Eleven - Mu
When the Emperor of China asked Daruma what the first principle of Buddhism was, Daruma replied, “Vast emptiness, nothing holy!” (See Collecting the Art of Zen.) I love the paintings of Daruma (Bodhidharma) by Fugai; Daruma is depicted as a lump of a man with a thick fuzzy beard. In Japanese, Mu means emptiness or negation. Lao Tsu has already introduced us to the Valley Spirit, the emptiness that gives birth to all things. Here again in Chapter Eleven we are confronted with this idea of negative space, holes of all sorts. Being an amateur potter, I consider this idea as Lao Tsu presents it all the time:
“Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.”
Sometimes, because I have not yet mastered the art of throwing pottery, this emptiness expresses itself in ways I did not plan and a would-be vase becomes a floppy plate whose negative space contains an entire hemisphere of the universe, as it were. The Zen master makes use of our intellectual discomfort with the idea of nothingness. If nature abhors a vacuum, the human mind abhors the idea of no-thing. Is it even possible for us to think nothing? This is not a trivial question. When I try to meditate by emptying my mind, I am reminded of this difficulty each and every time.
The Zen koan of Joshu goes like this: A monk asked Joshu, “Has a dog the Buddha-Nature?” Joshu answered, “Mu!” I’ve never been a fan of koans in general, but I understand their purpose, I think. They are shocks to the mind, jarrings which unsettle the listener. The Rinzai sect of Japanese Zen Buddhism employs them extensively. The Mu koan in particular is interesting to me; it brings to mind this mystery of nothingness we have been considering in this chapter of the Tao Te Ching. It is an idea we will have many other opportunities to consider as we continue to explore Lao Tsu’s work.