Know Your Characters: A Zen Glossary
Editor’s note: This an occasional series introducing some of the basic words and expressions used in Zen practice in their original form, as Chinese characters. Although the Kwan Um School of Zen is a Korean school, the root vocabulary of Zen is classical Chinese, shared by all traditions in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (and now around the world).
First character: Mu, 無
If you only want to learn one character used in Zen practice, it should be this one:
Mu (Korean, Japanese)
Wu (Mandarin)
Mu is a negation that can mean “no” in some cases, but most often means “does not have” or “without.” It is most famously used in the kong-an known as “Joju’s Dog” or sometimes “Joju’s Mu”:
A monk asked Joju, “Does a dog have Buddha nature (or not)?”
Joju answered, “Mu!” (It does not).
An interesting aspect of this kong-an is that mu or wu is not normally used without an object unless you’re answering a question. The question that the monk asks, in Chinese, is literally,
狗子還有佛性也無 ?
Dog / have / Buddha nature / does / [or] does not have
The way you answer this kind of a-or-b question in Chinese is to respond with either a or b. So in grammatical terms, Joju is not doing anything special; he’s simply answering the question in the negative: “mu.” (無) Of course, why he says mu is the challenge of the kong-an. How do you respond?
In some traditions of kong-an practice, students meditate on this response, and on the word mu, for years. Partly for this reason, mu has taken on an enormous significance in the history of Zen, as a way of summing up the Zen teaching of not relying on conventional language, tradition, or conceptual thought. It is often used in dharma names and temple names. For example, the New Haven Zen Center’s Korean name is Mu Gak Sa:
無覺寺
Does not have / enlightenment / temple
Mu also comes up in another of Zen’s most famous stories, about the encounter between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu of Liang. (The name of the emperor and the word wu are different characters). Emperor Wu asks Bodhidharma, “What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?” Bodhidharma replies, “Great emptiness, no holiness.”
廓然無聖
Great emptiness / does not have / holiness or wisdom
Here is a video demonstrating the calligraphy for the character Mu:
