Octopus Is Free: Becoming Mu Through Prayer

In my email this morning, I find this question:

“How does one become one with Mu?”

There is no way, really, and each of us must find the way.

Indeed, a common experience while working with mu, is for mu to seem like the island in the Pirates of the Caribbean film that you can’t find unless you’ve already been there.

Fortunately, each of us and all living beings is already there.

At the same time, there are many pointers to one becoming one with mu in The Book of Mu.

If you’re interested in the question, to complement wholehearted zazen and inquiry with a teacher, you might study this book carefully.

But when I read the question this morning, I was reminded of a dialogue I had with Katagiri-roshi that appeared in Keep Me In Your Heart Awhile (now just $5.74 on Amazon!).

Mu really is a wonderful one-word prayer and if you substitute “mu” for “universe” in Roshi’s comments that follow, it becomes another nice pointer.

Finally, though, you just have to do it.

Nevertheless, here’s Katagiri and a young Dosho:

“‘Before you think who you are, you are you,’ means you are exactly the universe, exactly, harmoniously intimate, no gap between. You must jump the gap between you and universe.”

“How can I jump the gap?”

“With prayer.”

“I am to use prayer to go beyond self-consciousness?” I asked.

I had left Catholicism and the reliance for salvation on anypower outside of “me” years before and thought that the essence of Zen practice was not to rely on God or anybody.

“Yes, of course,” Roshi continued, “always you are thinking, observing, calculating. This is ego. Your ego is calculating how to go beyond ego. But ego cannot go beyond ego, always holding tightly to something.”

“So I should pray?”

“Yes,” Roshi began to smile. “You know the story of the octopus. Japanese fishermen in old days would catch the octopus by throwing a chicken neck tied to a line into the sea. Then octopus would come and grab the chicken neck and fishermen would pull a little bit. The octopus holds on tighter. The fishermen pull more and the octopus holds on tighter.Finally, the octopus is hauled onto the fishing boat. But fishermen don’t use any hooks. From the beginning the octopus is free. Let go any time, anyway.”

“Okay. So I am like the octopus and I should pray. But Roshi, if there is nothing outside, no gap between me and the universe, to whom should I pray?”

“‘Pray’ means just pray. No object there. Just ‘Help!’”

Octopus is Free: Becoming Mu through Prayer