>[!abstract] >The word *wú* in Chinese (traditional 無, simplified 无), *mu* in Japanese (kanji 無, hiragana む), and *mu* in Korean (Hangul 무, Hanja 無), is a negation word meaning "no", "not", "nothing", "to lack", or "without". ## The Mu-koan of Zhaozhou’s dog Mu is central to a classic 13^th century kōan (story or parable) in Zen buddhism. A monk asks his Zen master: Does a dog have a Buddha-nature? In some versions, the master replies, "mu" in a transcendental negation sense to suggest that the question is meaningless. In this sense, mu is used to "unask" the question, either because it is flawed or because it does not lend itself to a binary answer. Douglas Hofstadter references it extensively in [[Hofstadter, 1979|Gödel, Escher, Bach]]. >[!related] >- **North** (upstream): [[Loaded question]], [[Not even wrong]], [[Zen Buddhism]] >- **West** (similar): [[Śūnyatā]] >- **East** (different): [[Dualistic logic]] >- **South** (downstream): [[Koan practice]]