Mu (negative)

The Japanese and Korean term () or Chinese (), meaning "not have; without", is a key word in Buddhism, especially Zen traditions. It is a fourth grade kanji. The Old Chinese * (無) is cognate with the Proto-Tibeto-Burman *ma, meaning "not". This reconstructed root is widely represented in Tibeto-Burman languages; for instance, means "not" in both Written Tibetan and Written Burmese. The Standard Chinese pronunciation of (無, "not; nothing") historically derives from the 7th century CE Middle Chinese , the 3rd century CE Late Han Chinese muɑ, and the reconstructed 6th century BCE Old Chinese *. Other varieties of Chinese have differing pronunciations of . Compare Cantonese ; and Southern Min bo˧˥ (Quanzhou) and bə˧˥ (Zhangzhou). The common Chinese word (無) was adopted in the Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean, and Sino-Vietnamese vocabularies. The Japanese kanji 無 has readings of or , and a (Japanese reading) of . The Korean 無 is read (in Revised, McCune–Reischauer, and Yale romanization systems). The Vietnamese Hán-Việt pronunciation is vô or mô. Some English translation equivalents of or are: "no", "not", "nothing", or "without" "nothing", "not", "nothingness", "un-", "is not", "has not", "not any" Pure awareness, prior to experience or knowledge. This meaning is used especially by the Chan school of Buddhism. A negative. Caused to be nonexistent. Impossible; lacking reason or cause. Nonexistence; nonbeing; not having; a lack of, without. The "original nonbeing" from which being is produced in the Tao Te Ching. In modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean it is commonly used in combination words as a negative prefix to indicate the absence of something (no ..., without ..., un- prefix), e.g., /無-線/ (무-선) for "wireless". In Classical Chinese, it is an impersonal existential verb meaning "not have". The same character is also used in Classical Chinese as a prohibitive particle, though in this case it is more properly written . In traditional Chinese character classification, the uncommon class of phonetic loan characters involved borrowing the character for one word to write another near-homophone.