In both Chinese and Japanese, the character 無Chinese: wu
Japanese: mu, nai
is most often a verb that functions in one of two ways. (1) In a sentence that has a subject and verb but no object, the verb 無 is intransitive and means that the subject “does not exist” or “is lacking.” (2) In a sentence that has a subject, verb, and object, the verb 無 is transitive and means that the subject “does not have” or “lacks” the object.
There are also many expressions in which the character 無 is paired with a noun to form a negative adjective, functioning in much the same way as the English suffix “-less” or the prefixes “un-” and “in-.” For example: 無主 (“ownerless”), 無理 (“unreasonable”), 無數 (“innumerable”), 無上 (“supreme” — literally, “having nothing above”).
Finally, in certain philosophical contexts (e.g. Daoist texts), the character 無 occasionally stands alone as a noun, with a meaning translatable as “non-being” or “nothingness.”
In the Zen Buddhist tradition, the character 無 has a special meaning that derives from its use in a famous dialogue attributed to Zen master Zhaozhou Congshen趙州從諗
(778-897). The dialogue is included as the first case in the kōan collection known as the Gateless Barrier無門關
, under the heading of “Zhaozhou’s Dog”趙州狗子
:
Reverend Zhaozhou was asked by a monk, “Do dogs, too, have buddha-nature, or do they lack it?” [Zhao-] Zhou said, “Lacking無
Chinese: wu
.”
趙州和尚因僧問。狗子還有佛性。也無。州云無。
The profundity of this dialogue hinges on the ambiguity of Zhaozhou’s response. If Zhaozhou is understood to have used the verb wu (無) in its transitive sense, as the monk who questioned him certainly did, then his reply means, “Dogs do not have buddha-nature.” That would have been a surprising and unorthodox statement, for Buddhists in medieval China widely accepted the Mahāyāna teaching that all sentient beings are innately possessed of buddha-nature佛性
, though few are awakened to that fact. However, it generally understood that Zhaozhou used the verb wu (無) in its intransitive sense, in which case his reply means, “It does not exist.” Read in that way, his response does not answer the question on its own terms, but rather rejects its very premise, i.e., the notion that such a thing as buddha-nature actually exists. In other words, Zhaozhou’s wu (無) negates the possibility of either “having” or “not having” buddha-nature.
To explain Zhaozhou’s response in more familiar terms, let us consider the question, “Does Santa Claus have a red suit?” Conventionally speaking, of course, the expected answer is: “Yes, he has one.” However, if someone were to respond to the question about Santa Claus in the manner of Zhaozhou, who takes the standpoint of ultimate truth, they might say: “There is no such thing.” Or, because Zen rhetoric tends to be mischievous, they might say: “No, he wears yellow.”
In the context of “Zhaozhou’s Dog” and the Zen tradition in general, the word wu無
Japanese: mu
points to the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness空
Chinese: kong
Japanese: kū
, which holds that the world does not really consist of static, separately existing, self-contained “things”法
Chinese: fa
Japanese: hō
, despite our pragmatic and linguistically determined propensity to view it that way. In Zen, the word wu does not have the meaning of an absolute “nothingness.” Precisely because Santa Claus does not exist, his wardrobe is not bare: it is as rich and varied as anyone could want.
