatively, Yasutani Haku'un of the Sanbo Kyodan
Sanbo Kyodan
Sanbo Kyodan is a Zen sect derived from both the Rinzai and Soto traditions of Japanese Zen.-History:...
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."
The koan originally comes from the Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi Yulu . An English translation of the koan, with the original Chinese, follows.
| Chinese | English translation |
|---|---|
| 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". |
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- - From The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu, koan 132, translation by James Green
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Signifying "unasking" the question or similar
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. PirsigRobert M. Pirsig
Robert Maynard Pirsig is an American writer and philosopher, and author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals .-Background:...
's 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is a 1974 philosophical novel, the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of Quality.The book sold 5 million copies worldwide...
, mu is translated as "no thing", saying that it meant "unask the question". He offered the example of a computer circuit
Electronic circuit
An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow...
using the binary numeral system
Binary numeral system
The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, represents numeric values using two symbols, 0 and 1. More specifically, the usual base-2 system is a positional notation with a radix of 2...
, in effect using mu to represent high impedance
High impedance
In electronics, high impedance means that a point in a circuit has a relatively high impedance to other points in the circuit.-Digital electronics:...
:
The word features prominently with a similar meaning in Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
's 1979 book, Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a book by Douglas Hofstadter, described by his publishing company as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll"....
, where it is used fancifully in discussions of symbolic logic
First-order logic
First-order logic is a formal logical system used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. It goes by many names, including: first-order predicate calculus, the lower predicate calculus, quantification theory, and predicate logic...
, particularly Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic. The theorems, proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of...
, 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.
In the same vein, according to the Jargon File
Jargon File
The Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...
(a collection of hacker jargon and culture) mu is considered by Discordians
Discordianism
Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...
to be the correct answer to the classic logical fallacy of the loaded question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" 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." For the same reason, "mu" is 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.
Other
- The video game EarthBoundEarthBoundEarthBound, also known as EarthBound: The War Against Giygas! and released as in Japan, is a role-playing video game co-developed by Ape and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console...
has the character named Poo undergo a rigorous test involving Mu as part of his training.
See also
- Ma (negative space)Ma (negative space)Ma is a Japanese word which can be roughly translated as "gap", "space", "pause" or "the space between two structural parts." The spatial concept is experienced progressively through intervals of spatial designation. In Japanese, ma, the word for space, suggests interval...
- Multi-valued logicMulti-valued logicIn logic, a many-valued logic is a propositional calculus in which there are more than two truth values. Traditionally, in Aristotle's logical calculus, there were only two possible values for any proposition...
- Not even wrongNot even wrongAn argument that appears to be scientific is said to be not even wrong if it cannot be falsified by experiment or cannot be used to make predictions about the natural world. The phrase was coined by theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or...
- NullNull-In computing:* Null , a special marker and keyword in SQL* Null character, the zero-valued ASCII character, also designated by NUL, often used as a terminator, separator or filler* Null device, a special computer file that discards all data written to it...
- Wronger than wrongWronger than wrongMichael Shermer has called "wronger than wrong" Asimov's Axiom, after the noted author Isaac Asimov, who discussed the issue in his book of essays, The Relativity of Wrong. A statement that equates two errors is wronger than wrong when one of the errors is clearly wronger than the other...
- Wu weiWu weiWu wei is an important concept of Taoism , that involves knowing when to act and when not to act. Another perspective to this is that "Wu Wei" means...
, a term in Chinese philosophyChinese philosophyChinese philosophy is philosophy written in the Chinese tradition of thought. The majority of traditional Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, during a period known as the "Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and... - Wu-Wo tea ceremonyWu-Wo tea ceremonyWu-Wo Tea Ceremony 無我茶會, also known as Wu-Wo Tea Convention and Wuwo Tea Party. It is a style of Chinese tea ceremony that encourages participants to forget about knowledge, wealth, and appearance to establish a group equality without prejudice. This concept of Wu-Wo is shown in the Wu-Wo Tea...