Core dumped
Mu! is the null pointer
that segfaults the mind
as smoke drifts through the zendo.
— EE Thompson
Image of Reflection Model (Rashomon) by Takahiro Iwasaki
Joshu’s Dog
A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”
— Mumonkan #1, translation by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps
Joshu answered: “Mu.”
Joshu’s Dog (also known as the Mu koan) is the first koan given to many Rinzai students. I turned my mind to it when one of our teachers mentioned it in a teisho1 she gave at our sesshin2 last weekend. As I mentioned in Leaky Buckets, koan contemplation isn’t a big part of my practice. However, I was a bit mentally stuck that last morning of sesshin. I started idly turning over the koan in my mind, both the opening I’ve quoted here and the rest of the commentary.
There are hundreds of articles, talks, and podcasts on Joshu’s dog. Unfortunately many articles say Mu means emptiness and that’s what I had taken Joshu’s answer to mean. A Zen master saying “empty” in response to a student’s conceptual question makes intellectual sense. When I dug in more carefully though, I found multiple translations that say “no” rather than Mu. The Book of Serenity also has “no” as Joshu’s answer. In addition, the koan is longer and includes Joshu answering “yes” to a different monk asking the same question. The contrast of negation and affirmation makes Joshu’s meaning clearer. During a break I wanted to remind myself of the commentary and verse as well as the koan. I happened on a translation that also has the original Chinese text. The Chinese character used for mu, 無, is the same one used in the title of Mumonkan 無門關. The characters literally mean no-gate barrier. I confidently settled on Joshu’s answer being no or not rather than a direct answer of empty.
Why research so carefully? I’ve found that translations in Buddhism are fraught. Describing nonverbal concepts with words is slippery to begin with. When the culture and context are stripped away, a modern English word can convey a completely different idea.
The hot iron ball
This begs an interesting question. Why did Mumon leave off Joshu’s affirmative answer when he transcribed the koan? It helps to know the context. Mumon was a teacher who habitually rejected his students’ answers or ideas. As soon as a student thought they had a firm grip on something, Mumon pulled the rug out from under them. Mumon also positions Mu as the “barrier to Zen.” Any good Zen student will immediately understand that what lies beyond the barrier is emptiness, and can confidently state that the barrier itself is also empty. This is the genesis of the various essays where Mu is said to mean emptiness. However, this overly clever approach merely bypasses the point of the entire koan. If you can realize emptiness, why contemplate Joshu’s Dog in the first place? Mumon gives us a better understanding of what he meant by Mu in his commentary: He writes:
Do not believe it [mu] is the common negative symbol meaning nothing. It is not nothingness, the opposite of existence. If you really want to pass this barrier, you should feel like drinking a hot iron ball that you can neither swallow nor spit out. Then your previous lesser knowledge disappears.”
Mumon isn’t so kind as to simply offer a negation or emptiness. He answers the seemingly reasonable question of a dog’s Buddha-nature with a hot iron ball trapped in our mouths. Intolerable! Spit it out! Swallow it! Run away! Find water! Your tongue is on fire! Who can possibly ask questions about the Buddha nature of a dog in this situation? Mumon has not merely deflected the question; he has metaphorically burned away the mouth that even asked. Mu has swiftly cut off the ability to ask the question in the first place.
Just concentrate your whole energy into this Mu and do not allow any discontinuation.
I doubt Mumon intends us to walk around contemplating a hot iron ball. That would be simply substituting one discursive thought for another. However, it points in an interesting direction. Questions like the Buddha-nature of a dog don’t help us deepen nonverbal awareness. Instead Mumon challenges us to understand that the questions themselves sustain lesser knowledge. Joshu hasn’t answered Mu to the question of a dog having Buddha-nature. He has answered Mu to asking the question in the first place.
Null pointers
As I looked at some other definitions of Mu I was struck by an explanation that it means null or N/A. Among other things I’m a programmer and null got my attention. As I contemplated the koan, I the concept of null in a database. It doesn’t mean zero or no. Null means the information was never collected. It is essentially a spot of infinite possibility in the database. The database null flowed into the concept of C null pointers.
Null pointers are addresses to unallocated memory. It’s like trying to drive to 2005 Oak St., but finding a dead end at 2003. It’s puzzling in the real world but in a C program it’s catastrophic. The program, encountering an undefined result when it makes a perfectly reasonable request for data, comes to a halt and throws the dreaded Segmentation fault (core dumped) error. I’ve lost days debugging segfaults, especially if the system is complex “spaghetti code” and I didn’t write all of it. In a computer, sometimes it’s better to drop an old, inefficient library entirely when it starts crashing the system.
Our brains are also filled with spaghetti code; subroutines built up over decades of living. The Mu koan can serve as a null pointer for the mind. Questions that seem reasonable like a dog’s Buddha-nature return an undefined answer. Mu invites me to trim the questions when spontaneous knowing doesn’t present itself. Do I really need to be trying to develop an intellectual understanding of the Buddhadharma? What other question-asking subroutines can I trim away? As I watched the smoke drifting through the zendo I realized that a mental null pointer, Mu, had tremendous potential to slim down the software in my mind. The haiku presented itself and so I pass it on to you.
