Mu
Nepal 2,500 BC
One morning in the courtyard of a monastery in Katmandu the Shakyamuni Budda was giving a discourse on the Heart Sutra - which in essence states that everything is endowed with Buddha nature. At the end of the lecture a temple dog strolled into the courtyard. One of the monks pointed at it and asked; “Does that dog have Buddha nature?” The Buddha answered: “Mu”.
Herein lies a another story related to a modern interpretation of the meaning of Mu. It took place twenty five centuries later in a monastery in Thailand. It concerns me, a Theravada Buddhist monk, and a dog.
Japan 1978
I first became familiar with Mu in Hosshinji monastery in Japan while training in Zen practices. Mu, a.k.a. as The Diamond Sutra, was adopted in Japan in the 12th Century as representative of the essence of Zen. Since then, every morning in monasteries throughout Japan for nearly three hundred generations tens of thousand of Zen monks, have left their meditation mats in the zendo, retired to the central sodo and, to the rising beat of a wooden drum, religiously chanted the Heart Sutra in the original archaic tongue of ancient Japan. In the interests of this story and the subtlety of the interpretation of MU, I will print out the ancient text in its original and follow it with a direct English translation, before proceeding with the tale of the dog.
Phonetic reading of the kanji of the heart sutra in Japanese
HANNYA HARAMITTA SHINGYÔ
KANJI ZAI BO SATSU GYÔ JIN HANNYA HARA MITTA JI SHÔ KENGO UN KAI KÛ DO ISSAI KUYAKU.SHA RI SHI. SHIKI FU I KÛ KÛ FU I SHIKI. SHIKI SOKU ZE KÛKÛ SOKU ZE SHIKI. JU SÔ GYÔ SHIKI YAKU BU NYO ZE. SHA RI SHI. ZE SHO HÔ KÛ SÔ. FU SHÔ FU METSU FU KUFU JÔ FU ZÔ FU GEN. ZEKO KÛ CHÛ MU SHIKI MUJU SÔ GYÔ SHIKI. MU GEN NI BI ZETSU SHIN I. MU SHIKI SHÔKÔ MI SOKU HÔ. MU GEN KAI NAISHI MU ISHIKI KAI. MU MUMYÔYAKU MU MUMYÔ JIN. NAISHI MU RÔ SHI YAKU MU RÔ SHI JIN. MU KUSHÛ METSU DÔ. MU CHI YAKU MU TOKU I MU SHO TOKU KO. BO DAI SATTA E HANNYA HARA MITTA KO SHIN MU KEIGEI MU KEI GEI KO MU U KU FU ON RI ISSAI TENDÔ MU SÔ KU GYÔ NEHAN. SANZE SHO BUTSU E HANNYA HARA MITTA KO TOKU ANO KUTARA SANMYAKU SANBODAI. KO CHI HANNYA HARAMITTA ZE DAI JIN SHU ZE DAI MYÔ SHU ZE MUJÔ SHU ZE MUTÔDÔ SHU NÔ JO ISSAI KU.SHINJITSU FU KO. KO SETSU HANNYA HARAMITTA SHU SOKU SETSU SHU WATSU:
GYATEI GYATEI HARAGYATEI HARASÔGYATEI BOJI SOWAKA.HANNYA SHIN GYÔ.
Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
The Heart Sutra on the Perfection of Wisdom
The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, while dwelling in the deep Perfection of Wisdom, sees clearly that the five skandhas are all empty and is thus freed from all suffering.
Oh Shariputra! Form is not different from emptiness; emptiness is not different from form. Form is indeed emptiness; emptiness is indeed form. Feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness are also like this.
Oh Shariputra, all dharmas have the nature of emptiness. They neither arise nor perish; they are neither impure nor pure; they neither increase nor decrease. Thus, in emptiness there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no mental formations, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no objects of mind. No sensory realms or mind-consciousness realm.
There is no ignorance, and no end to ignorance. There is no old age and death, and no end to old age and death. There is no suffering, no arising, no cessation, and no path. There is no wisdom, and no attainment.
As there is nothing to be attained, the Bodhisattva abides in the Perfection of Wisdom, and has a mind free of hindrances. Because the mind is free of hindrances, it is fearless. Having transcended all illusions, the Bodhisattva finally transcends Nirvana.
All the Buddhas of the past, present and future follow the Perfection of Wisdom and thus realize unexcelled perfect Enlightenment.
Thus, know that the Perfection of Wisdom is the great holy mantra. It is the mantra of great knowledge, the unsurpassed mantra, the incomparable mantra that removes all suffering. It is true, not illusory. Therefore, say the mantra of the Perfection of Wisdom. Thus, recite the mantra:
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha! (Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone totally beyond, Enlightenment, hail!)
So back to the tale of me, Mu and the dog.
My year-long stay in Hosshinji monastery was interrupted every three months by visa requirements. After the first three months I had to leave the small fishing village of Obama where Hosshinji is located and go by train to the Japanese consul in Tseruga and have my visa extended for another three months. After that expired I was required to leave Japan altogether and apply for a new visa in another country. So after the second visa expiration I left Japan and went to Korea and stayed in monasteries in Pusan and Seoul while waiting for my visa application to be approved. I then went back to Japan and continued my Zen training at Hosshinji. Three months later I returned to Tseruga for a visa extension and at the end of the year had to leave Japan again. This time I decided to visit Thailand and wait for visa approval. On my way out of Japan I stopped by at the United Nations offices in Tokyo and applied for permission to do missionary work in a Cambodian refugee camp that had been set up in Thailand. I received a polite refusal.
This refusal was transcended after I arrived in Thailand. As an ordained Buddhist monk, I was received room and board at Wat Bowonniwet, the Royal monastery in central Bangkok. My room was next door to that of an exiled Cambodian abbot. He was one of the few Buddhist monks that had escaped extermination during the Pol Pot regime. When he heard that I wanted to do missionary work in the Cambodian refugee camp he immediately recruited me, and drove me out to the camp.
The wire-enclosed refugee camp bordered Cambodia. It housed thirty thousand Kmer Rouge who were too afraid to return to their country after the blood bath of the Killing Fields. Zen is a branch of Mahayana Buddhism. Buddhists in South East Asia practice the original form of Hinayana Buddhism. Though of a different sect, the Cambodian abbot and I were the only Buddhist clergy among the 30,000 godless ex-Marxists - who were now only too eager to re-embrace Buddhism. The rest of the helpers in the vast camp were United Nations administrators and medics. I was given a room in the Thai monastery that abutted the camp.
At prayers the next morning after my arrival, my mentor announced to the assembled multitude that I would teach classes in Buddhist meditation before dawn each morning. So, at precisely 4.a,m I announced meditation time by banging a heavy iron serving spoon mightily on large iron frying pan. My make-shift gong brought some 300 bleary-eyed men and women turned out for the first class held inside a large circus-sized tent. Sitting motionless in full lotus for two forty five minute meditation sessions with a ten minute break in between is a painful experience by any criteria that measures the pain threshold. Only thirty sleepy faces appeared the next morning, mostly young women. I held the class for three months, until I found out that my Japanese visa had been turned down. Apparently Japanese had succumbed to the world wide cultural ban on white-skinned South Africans. The good news was that my classes in meditation bore fruit. I was informed several months later that twelve of the young women from class had continued meditation practice without me and taken ordination under my abbot mentor as Buddhist nuns.
A couple of days before leaving the camp, I stood outside a kuti talking to a young Englishman who had taken ordination as a Theravada monk. As we talked a small dog staggered into view. She was a small black and white long haired terrier. An ugly cyst, the size of a soccer ball, grew from her belly. She was dragged herself in obvious pain into the shade under the building.
“She should be put down.” I remarked.
“I know,” replied the Englishman, resignedly. “But mercy killing of animals is strictly against Buddhist belief. Besides she is the local abbot’s private pet.”
Thai kutis are constructed on stilts above the ground, I knelt down and crawled after the dog. She retreated further into the shade, wide eyes on me. I spoke softly.
“Listen old lady. You have suffered enough. I will help end it, if you want.”
I had no idea of how I would go about it, but put the offer out there anyway. She remained silent.
I got up and joined with the monk in his kuti for a cup of English tea. During our conversation my arm slipped accidentally behind the couch I was sitting on. My hand fell on the handle of a farm implement It was a machete, razor sharp. After tea the two of us strolled over to the monastery’s out-door crematorium. It was large red-brick oven with a tall chimney. Two human corpses, one large and one small, lay wrapped on the ground before it. I was astonished at the amount of wood piled outside that was needed to convert the bodies to ashes. The monk presiding over the cremation said that the bodies were of a young man and a child. The crematorium was rarely cold. Virtually every day the vast camp provided bodies for burning. I had never seen a cremation, so waited to see what would happen.
What happen next was eerie to say the least. The small terrier came staggering up to us and sat herself down right on top of my sandals. She looked directly into my eyes and then wet herself. There was no mistaking her resolution or her fear. Interpret it as you may. Here was a dying patient asking for euthanasia. An execution knife had appeared out of nowhere. And a crematorium was being readied for bodies. The English monk beside me never spoke a word or moved a muscle as I quietly gathered up the dog in my arms, entered his kuti, retrieved the machete, went out into a nearby field and put the dog at my feet. She looked up once more at me, then offered her neck.
Nobody in the monastery, not a monk or the abbot, said a word about it after.
Mu.
(edit/ apologies for the earlier title mistake, the Diamond Sutra is another story)