Clinging

30 is named 離 (lí), "Radiance".
Other variations include "the clinging, fire" and "the net".

• Its inner trigram is ☲ (離 lí) radiance = (火) fire, and
• its outer trigram is identical.

The origin of the character has its roots in symbols of long-tailed birds such as the peacock or the legendary phoenix.

Fire upon Fire

䷝

Actually the principle of ionization, the ion & the ionosphere

“The more you cling to that which all the world desires, the more you are Everyman, who has not yet discovered himself and stumbles through the world like a blind man leading the blind with somnambulistic certainty into the ditch. Everyman is always a multitude. Cleanse your interest of that collective sulphur which clings to all like leprosy.

The unconscious demands your interest for its own sake and wants to be accepted for what it is."  

Therefore away with your crude and vulgar desirousness, which childishly and shortsightedly sees only goals within its own narrow horizon. Therefore bethink you for once and consider: What is behind all this desirousness? A thirsting for the eternal...”

— C.G. Jung

“Man fulfils his highest self not when he conforms to others but when he finds the distinctive note his own life can play, and when he does indeed play it.”

— Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser, “Freedom and Authority”

(Freedom and Authority in Our Time: Twelfth Symposium of the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, page 489)

“I would like you to dance (Birthday)
Take a cha-cha-cha-chance (Birthday)
I would like you to dance (Birthday)
Dance, yeah, woo, come on (Come on)”

Birthday

The Beatles

Album The Beatles (The White Album)

Paul McCartney & John Lennon

The character wu 無 originally meant "dance" and was later used as a graphic loan for wu "not". The earliest graphs for 無 pictured a person with outstretched arms holding something (possibly sleeves, tassels, ornaments) and represented the word wu "dance; dancer". After wu 無 "dance" was borrowed as a loan for wu "not; without", the original meaning was elucidated with the 舛 "opposite feet" at the bottom of wu 舞 "dance".

 The Mu-kōan

The Gateless Gate, a 13th-century collection of Chan or Zen kōan, uses the word wu or mu in its title (Wumenguan or Mumonkan 無門關) and first kōan case ("Zhao Zhou's Dog" 趙州狗子). Chinese Chan calls the word mu 無 "the gate to enlightenment". The Japanese Rinzai school classifies the Mu Kōan as hosshin 発心 "resolve to attain enlightenment", that is, appropriate for beginners seeking kenshō "to see the Buddha-nature"'.

Case 1 of The Gateless Gate reads as follows:

Chinese	English translation
趙州和尚、因僧問、狗子還有佛性也無。 州云、無。	A monk asked Zhaozhou Congshen, a Chinese Zen master (known as Jōshū in Japanese), "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?" Zhaozhou answered, "Wú" (in Japanese, Mu)

The koan originally comes from the Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi Yulu (: 趙州真際禪師語錄), The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Zhao Zhou, koan 132:

Chinese	English translation
僧問：狗子還有佛性也無？ 師云：無。 問：上至諸佛，下至螻蟻皆有佛性，狗子為什麼卻無？ 師云：為伊有業識在。	A monk asked, "Does a dog have a Buddha-nature or not?" The master said, "Not [Mu]!" The monk said, "Above to all the Buddhas, below to the crawling bugs,  all have Buddha-nature. Why is it that the dog has not?" The master said, "Because he has the nature of karmic delusions".

The Book of Serenity : 從容録: cóngrónglù, also known as the Book of Equanimity or more formally the Hóngzhì Chánshī Guǎnglù: 宏智禪師廣錄, has a longer version of this koan, which adds the following to the start of the version given in the Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi Yulu.

Chinese	English translation
僧問趙州，狗子有佛性也無。 州云，有。 僧云，既有為什麼卻撞入這箇皮袋。 州云，為他知而故犯。	A monk asked Master Zhao Zhou, "Does a dog have Buddha Nature?" Zhao Zhou replied, "Yes." And then the monk said, "Since it has, how did it get into that bag of skin?" Zhao Zhou said, "Because knowingly, he purposefully offends."

Origins

In the original text, the question is used as a conventional beginning to a question-and-answer exchange (mondo). The reference is to महापरिनिर्वाण सूत्र: 大般涅槃經: Dàbānnièpán-jīng, the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra which says for example:

In this light, the undisclosed store of the तथागत (tathāgata) has proclaimed: "All beings have the Buddha-Nature".

Koan 363 in the Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi Yulu shares the same beginning question.

Interpretations

This koan is one of several traditionally used by 臨濟宗Rinzai school to initiate students into Zen study, and interpretations of it vary widely. 安谷 白雲, Yasutani Haku'un, 1885–1973) a 曹洞宗老師 Sōtō rōshi founder of 三宝教団 the Sanbo Kyodan organization of Japanese 禪 Zen, maintained that

The koan is not about whether a dog does or does not have a Buddha-nature because everything is Buddha-nature, and either a positive or negative answer is absurd because there is no particular thing called Buddha-nature.

This koan is discussed in Part 1 of Hau Hoo's The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers. In it, the answer of "negative", mu, is clarified as although all beings have potential Buddha-nature, beings who do not have the capacity to see it and develop it essentially do not have it. The purpose of this primary koan to a student is to free the mind from analytic thinking and into intuitive knowing. A student who understands the nature of his question would understand the importance of awareness of the potential to begin developing it.

One-sided interpretation

The Japanese scholar Iriya Yoshitaka [ja] made the following comment on the two versions of the koan:

I have held doubts for some time even with regard to the way the so-called "Chao-chou's Word No" has been previously dealt with. To the question "Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?", on the one hand, Monk Chao-chou replied affirmatively, but on the other hand, he replied negatively. However, Zen adherents in Japan have rendered the koan exclusively in terms of his negative response and completely ignored the affirmative one. Moreover, it has been the custom from the outset to reject the affirmative response as superficial compared to the negative one. It seems that the Wu-men Kuan is responsible for this peculiarity.

A similar critique has been given by Steven Heine:

The common approach espoused [...] emphasizes a particular understanding of the role of the koan based on the “head-word” or “critical phrase” method developed by the prominent twelfth-century Chinese master, 大慧宗杲 Dahui Zonggao or Daie Sōkō. This approach takes the “Mu” response in a non-literal way to express a transcendental negation that becomes the topic of an intensive contemplative experience, during which any and all thoughts or uses of reason and words are to be cut off and discarded for good rather than investigated for their expressive nuances and ramifications. Yet, historical studies demonstrate quite persuasively that an overemphasis on this single approach to one version of the kōan is somewhat misleading.

"Unasking" the question

The term is often used or translated to mean that the question itself must be "unasked": no answer can exist in the terms provided. Zhaozhou's answer, which literally means that dogs do not have Buddha-nature, has been interpreted by Robert Pirsig and Douglas Hofstadter to mean that such categorical thinking is a delusion, that yes and no are both correct and incorrect.