mu
see also: Mu, MU
Pronunciation Noun
Mu
Proper noun Noun
MU
Proper noun
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see also: Mu, MU
Pronunciation Noun
mu
- The 12th letter of the Modern Greek alphabet.
- (Zen Buddhism) Neither yes nor no.
- 1974, Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
- Mu means "no thing." Like "Quality" it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, "No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no." [...] It's a great mistake, a kind of dishonesty, to sweep nature's mu answers under the carpet.
- 1979, Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid:
- Achilles: Oh, but MU is Jōshū’s answer. By saying MU, Jōshū let the other monk know that only by not asking such questions can one know the answer to them.
Tortoise: Jōshū “unasked” the question. […]
Achilles: […] And the answer of “MU” here rejects the premises of the question, which are that one or the other must be chosen.
- Achilles: Oh, but MU is Jōshū’s answer. By saying MU, Jōshū let the other monk know that only by not asking such questions can one know the answer to them.
- 1996, Dan Simmons, "Looking for Kelly Dahl", The Year's Best Science Fiction, page 424 ↗:
- "Mu," said Kelly Dahl.
- On one level mu means only yes, but on a deeper level of Zen it was often used by the master when the acolyte asked a stupid, unanswerable or wrongheaded question such as "Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?" The Master would answer only, "Mu," meaning—I say "yes" but mean "no," but the actual answer is: Unask the question.
- 2002, Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, The Heart of Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō, page 72 ↗:
- The Fifth Patriarch's utterance You say mu [Buddha-nature] because Buddha-nature is emptiness articulates clearly and distinctly the truth that emptiness is not "no". In uttering Buddha-nature-emptiness one does not say "half a pound." One does not say "eight ounces." One says "mu."
- 2010, Joan Price, Sacred Scriptures of the World Religions, [https://books.google.com/books?id=J0eycqQq9U4C&lpg=PA70&dq=%22'Has%20a%20dog%20the%20Buddha%20nature%20or%20not%3F'%20Joshu%20said%2C%20'Mu%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=%22'Has%20a%20dog%20the%20Buddha%20nature%20or%20not?'%20Joshu%20said,%20'Mu%22&f=false page 70]:
- A monk once asked Master Joshu, 'Has a dog the Buddha Nature or not?' Joshu said, 'Mu!'
- 1974, Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
mu (uncountable)
- (Zen Buddhism) Nothingness; nonexistence; the illusory nature of reality.
- (nothingness) See also Thesaurus:inexistence
mu (plural mu)
- A unit of surface area, currently equivalent to 666 and 2/3 meters squared.
- 2007 — Chang Liu, “Peasants and Revolution in Rural China: Rural Political Change in the North China Plain and the Yangzi Delta, 1850-1949”, page 87 ↗
- Of 114 village farming families, only ten had more than 30 mu of land and only five had more than 60 mu.
- 2007 — Chang Liu, “Peasants and Revolution in Rural China: Rural Political Change in the North China Plain and the Yangzi Delta, 1850-1949”, page 87 ↗
Mu
Proper noun Noun
mu (plural mus)
- μ a mu particle
MU
Proper noun
- Abbreviation of North Maluku, a province of Indonesia.
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.032