On the nature of MU and regard to our discussion... you asked me this question:
Quote: So you are just reacting because you feel I am testing one of your buttons of your solid sense of self?
I answered mu. If you go back and look at our exchanges prior to this remark, you may understand why I responded with Mu, which is a reply to a Koan, or a paradoxical type question.
To answer Mu is a response to answer neither yes-nor-no: Mu is not as unusual as it first seems. There are many everyday questions that we would not want to answer either yes or no to. Consider the question: "Have you stopped beating your dog yet?" Now it is notoriously easy to invent a situation in which either a positive or a negative answer to this question is misleading. Either answer will mislead if I ask the question of a devoted animal lover, someone who would never mistreat any animal. If I was to demand a yes or no answer from a such a person they would be in a situation equally perplexing as the question you asked me: any response I make will be misleading. A positive answer has the implication that the mis-treatment once took place and has now ceased. Whereas a negative reply implies that this non-existent mistreatment is still continuing.
The difficulty with answering this question for a pet lover 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 one more firmly within that view of things.
Mu, as a response, questions the question: To ask for an alternative way of picture things. This is also implicit in the notion Mu. To answer a question with Mu (to say neither yes-nor-no) is to deny the validity of the question itself. Mu is a call for the question to be unasked, for what you initially questioned never took place.
