I think you gave me the very best compliment I've ever had on this board: you called me HD!! Whoo-whoo!!! Actually, I came to this board as an LD. And while I now consider myself to be a reformed LD, I would never go so far as to claim myself to be HD.
Hairpup:
Mu, pronounced as the sound a cow makes, (interesting that you should bring that up) is what Buddhist's call a Koan. The word Koan or Ko-an comes from the Chinese term kung-an, literally "public notice," or "public announcement."
Basically a Koan is a paradoxical utterance used in Zen as a center of concentration in meditation. The paradoxical nature of Koans is essential to their function: The attempt to break down conceptual thought. Koans are constructed so that they do not succumb to conceptual analysis and thereby require a more direct response from the meditator, or in this case, your wife.
When we practice Koans, we often only deal with what is immediately provided by the translator (your wife). We rarely investigate other sources and dig below the surface. And there is always a lot more to a Koan, or any barrier for that matter, than first meets the eye.
Often your wife puts you in a position, through her questions or statments, which leaves you in a damed-if-I-do, damed-if-I-don't situation. You cannot respond either yes or no, agree or disagree. Quite the paradox for you. So rather than wade into the morass, you simply utter "Mu."
To answer Mu is to answer neither yes-nor-no. The reason the answer is neither yes-nor-no is because your wife's questions/statements set up misleading categories for you, similar to Avyaakata in the sutras, which do not apply to the situation being examined (for example, when your wife said to you, "I didn't know you were a man who would divorce over sex" -- this has nothing to do with the issue, and she well knows it.)
The difficulty with answering this question in any way for you is that the question itself sets up a misleading picture of things. The question implies the existence of something that has never taken place and any response only seems to place you more firmly within that view of things. The correct response is to question the question: To ask for an alternative way of seeing the issue. This is also implicit in the notion Mu. To answer a question/statement with Mu (to say neither yes-nor-no, to neither agree nor disagree) is to deny the validity of the question/statement itself.
Mu is a call for the question/statement to be unasked/unuttered. It is a call to look beyond the limiting conceptualisation implicit in the question/statement (in this case, her view that you are merely a sexual deviant trying to objectify her and exert power and control over her through sex). In fact, Mu is more extreme than this: It is a call to move beyond the limiting perspective of conceptualisation itself to a direct contact with ultimate reality via pre-reflective awareness. (Meaning, it is a call to examine the real issue, not the illusion(s) created within her mind).
Once upon a time in a land far away lived a poor uneducated, mentally challenged man who tended a herd of cows for his master. He happened upon a meditation teacher and was very taken with his calm, loving, gentle and happy nature. He decided he wanted to know that experience first hand. And so he went to the teacher and begged him to teach him a way to achieve the inner peace that radiated so obviously from the teacher. The teacher accepted him as his student but quickly found that the man couldn’t understand any of the philosophical points he was making and as a matter of fact couldn’t even remember the Mantra "OM" when he tried to teach it to him.
The teacher lovingly said, "My oh my, you don’t seem to know anything at all, can’t be taught, and can’t remember anything. You are devoted and sincere in your desire to gain happiness though, so I will try to help you. My son, what do you know?"
The man said, "Oh great teacher, the only thing I know is cows. All my life I’ve spent caring for cows, making sure they graze, are milked, and are kept clean. Yes, for me, everything is cows."
"Well, that’s alright," said the teacher, "then you know what sound the cows make."
"Oh yes," said the man, "they say moo."
"Very well then," said the teacher, "for you, moo will be your mantra. All you have to do is say moo continually and you will reach freedom from suffering and know real bliss."
So the man chanted moo, moo, moo when he took the cows out to graze and he chanted moo, moo, moo when he milked them, and he chanted moo, moo, moo when he cleaned them. He chanted moo all the time and very soon merged with that vibration, which is Om backward, and reached the highest heights of joyous understanding and lived happily ever after.
So there you go, HD. You can now join your daughter in her Moo Mantra, and together reach the highest heights of joyous understanding, and live happily ever after.
Now you have to memorize all of this (which I know you can do cause you're a smart lawyerly type), and when the moment is ripe, you will utter "Mu" to your wife, explain your Buddhist knowledge when she challenges you... and then watch what happens.
