莫妄想 maku mōzō Do Not Think Falsely

莫 is the classical Chinese do not. 妄想 is a Buddhist word before it is an everyday one: in this phrase it means taking what is not true for true, from a mind that clings, where the everyday word today is a delusion or a wild fancy. Two readings are found in print: maku mōzō, the headword of the two general Japanese dictionaries read, and bakumōzō, in a Zen phrase book of 1889. Both voice the last syllable, もうぞう, the old reading of 妄想.

The デジタル大辞泉 Digital Daijisen enters 莫妄想 as a word of the Zen school: do not think falsely; to reach awakening, cast off the mind that thinks and discriminates.

The story is told of the Tang master 汾州無業 Funshū Mugō, a disciple of Mazu Daoyi. The oldest telling found, in the Transmission of the Lamp of 1004, says: whenever a student asked a question, the master for the most part answered: 莫妄想. The word there is 多, mostly. The older lives of him, of 952 and 988, do not carry the phrase.

Beginning with the recorded sayings of 汾陽善昭, which were compiled in 1101, the later tellings read say that whatever 無業 was asked he always or only said 莫妄想. The Blue Cliff Record of 1125 tells it in the comment on 俱胝's one finger, and Yuanwu Keqin's letter of 1129 pairs the two masters: 俱胝 only raised one finger; 無業 only said 莫妄想.

莫妄想 was a stock answer. The Transmission of the Lamp gives it to two others, and 雲門, in his own recorded sayings, opens a sermon with it: monks, do not think falsely: the sky is the sky, the earth is the earth. Mugō is the master the phrase was attached to as a habit.

Dōgen takes the phrase up in the Shōbōgenzō fascicle Busshō, given in 1241, from another master's mouth: asked by a minister, 竺尚書, in which half of an earthworm cut in two the Buddha-nature lies, 長沙景岑 Changsha Jingcen answers do not think falsely. Dōgen tells the story three times in the Eihei kōroku as well.

Two Japanese masters of the fourteenth century who trained in China put the phrase into their own teaching. 寂室元光 opens the verses of his recorded sayings with 無業, all his life: do not think falsely, and ends the poem in a deep noon sleep. 月林道皎, commenting on 長沙's earthworm case, puts himself in 長沙's place: had the minister put the question to him, he would have answered in which end is the Buddha-nature?, and when the minister made to ask again, I would have struck him across the back: what talk is this of "do not think falsely"!

A Muromachi tale of a war between crows and herons, the 鴉鷺合戦物語, in a list of what is in fashion, counts 莫妄想 among the lines half-baked Zen monks always chirp, with thirty blows.

A chronicle of about 1597 to 1602 gives the warrior 太田道灌 Ōta Dōkan, killed in 1486, a death poem: the hemless bag, where until yesterday I kept my makumausau, has torn today. The last line follows a 1906 print of a letter that cites the poem, and hemless is a guess at what the bag is, made in a letter that calls itself uncertain. The poem is first found, in the witnesses read, more than a century after his death, and it gives the oldest kana of the word found in the National Diet Library's full-text index, by the date of the text: maku-.

The phrase is sometimes told as 無学祖元 Mugaku's word to 北条時宗 Tokimune in 1281. The source, the 元亨釋書 of 1322, has another phrase there, 莫煩惱, do not worry; asked what not to worry about, Mugaku answered: between spring and summer Hakata will be in turmoil, but a single wind will rise and ten thousand ships will be swept away; I pray you not to be troubled. 莫妄想 is first found in that story, in the National Diet Library's full-text index, in a Zen journal of 1897, as hearsay.

A tea journal of October 1941 records a gathering at which a horizontal piece of the three characters 莫妄想, by 月和尙, was hung.

The first English telling found on our shelf and in the Internet Archive's full-text index of 1800 to 1965, Nukariya Kaiten's of 1913, says Mugō is said to have replied to every questioner: Away with your idle thoughts. Miura and Sasaki's The Zen Koan of 1965 gives Maku mozo! Don't be deluded!, and Thomas and J. C. Cleary's Blue Cliff Record of 1977, Don't think falsely!

As our history of the phrase reads it, the always of the later tellings is a teaching shape laid on a habit and the mostly of 1004 the closer account, and on either telling the phrase does not answer a question: it turns the asker back on the thinking that produced the question.

A Chan admonition attributed, in the oldest witness read, to 汾州無業 (buried 823): the Transmission of the Lamp of 1004, where he answers most questions with it; from 汾陽's record (compiled 1101) on, the tellings read say he always or only did.