MU-I: Free of What?

In the opening sentence of Shobogenzo Master Dogen DID NOT WRITE that when buddhas verify, in their own experience, the supreme awakening of bodhi, then there is present in them in-depth knowledge of the sciences of psychology and physiology.

Master Dogen wrote that when buddhas verify, in their own experience, the supreme awakening of bodhi, then there is present in them a subtle method which is of the highest order and free of *******.

Free of ******* is two Chinese characters: MU-I.

In a compound, the first character, MU, means "without" or "free of." On its own it means "nothing." The original Chinese pictograph is of paper above flames.

So the big question is this: when Gautama Buddha sat under the bodhi tree, there was present in him a subtle method which was free of what?

In endeavoring to learn the backward step, I come back to this question often. And at different times I come up with different answers. Twelve years ago, when Shobogenzo Book One was published, the translation of MU-I that I selected was "without intention." I now regard that as a woeful translation. But I still like "without intention to achieve."

Another translation that I like is "free of doing."

But my intention in this post is not to put forward a definitive translation of MU-I. Rather, I invite you to leave a comment saying the translation that would be most meaningful to you now.
To help you, the English translation of the second character in the compound, I , is given in the dictionary as "be of use; do; try; turn into" (Nelson character dictionary) and "do; be; become" (Spahn/Hadamitzky character dictionary).

As a compound, MU-I is given in the Kenkyusha New Japanese-English dictionary as "idleness; inactivity; inaction."

As further background, Master Dogen exhorts us in Fukan-zazengi to "revere a person who is through with study and MU-I."

In his translation of Shobogenzo into modern Japanese, Gudo explains MU-I as saku-i no nai koto; shizen na koto, "without artificiality; natural." In his original translation of Shobogenzo into English, Gudo went with "natural."

Finally, in Buddhist sutras translated from Sanskrit, MU-I represents the Sanskrit word asamskrta, which is given in the Monier-Williams as "not prepared, not consecrated; unadorned; unpolished, rude (as speech)."

Please, don't be shy: go beyond right and wrong and have a go. Probably there is no right answer anyway. The great thing is to ask ourselves the question.

And if you find this kind of exercise useful, let me know and I will do the same thing with other key terms in Shobogenzo. I have often thought that the ideal thing would be for each person to be able to translate the key terms in Master Dogen's teaching for themselves, not to rely on the dirty filter of other people's understanding.