This will seem off topic at first, but bear with me.
This column is mostly concerned with reinterpreting media, and turning our assumptions about narrative on its head.
I’ve always maintained that the techniques in doing what I do are not literary but theological: I utilize normally utilize ordinary instead of religious text. But that doesn’t mean that these techniques cannot sometimes be applied to religious ideas, and so it is I turn to a famous Japanese Koan, the Mu Koan.
A monk asked Zhaozhou Congshen, a Chinese Zen master (known as Jōshū in Japanese), “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?” Zhaozhou answered, “Wú” (in Japanese, Mu)
—The Gateless Gate, koan 1, translation by Robert Aitken
For the uninitiated, a koan, according to Wikipedia, “…is a fundamental part of the history and lore of Zen Buddhism. It consists of a story, dialogue, question, or statement, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but may be accessible through intuition.” As you may be able to tell if you read what I write regularly, koans are fountains of interpretable ideas, and ready fodder for my brand of mythography.
A Zen master might present this koan to a student, and the student would ponder it for a while, and try to reason through the apparent contradiction at the heart of the piece. The contradiction is this: since all reality is of Buddha nature, then a dog must certainly be of Buddha nature, but a Zen master answered the question “Mu” meaning no. Dogs do not have a Buddha nature. Puzzling through this contradiction is at least one possible path to enlightenment.
I would like to suggest a solution to the Mu Koan that does not entail enlightenment, is based on a pun, yet still maintains within it the essential quality of contradiction. I don’t expect to be proclaimed an enlightened Zen master for my efforts, but I won’t refuse such accolades if offered.
I believe the key to this koan is to visualize the story in your head. I pictured the TV show Kung Fu, where the young Kwai Chang Caine talks to Master Po, (played by the late, great Keye Luke!) at the Shaolin Monastery. After the young monk asks “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?” the Zen master, Zhaozhou Congshen, played by Keye Luke answers not as a human, but as a dog. He barks his answer, “Wú!”
Note the difference now. The Zen Master answers “No!” as if he’s barking like a dog. He’s answering the question as a dog would answer the question, and the word Wu or Mu sounds like a dog bark, the way we might say “Woof!” What’s interesting about words people use for dog barks is that they are different depending on culture. According to Wikipedia: “Woof is the conventional representation in the English language of the barking of a dog. As with other examples of onomatopoeia or imitative sounds, other cultures “hear” the dog’s barks differently and represent them in their own ways.”
In Chinese the sound a dog makes is roughly “wang wang” or “wow wow.” A pun could easily be made connecting Wu to Wow or even Wang.
So if Zhaozhou Congshen is answering the question as a dog might, why is he and what does he mean by his answer? I believe that the Zen master was not only answering like a dog, he was answering the way a dog would answer. Even if dogs possess a Buddha nature, which they do, a dog would be incapable of being aware of his Buddha nature. Only a human or human-like mind can understand such a deep truth. Dogs do not have the capacity to understand Buddha nature, so the only answer a dog can give is “No.”
But human minds can see deeper truths. They realization that Zhaozhou Congshen wanted the young monk to attain was many folded, but at least one aspect was to realize that only a human mind, attenuated to the way of Zen, could do the work necessary to save all beings, animate and inanimate, from suffering. In China dogs were considered lowly creatures, but even they can one day be saved by a true Buddha, despite themselves.
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