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Mario comments on The First Koan: Drinking the Hot Iron Ball - Less Wrong
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Am I the only one that has always assumed that story was a joke epically misunderstood? If the monk had instead asked, "What is the nature of a dog's path to enlightenment?" I think Joshu would have answered "Rough."
Wikipedia lists this as a possibility, that "mu" in archaic Japenese was "wu" the sound that a dog makes. While this also makes the koan a pun, I think it now works even better as a koan:
Q: Does a dog have a Buddha-nature? A: Woof!
Does 'Woof!' mean 'yes'? Does it mean 'no'? It's still just 'mu', but better. (For one thing, we'd expect an English-speaking dog to respond to the question.)
Once, a young monk asked Joshu, "Master, does a cow possess buddha-nature?"
Joshu thought briefly, then replied, "Muuuuuu."