MU

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MU, Nothingness, the Void.....無

***** Location:　Japan, worldwide
***** Season: Non-seasonal Topic
***** Category: Humanity

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Explanation

To explain MU, that is quite a task. Here we are only concerned with the translation in Haiku. It all started with this photo and haiku by Gabi Greve:



花心　深く見れば　無　となり

looking deep
into the flower heart -
all is MU

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Some friends have translated this haiku to other languages.

Russian

смотрю в самую
сердцевину цветка, а там...
ничего

Ethel Yanova

ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo

Italian

guardo in fondo
al cuore di un fiore
tutto è nulla

another version :

in immersione
dentro il cuore del fiore
io vedo il Tutto

Moussia

ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo

Spanish

asomándose
al corazón de la flor
todo es "nada"

"momiji"

ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo

Hungarian and Romanian

melyen benezve
a virag sziveben
semmi az egesz


uitandu-ma-adanc
chiar in inima florii
totul este MU

or for those unfamiliar with Eastern philosophies:

uitandu-ma-adanc
chiar in inima florii
totul e neant

Cristian

Read more about Cristian's arguments on the translation

Cristi has pointed out that the concept of MU might not be known to all and should be rendered into maybe
"neant" in Romania.

In the Spanish version, it comes with quotation marks, which is a good device to show it is not the normal meaning of the word
"nada"

When I changed my version to

(2)
looking deep
into the flower heart -
all things become "nothingness"

I realized, that was not IT at all !!

Next version was

(3)
looking deep
into the flower heart -
I see it ALL

Ha, now .. nothing .. had turend to ALL.
My western logic tells me

ALL can encompass Nothingness
but
Nothingness can not encompass ALL

My Zen logic (if there is any) tells me different, but then, we are back to the Koan of MU

A monk once asked master Chao-chou,
"Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?"

Chao-chou said, "Mu".

Check it out here.


Well, if you google with MU and KOAN, you get your fill of this discussion.

Here, I want to think about the translation in this haiku only.

I would rather leave it as MU (like the first version), hoping that most haijin had heared of this concept and make a footnote, with some kind of explanation (which I do not have at the moment .. hahaha) ..

Gabi

Footnote:
It seems, some of you do not even know how to pronouce this word correctly !
Do you know how a German cow says? MUUUUUUUU !
not mju like in musical
more like YOU without the Y.

And for the Western Mind, trained in Freud and Jung, locig and science, it is even harder to let go of all concepts and just experience the HERE and NOW.

Try reading a cookbook, you will not be able to fill your stomach.
Try to understand MU, you will not be able to experience it.



MU is also not related to atheism, as some Europeans might think.
Atheism, by Sam Harris

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A Way of Life called MU

無と言う生き方



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Essential Haiku and Its Subject Matter By Nagata Kôi
Margaret Mitsutani

I. The Essential Spirit

The word “essential” here refers to the philosophical “essence of existence;” in terms of Eastern religion, it is “the Eastern concept of mu (nothingness).” Those who seek an academic understanding of this concept will find the works of Nishida Kitarô and Suzuki Daisetsu helpful, in addition to books such as Kuki Shûzô’s Man and Existence, Shimomura Toratarô’s The Philosophy of Nishida Kitarô, and Hismatsu Shinichi’s The Eastern Concept of Mu.

Those with an interest in philosophy and religion will already be familiar with it. Nevertheless, it is a metaphysical concept, and with my poor smattering of knowledge, I can hardly claim to understand it completely myself.

A flower is beautiful, but what is it that makes it a flower? I am undoubtedly I, but what is it that makes me so? When we ask questions like this, the answer brings us to an encounter with “the eastern concept of mu.” This is not nonexistence as opposed to existence, but the absolute mu that transcends the opposition of existence and non-existence.

That, I believe, is the “essence of existence.” But why, then, do I feel the need to pursue it, and to believe in it? .....

This religious spirit that seeks to “live well” inevitably leads us to the realm of “the Eastern concept of mu.” This realm is both absolute and limitless, an utterly free world without hindrance or reward. .....

Therefore, the world of Eastern mu is not merely a world of abstract concepts, but a world that can be grasped by directly confronting existence itself. .....

This “world of god” is nothing other than “the world of Eastern mu.” .....

To seek for the essence of existence: this is not a new philosophical trend, nor is there anything old-fashioned about it. We find it in the doctrines of the Kongô-Hannya Sutra, in Chuang-tzu’s conception of chaos, in Goethe’s conversations about the essence of phenomena: all of these speak to us of the workings of the essential spirit. .....

Haiku, this briefest of our poetic forms, is fundamentally connected to the spirit of Zen. I don’t believe there is any room for doubt about this. Rooted in everyday life, it is both blunt and sharp, as well as satiric, humorous, suggestive, and symbolic: all of these are Zen-like characteristics. As long as we make sure that these characteristics form the basis of our haiku, they will always be new, both limitless and unchanging. ...

The above are just some quotes.
Please read the full article at "Modern Haiku, 2002"
http://www.modernhaiku.org/essays/nagatakoihaiku.html

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MU (無) (In Japanese/Korean) or WU in Chinese,
is a word which has been translated variously as "not", "nothing", "without", "nothingness", "non existent", and "non being". In modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean it is commonly used in combination words as a prefix to indicate the absence of something.
Mushin (無心; (English translation "without mind") is a mental state into which very highly trained martial artists are said to enter during combat.They also practice this mental state during everyday activities. The term is shortened from mushin no shin (無心の心), a Zen expression meaning the mind without mind and is also referred to as the state of "no-mindness". When we realize our own nothingness then we realize the power of our true being.

- Shared by Steve Weiss -
Joys of Japan, 2012


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Matsuo Basho and MU

The practice of Zen shaped Basho's thinking and established some life principles. R. H. Blyth, a well-known British theoretician of haiku poetry, linked loneliness, a strong theme of Basho's poetry, with the notion of mu in Zen, a state of absolute spiritual poverty, in which not possessing a thing, one can possess everything.
www.worldhaikureview.org



. Matsuo Basho and the concept of EMPTINESS .


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In a previous volume, "The Still Point", Roseliep celebrated the awful suspension between life and death with haiku of mu, haiku of nothingness—moving us to no handhold, no foothold. Haiku of mu are everywhere in "Rabbit" .....

........................................................... Read more about
Rabbit in the Moon—Raymond Roseliep’s Last Book

By Donna Bauerly
http://myweb.loras.edu/db000020/Rabbit_Moon.htm

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Mu is a Japanese and Chinese word regarding an absence of/in the negative. When one desires an answer, but your question makes false assumptions, the answer can only be Mu.
A radical change of perspective is required before the Mu can be overcome.

Now GET MU-HAIKUING!

Mu Haiku
http://www.huge-entity.com/2006/01/mu-haiku-cryogenically-frozen-tank.html

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Worldwide use

India

Shunyata, Śūnyatā, (Sanskrit) or Suññatā (Pāli)
translated as "Emptiness" or "Voidness", for an aspect of the Buddhist metaphysical critique as well as Buddhist epistemology and phenomenology. Śūnyatā signifies that everything one encounters in life is empty of soul, permanence, and self-nature. Everything is inter-related, never self-sufficient or independent; nothing has independent reality. Yet śūnyatā never connotes nihilism, which Buddhist doctrine considers to be a delusion, just as it considers materialism to be a delusion.

The Heart Sutra (one of the Mahayana Perfection of Wisdom Sutras) declares that the skandhas, which constitute our mental and physical existence, are empty in their nature or essence, i.e., empty of any such nature or essence. But it also declares that this emptiness is the same as form (which connotes fullness)--i.e., that this is an emptiness which is at the same time not different from the kind of reality which we normally subscribe to events;
it is not a nihilistic emptiness that undermines our world, but a "positive" emptiness which defines it.

Read more in the WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunyata

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Things found on the way

Koan and Haiku 公案と俳句
By Gabi Greve

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MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU

MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU MU

Daruma and "Katsu"

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MU Haiku Writer Comparisons

The Differences Between Culture, Language, and Geography in Haiku:
A comparison of College students’haiku and haiku by Carlos Fleitas
Essay by Mahrya Fulfer

MU here stands for : Millikin University
Read this Essay here.

...............................................One more LINK from MU University

Eric Amann, a Canadian haiku writer, wrote and published an essay on the topic entitled The Wordless Poem. His essay examines the connection between the Zen philosophy and haiku poetry.

Raymond Roseliep became interested in haiku in 1960 and has a rather large collection of eleven haiku publications. In his book The Still Point, dedicated to Nobuo Hirasawa, Roseliep addresses the "mu" in haiku, which means nothing or empty.

Zen in Haiku Versus a Christian Perspective


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HAIKU

"a blind man
is usually the first
to see the moon"
- Hua-ching

the Moon
witnessing
a smile

Read more of MU's Poetry
http://www.geocities.com/memphis_tn_usa/

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contemplating MU -
the cold wind feels
..... C.O.L.D.

Gabi Greve, 2000

cold wind, kanpuu　寒風, a kigo for winter.
Cold at Eihei-Ji, a Zen Temple, by Gabi Greve

... ... ...

the great MU
takes shape NOW ...
HAIKU

Gabi Greve, September 2006

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Motionless wooden floor
In and out the only song
Sengai blows on in.

Gerard Menzel
http://www.wildlotus.net/

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in a happy MU-d

at the risk
of repating MU-self
reinCARNATION*

* http://sd1new.net/GardenPages/carnation.ht

~simple-sigh-man~

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The core of a thing
without a frame or being
is not nihil.

flowing water
flying bird and air
nothing remains, yet. . .

Aju Mukhopadhyay, India, August 2006

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the sky is mu
the spring-light is mu
the bird-song is mu



© Narayanan Raghunathan, Wonderhaikuworlds India 　


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©　Haiga by Emile Molhuysen, Delft, 2006


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Related words

***** KATSU ! and Daruma

***** The Circle, Ensoo and Daruma

***** Meditation

***** Silence

***** Mandala

***** ZEN and Haiku ... well, well, well


***** SHASEI, sketching haiku from nature AS IT IS !

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Back to : Translating Haiku with Gabi Greve


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