"the place they go is mu"

[vashti]

So last night me, honoumiko and nardaviel had a huge (and very fun) Twitter argument about the nature of Mu. Which I then wrote up for the DN Wiki, largely based on Libby's summary of Mu.

I figured (a) it might interest some of you gaiz, and (b) you're all smart enough to point out where I've got it wrong-so, haz.

Comments

[serria]

I always liked how, although Death Note uses some obvious Christian imagery (though mostly for aesthetic and ironic purposes, imo) its conclusion is distinctly Buddhist.

My first introduction to Mu was in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (if you haven't read it, lovely book) - it also discusses the paradox of Mu. I don't mind the English translation of Nothingness, because technically you can't "go" to Nothingness and in that text I think it's equally paradoxical. But I feel like Western audiences, with Judeo-Christian background, have trouble comprehending or just plain feeling comfortable with that concept, so many prefer to think of "Nothingness" as a place where you just sit being bored out of your mind. Which, to me, destroys the beauty of the MU concept. The place you go is nowhere. You don't go anywhere. You just die

[vashti]

*Yes*. The way Light's philosophy is so Western, all along, but the very end - the death of the story and his own eventual fate - is Buddhist. The same patchwork syncretist way Japan generally treats religion.

The Nothingness translation makes perfect sense; it's not a bad translation at all. It's just that also calling it Mu confuses people; it makes it sound like a place. I need to read that book.

Interesting that that "there is no afterlife, let's do what we can while we're alive" is certainly something the characters live by...

[versipellis]

Oh. Mu is like dividing by zero. I... kind of love that answer.

Which is weird because a) think of all the people who died in that series b) the thought of dying and no longer being "the me observing things from behind this pair of eyes" freaks me out, but somehow it's got a beauty to it. Maybe it's the introduction of maths and logic.

[vashti]

And yet everyone in the show throws themself into what they believe. They aren't putting life off against something they might get in the future, they're living it, even if they do it badly, or for evil.

That ... really is kind of beautiful, IMO.

[versipellis]

It really is.

Wow, Death Note, you're making me feel uplifted. This is a turn-up for the books.

[vashti]

THIS NEVER HAPPENS.

[vashti]

Hah, I don't want to come off as one either! It does make sense, though. Thank you. :)

[sashocirrione]

All of that is true.

However, the definition of "Mu" is tricky enough that it isn't as if those fanfic writers who choose to present some kind of afterlife are necessarily wrong, depending on exactly how it is done. I get a lot of my info from MrsJeevas's DeviantArt Essay "All Humans Go to Mu" for the following

[sashocirrione]

6) The term "Mu" as an answer can be roughly translated to mean "that question is unanswerable" or "nobody has the answer to that question" (i.e. "Mu" can be a fancy way of saying "I don't know"). If you take that interpretation then you can postulate an afterlife, as long as there is no way of either shinigami or living humans knowing that such an afterlife exists. In this case, you'd have to have it set up so that there is no contact between the afterlife and the realm of the living or between the afterlife and the shinigami realm, or alternatively you set it up so that there is little contact and the contact which exists is slight and unprovable. This involves a bit more mental gymnastics than ways #1 through #5, but it still probably stretches the rule rather than breaking it