Joshu’s ‘no’ is a rejection of the question, not a response to it per se.
Mumon suggests that the monk wasn’t genuinely interested in truth or increasing his understanding of enlightenment, merely in pondering an intellectual puzzle. In doing so, the monk made a fatal assumption that leads to an incorrect question.
Why ponder whether and how a dog can reach enlightenment when the goal is to become enlightened yourself?
Why ponder whether and how a A can reach X when the goal is to become X yourself?
In general, because it might give you insight into the nature of X.
I agree that the initial question in this case is ill-formed, but I don’t think your final sentence has any bearing on why it is ill-formed. It only seems like it does because the initial question is ill-formed.
Joshu’s ‘no’ is a rejection of the question, not a response to it per se.
I know: Mu doesn’t mean “no”; it means the “third answer”, the something else left when you eliminate “yes” and “no”.
Rather, I was answering “no” to the question, “Does a dog have a Buddha-nature?” to see what would happen.
What if the answer is “yes”? Why would saying “yes” make you lose your own Buddha-nature? I agree, the reason may be somewhere in how the Buddha-nature is different for the dog, it somehow negates our own Buddha-nature. So we choose our own Buddha-nature (we choose our context) and negate the dog’s...but then that negates our own.
Analogously, either way you answer the question, “Do other people’s moral beliefs have value?”, you lose the value of your own. I suppose the power of the koan is that you can apply it to anything, like a torch pointed wherever you happen to already be looking. Or you can not focus it anywhere, and keep going with it, embracing “mu” indefinitely, becoming really, really wise...
Why would saying “yes” make you lose your own Buddha-nature?
Because to label a thing is to demarcate a category… thereby verbally overshadowing your experience.
Much of Zen tradition basically consists of tying verbal intelligence in knots to force some non-verbal thinking or experiencing to occur.
The moment where it really hits you that you can’t say yes or no, is the moment where you directly experience the limitations of your verbal reasoning to provide an accurate map of the territory.
The moment, however, that you reduce this back to a verbal summary of the non-verbal experience—for example, this explanation of mine! -- you’ve gone back to the non-Buddha nature: verbally tagging the map of your experiences, rather than being aware of the (untagged, unlabeled) territory.
In effect, koan practice is a way of learning not to trust your brain’s naive reasoning. And GEB had a lot about Zen because it’s sort of like trying to “Godel” or “Escher” out of your own brain’s limitations—to leave its own printed page and join the world of three-dimensions.… even though in the end, even enlightenment is still an illusion.
(A worthwhile illusion, though; it may only be 2.5D, but that’s still .5 more than 2D!)
“What if the answer is “yes”? Why would saying “yes” make you lose your own Buddha-nature? ”
If I say that “this statement is false” is true, isn’t that just as much an error as saying that it’s false?
How can something be without growing from the source of existence? How an existent thing be part of the source of existence, which does not exist itself?
Joshu’s ‘no’ is a rejection of the question, not a response to it per se.
Mumon suggests that the monk wasn’t genuinely interested in truth or increasing his understanding of enlightenment, merely in pondering an intellectual puzzle. In doing so, the monk made a fatal assumption that leads to an incorrect question.
Why ponder whether and how a dog can reach enlightenment when the goal is to become enlightened yourself?
In general, because it might give you insight into the nature of X.
I agree that the initial question in this case is ill-formed, but I don’t think your final sentence has any bearing on why it is ill-formed. It only seems like it does because the initial question is ill-formed.
Yes, precisely! Mumon suggests that the monk wasn’t asking the question for that purpose. The monk’s mistake wasn’t an honest one in that sense.
I know: Mu doesn’t mean “no”; it means the “third answer”, the something else left when you eliminate “yes” and “no”.
Rather, I was answering “no” to the question, “Does a dog have a Buddha-nature?” to see what would happen.
What if the answer is “yes”? Why would saying “yes” make you lose your own Buddha-nature? I agree, the reason may be somewhere in how the Buddha-nature is different for the dog, it somehow negates our own Buddha-nature. So we choose our own Buddha-nature (we choose our context) and negate the dog’s...but then that negates our own.
Analogously, either way you answer the question, “Do other people’s moral beliefs have value?”, you lose the value of your own. I suppose the power of the koan is that you can apply it to anything, like a torch pointed wherever you happen to already be looking. Or you can not focus it anywhere, and keep going with it, embracing “mu” indefinitely, becoming really, really wise...
Because to label a thing is to demarcate a category… thereby verbally overshadowing your experience.
Much of Zen tradition basically consists of tying verbal intelligence in knots to force some non-verbal thinking or experiencing to occur.
The moment where it really hits you that you can’t say yes or no, is the moment where you directly experience the limitations of your verbal reasoning to provide an accurate map of the territory.
The moment, however, that you reduce this back to a verbal summary of the non-verbal experience—for example, this explanation of mine! -- you’ve gone back to the non-Buddha nature: verbally tagging the map of your experiences, rather than being aware of the (untagged, unlabeled) territory.
In effect, koan practice is a way of learning not to trust your brain’s naive reasoning. And GEB had a lot about Zen because it’s sort of like trying to “Godel” or “Escher” out of your own brain’s limitations—to leave its own printed page and join the world of three-dimensions.… even though in the end, even enlightenment is still an illusion.
(A worthwhile illusion, though; it may only be 2.5D, but that’s still .5 more than 2D!)
“What if the answer is “yes”? Why would saying “yes” make you lose your own Buddha-nature? ”
If I say that “this statement is false” is true, isn’t that just as much an error as saying that it’s false?
How can something be without growing from the source of existence? How an existent thing be part of the source of existence, which does not exist itself?