To pay homage to China’s greatest poets, renowned translator Bill Porter—who is also known by his Chinese name “Red Pine”—traveled through China visiting dozens of poets’ graves and performing idiosyncratic rituals that featured Kentucky bourbon and reading poems aloud to the spirits. Combining travelogue, translations, history, and personal stories, this intimate and fast-paced tour of modern China celebrates inspirational landscapes and presents translations of classical poems, many of which have never before been translated into English. Porter is a former radio commentator based in Hong Kong who specialized in travelogues. As such, he is an entertaining storyteller who is deeply knowledgeable about Chinese culture, both ancient and modern, who brings readers into the journey—from standing at the edge of the trash pit that used to be Tu Mu’s grave to sitting in Han Shan’s cave where the Buddhist hermit “Butterfly Woman” serves him tea. Illustrated with over one hundred photographs and two hundred poems, Finding Them Gone combines the love of travel with an irrepressible exuberance for poetry. As Porter writes: “The graves of the poets I’d been visiting were so different. Some were simple, some palatial, some had been plowed under by farmers, and others had been reduced to trash pits. Their poems, though, had survived… Poetry is transcendent. We carry it in our hearts and find it there when we have forgotten everything else.”
These are some of the Poets’ graves that Bill has visited : Li Pai, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Su Tung-p’o, Hsueh T’ao, Chia Tao, Wei Ying-wu, Shih-wu (Stonehouse), Han-shan (Cold Mountain).
With Finding Them Gone as your map, you will encounter rural and industrial China’s shifting cultural landscape without ever leaving the page. On your journey, you’ll set off by train in Beijing and arrive in the cave where Cold Mountain, a master of Hermetic poetry and Zen practice, once sang his verses—“with nothing to do I write poems on rock walls/trusting the current like an unmoored boat.”
Each step of the pilgrimage is marked with poetry from Chinese masters—among them Stonehouse, Cold Mountain, and Li Po—including poems never before translated into English.
Hua Zang Si is my favorite sacred spiritual worship place in the bay area. In there I find peace, relaxation, and harmony, and a home for my soul. I have gone there many times, to chant the sutra, join the meditation sessions, and participate in Dharma assemblies.
Hua Zang Si, an impressive-looking temple located in the center of the Mission District in San Francisco. The building was formerly the St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, built in 1903, and has been repurposed as a Chinese temple. To me it is really a friendly symbol that different religions can coexist in harmony.
The large outside facade of the temple is painted red color, made the building a very outstanding and eye-catching landmark in the neighborhood. Red is a good color in Chinese culture that symbolizes auspiciousness and warding off evil spirits。
Once entering the temple, I feel like I am in another world. The marvelous statue at the entrance of the temple is an oversize representation of a jolly, laughing Buddha: Maitreya Bodhisattva (the next Buddha in this Saha world). It is such a warm welcoming sign. The big belly not only means jolly, it also means tolerating those intolerable things in the world. So when you look at the statue, you will start to feel that learning Buddhism is happy and kind.
The right line of the couplet is “da du neng rong tian xia shi he lai bu rong zhi rong.” As self-cultivators, we should be like the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. We should have a broad mind, open heart, and great tolerance. The left line of the couplet is “ren ru ke na fa jie jing qi shi you na zhong na.” The first priority for one who learns Buddhism and cultivates himself is to be patient and forbearing under insult. The thought of patience or tolerance does not arise from his mind. Everything in all of the dharma realms can change from ordinary to holy.
Walking inside, the first floor is Shakyamuni Buddha Hall. The golden statue of Shakyamuni Buddha is a very dignified-looking Buddhist statue. On the left side is the one thousand-armed and one thousand-eyed Guanyin Bodhisattva, an awe-inspiring statue. On the right side is Skanda Bodhisattva, a standing majestic full-body armored statue. With a sword in hand, Skanda Bodhisattva is a Buddha Dharma protector, and it is believed he can subjugate demons and evil spirits.
Shakyamuni Buddha
One thousand-armed and one thousand-eyed Guanyin Bodhisattva
Skanda Bodhisattva
The second floor is Amitabha Buddha Hall. The twenty-one-foot-high statue of Amitabha Buddha (designed by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III) has been generally recognized as the most majestic Buddhist statue in the world. It is an extremely solemn sight. The color painted on the face is so lifelike, one feels like seeing the real Amitabha Buddha from western paradise. The Buddha’s eyes seem alive as well, looking down at all beings full of compassion and love. Every time when I look at the Buddha, I feel so moved and touched, tears fill my eyes. I can’t help but to kneel down and pray wholeheartedly: Please Buddha save me from the birth-death cycle, please take me to the western pure land. I feel my whole body melted into the compassionate gaze of the Buddha.
In the center of Amitabha Buddha hall, there is a large circular mandala on which a Yun sculpture (carved by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III) depicting Mt. Sumeru is placed. In that Yun sculpture are shariras (sacred relics) of the Shakyamuni Buddha for worshipping.
Directly facing the Amitabha Buddha is a tall Dharma altar, there is a huge blue Dorje Chang Buddha image. Dorje Chang Buddha is also called Buddha Vajradhara or Ruler of the Vajra Beings. In the entire universe, Dorje Chang Buddha is the first Buddha with form and is the highest Buddha. That is, the highest leader of Buddhism in the entire universe came into being in the form of Dorje Chang Buddha. It was Dorje Chang Buddha who began transmitting dharma and saving living beings in the dharmadhatu. As a result, Buddhism was born and the Buddha-dharma began spreading.
In front of the image of Dorje Chang Buddha are photos of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. Dorje Chang Buddha has come to this world twice. The first time was in the form of the holy and venerable Vimalakirti, who was Dorje Chang Buddha II. The second time was in the form of H.H. Wan Ko Yeshe Norbu, who is Dorje Chang Buddha III.
These photos were true records of the holy miracle Buddha Dharma. On October 18, 2012, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III within ten minutes, reversed his appearance back to a youthful look. This incredible Buddha Dharma ever practiced successfully by Guru Rinpoche long time ago in Tibet.
Hua Zang Si has many Holy Treasures , make sure you check them out at the corner of this hall as well.
The third floor contains a library of Buddhist scriptures.
The backyard — a city oasis in the shadow of surrounding Victorians — is home to a magnolia tree, which the faithful say rained nectar for three days, along with a miraculous lotus tub used in the bathing of the Buddha and heavenly beings.
Further back, there is Dharma protector pavilion, a statue of the Dharma Protecting Deity Guan Yu was installed inside.
Guan Yu took refuge in Master Zhiyi at Yuquan Hill. He then manifested great supernatural power and constructed the Yuquan Temple overnight on a barren lot, where he resolved to become a protector of Buddhism. That is why, upon the plea of many Buddhist practitioners, he was recommended to be the Dharma Protecting Deity of Hua Zang Si.
Hua Zang Si is different from other temples that propagate only one sect within Buddhism. It teaches all of the various sects within Buddhism. If you want to know and learn Buddhism, Hua Zang Si is the best place to start with.
There are some good reasons to believe that Nietzsche was interested in Eastern philosophy during his lifetime. In the Antichrist he states:
“Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times more austere, more honest, more objective. It no longer has to justify its pains, its susceptibility to suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin—it simply says, as it simply thinks, ‘I suffer’”
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 23
Buddhism, as a pessimistic and decadent religion for Nietzsche resembles Christianity but it seems that he had far more admiration for Buddhism. He inherited most of his understanding of Buddhism from Schopenhauer, who considered his own pessimistic philosophy a European relative of Buddhism.
Schopenhauer, in his research into Indian philosophy, appears to have attained the most comprehensive understanding among nineteenth century German thinkers of a system of Asian thought.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Although Nietzsche did read about Buddhism, it was usually second-hand and westernised, he was predisposed to react to Buddhism in terms of his close reading of Schopenhauer. Many Buddhists have since disputed Schopenhauer’s comprehension of their religion.
Influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche criticised both Christianity and Buddhism as forms of nihilism, where the will to nonentity prevails over the will to life. However, he soon feared the rise of pessimism in Europe would culminate in the triumph of the weary and passive nihilism.
It is important to know that Nietzsche was not a nihilist as some suggest, stating that the modern man would have to create his own values through a Revaluation of All Values, leading to the Ubermensch, affirming the world and saying yes to existence, the pinnacle of self-overcoming.
The foundation of his critique of Buddhism is his characterisation of Nirvana as a nothingness and as a form of nihilism. However, this does not best describe the Buddhist path.
There are Four Noble Truths in Buddhism. The first one is the acknowledgement of duhkha or “suffering”, an inseparable characteristic in the realm of Samsara, which suggests that human beings, at the time of death, are reborn to a realm determined by their karma. It is the cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence.
Samsara
If we stop here, we can see why Nietzsche considers it nihilistic. However, this is but one of the noble truths. The second one is the origin of this suffering which comes from craving, desire or attachment and the third one states that there is an end to suffering, by letting go of this craving. This leads to the final noble truth, which is the path that gives way to renouncement of craving and the cessation of suffering, following the Noble Eightfold Path, which liberates one from Samsara, the painful cycle of rebirth – achieving Nirvana, the cessation of all afflictions, actions, rebirths and suffering that are a consequence of afflictions and actions.
Noble Eightfold Path
Nirvana refers to the realisation of the “non-self” and “emptiness”, marking the end of rebirth by stilling the fires that keep the process of rebirth going. This is what Nietzsche thought of as a longing for nothingness. However, it is not a longing for nothingness, it is simply the end of Samsara. Thus, different from Schopenhauer’s pessimism, Buddhism starts pessimistic but ends with the positive experience of Nirvana.
It is not an escape from the world, one begins with the suffering inherent in life, one is to overcome pleasure and pain, before beginning a mindful examination of one’s self and reality as perceived by the self. Upon this examination, one realises that there is no self, but only the combination of mental and physical states (skandhas).
The Five Skandhas
This realisation of non-self is also misunderstood. It is not a destruction of a self, but rather a rejection of the existence of a self. Buddhists believe that the concept of “emptiness” means that all things are empty of inherent existence, there is no such thing as inherent existence, everything arises mutually. Thus, negation in the East does not have the same pessimistic connotation that it has in the West.
Perhaps the most serious misreading we find in Nietzsche’s account of Buddhism was his inability to recognise that the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness was an initiatory stage leading to a reawakening.
Throughout Nietzsche’s books and notes, he refers to different aspects of Eastern philosophy on more than four hundred occasions, and in several of these he claims to be interested in it.
Although Nietzsche considers Eastern philosophy as nihilistic, he does indicate its profundity. It seems that he studied this material closely and appreciated it greatly, this is important to note. And even if Nietzsche despised sacred texts, he upholds the beauty and grandeur of them as literary documents.
Nietzsche’s interest in studying Buddhism seems to be seeing it as a psychological symptom, as well as a historically embedded phenomena. Having chosen Buddhism to comment on might be in line with his idea of having the courage to engage with worthy adversaries. He states:
He (the Buddha) does not advocate any conflict with unbelievers; his teaching is antagonistic to nothing so much as to revenge, aversion ressentiment. And in all this he was right, for it is precisely these passions which, in view of his main purpose, are unhealthful.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 20
Here he agrees on the Buddha’s doctrine, which is opposed to the feelings of revenge, antipathy and ressentiment. And in Thus Spoke Zarathustra he said:
“For that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms”
Nietzsche’s conceptions of the Eternal Recurrence and Samsara, Zarathustraand Bodhisattva (a person who is able to reach Nirvana but delays doing so through compassion for suffering beings), the Transvaluation of All Values and Nirvana, are all examples of similarities.
In his analysis of the self, Nietzsche contended:
“the subject is only a fiction: the ego of which one speaks when one censures egoism does not exist at all”. This is remarkably similar to the Buddha’s doctrine of non-existence of the self.
Nietzsche’s philosophy may have been much more similar to Buddhism than he might have realised. This should not be surprising, given Nietzsche’s respect for the Buddha and that Buddhism concerns itself with one of the basic problems with which Nietzsche was grappling: the structure and meaning of the human condition.
At the onset of his mental collapse, he even came to identify himself with Buddha:
“I have been Buddha in India, Dionysus in Greece.”
However, on the whole, this impression is deceptive.
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Eastern Philosophy and Nietzsche | Buddhism and Hinduism
Although Nietzsche considers Eastern philosophy as nihilistic (wrongly), he does indicate their profundity. It seems that he studied this material closely and appreciated it greatly.
Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang is a world-renowned painter. Throughout Asia, she is the only artist to whom the New York Academy of Art conferred the title of international preeminent artist of first class standing.
The art world has classified the quality of ink painting into four different levels: Class of Proficiency, Class of Wonderment, Class of Divinity, and Class of Ease. Artwork of the Class of Proficiency has the ability to present a resemblance of objective reality, achieving likeness in form. This is the first stage of artistic creation. The art world calls it the stage of sketching. This is a stage that an artist cannot skip, yet they also cannot remain at this status quo, because this is an elementary stage. The next level is the Class of Wonderment. Artworks of this Class demonstrates highly skilled techniques. The artist is able to paint anything at will without revealing any trace of effort. However, one also cannot remain stagnant at this stage.
The next level after the Class of Wonderment is the Class of Divinity where the art carries likeness of ‘form’ and likeness of ‘spirit.’ In ink painting, the highest state of accomplishment is the Class of Ease where the artist attains natural ease by using simple brushstrokes to fully capture the form. With the most succinct brushwork and the most superb technique, the artist depicts objective reality and attains a state of miraculousness where both form and spirit are fully captured. This is the kind of art that viewers never get tired of appreciating; it leaves a wonderful aftertaste. There are only about a dozen people in the history of art who have attained such a class.
Stamps published in Ukraine
In 2008, the United States Congress exhibited her sculptures and paintings in the Gold Room in the Rayburn Congressional Building which received rave reviews. Professor Stephen Farthing of the University of the Arts in London, United Kingdom, determined that “Professor Wang’s paintings reach across cultures to celebrate the space that exists intellectually and emotionally between representation and abstraction, between a fact and an idea…Dr. Wang’s paintings may draw heavily on the traditions of Eastern art, but they present themselves as extraordinarily Western ideas and images.”
in 2013, out of the works of all painters, the World Federation of UNESCO Clubs, Centers and Associations (WFUCA) awarded the title “WFUCA2013” to the artworks of Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang. In 2020, the United States National Commission for UNESCO Clubs, Centers, and Associations conferred on her the “International First-Class Artist” title along with the issuance of a certificate and badge.
In 2019, When Professor Wang’s solo exhibition was held at the Shanghai Exhibition Center that used to be the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building, a record-breaking number of people visited the show. The Museum Director Wu Shufang stated that the museum had never experienced such an overwhelming number of visitors since its official opening, and for this exhibition, they had to post notices to limit admission. Same year, she held a solo exhibition, titled One Flower, Two Worlds at the Louvre in Paris in 2019 and created a sensation in French art circles. This exhibition showcases 27 of Professor Wang’s extraordinary artworks each of which has reached the height of the Class of Ease.
More than 200 distinguished members of society, artists, collectors, entrepreneurs, and art lovers attended the exhibition opening; including representatives from French museums, professors from French art institutes, French nobilities, renowned artists, celebrities, representatives from auction houses, art critics and journalists from major news media. They all marveled at the artworks and expressed their praises. They considered this an unprecedented experience for French people.
Simply put, the artistry of Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang has attained the highest level of artistry in ink painting which is the Class of Ease. One of Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang’s paintings Pomegranates in a Basket realized a top auction price of US$1.27 million at the Gianguan Auction House in New York on March 13 of 2019. It clearly shows that the art of Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang is recognized by art collectors and people of foresight alike.
Dr. Yuhua Shouzhi Wang is the Lifetime Honorary Chairwoman of the International Art Museum of America. The museum has a dedicated gallery exhibiting her artworks. Her paintings encompass a broad range of styles and subject matters, including landscapes, animals, flowers, birds, and so forth, all of which have reached the summit of world class artistic excellence. Based on her lotus and water lily paintings, artists have acclaimed that Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang is the foremost lotus painter of all times. No artist in the past would have been able to surpass her accomplishment, and her works will continue to inspire generations to come. Among all notable lotus painters, her skills are extremely profound, substantial, and masterful, and she is among the most distinguished artists in history. Her artistic achievement has reached perfection at the summit of the “ten ultimate artistries.”
The well-known saying, “Deeply hidden talent not easily revealed” aptly describes Dr. Yuhua Shouzhi Wang’s morality and inner refinement. The characteristics of an artist’s paintings essentially reflect the character of the painter. From the paintings below you can find humility, inner peace, harmony and noble morality of professor Wang.
Golden Lotuses
The approach of Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang to draw flowers in gold and create leaves with splashed watery ink exhibits high elegance, great beauty, and lovely simplicity. The technique of Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang to paint lotus flowers in varying degrees of darkness and lightness enables her to represent fully a striking charm in both tone and form. Every stroke is lively, vigorous, graceful, and without the slightest air of affectation. Applying mature and seasoned artistry, she fully displays on paper her unfettered, natural, unattached state of mind. The brushwork was completed with ease and spontaneity, free of any inhibition. The atmosphere is strong but very elegant and pure. This entire painting provides much comfort to the eyes.
Brushstrokes as Spontaneous as Dancing Dragons and Snakes
Springtime Snow-White Plum Blossoms as Pure as Jade
The Ink-wash paintings of Dr. Yuhua Shouzhi Wang
Loquats and Radish Staring at Taro
Some of professor Wang’s paintings have been published on stamps.
This interesting old American man has no Chinese ancestry, but he loves Chinese traditional culture deeply.
He is the author of “The Orchid in the Empty Valley”, Bill Porter, an American writer who is influenced by Buddhist classics and obsessed with Chinese culture. He has visited China many times, lived a simple life in temples, and looked for a place for hermits and eminent monks. Be the Chinese Taiwanese wife of Zhuangzi’s research.
He also tried to pursue the ideal world in the minds of Chinese people for thousands of years-Peach Blossom Spring.
Published a series of books expounding Chinese culture in China and the United States: “The Orchid in the Empty Valley”, “Looking for People”, “The Heart Sutra” interpretation, etc. He also translated and published “Hanshan Poems”, “Shiwushan Residence Poems” and poetry by Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan.
Bill Porter is a particularly interesting old urchin. He returned to China to follow in the footsteps of Su Shi and Tao Yuanming and wrote “Yi Nian Tao Hua Yuan”. When he flew over the sky over my hometown Leizhou Peninsula, he opened the collection of Dongpo poems and began to recite. Because Su Dongpo was demoted to stay in Leizhou Peninsula for too long and left a poem.
“The Orchid in the Empty Valley”, published in 2008, records his journey of searching for a Chinese hermit in Zhongnan Mountain, which has gained widespread attention for cutting into the most secret part of Chinese culture. He felt that “hermits are doctors in Chinese religion.”
Begin to visit the former residences and cemeteries of 41 ancient Chinese poets in 2012. Along the way, he always took two precious bottles of whiskey and three wine glasses, and he reverently served a glass in front of each poet’s grave.
The old naughty boy Bill Porter thought that when he traveled through time and space in front of the tomb and was drinking with the greatest poets in this land, he seemed to have met each other in the air. I remembered that my friend Yun called drinking “liquid meditation”. , Very advanced.
Bill Porter also hopes that after reading his book, Chinese readers can try to experience this kind of travel to find heroes in their own culture.
Poems translated by Bill Porter:
(One)
I built my hut beside a path but I hear neither cart nor horse
you ask how can this be when the mind travels so does the place
picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence I lose myself in the hill to the south
the mountain air the sunset light birds flying home together
in this there is a truth I’d explain if I could remember the words.
You wonder how a book like Zen Baggage could be written. First, who would have guessed that China’s legendary Zen temples would rise from the ashes of the Cultural Revolution and prosper in the new century? And second, what Western writer could pull off a history of Zen in China and then go on to paint a vivid picture of contemporary life in China’s most legendary Zen temples and monasteries?
Bill Porter in Port Townsend (2010). Photograph by Julie Anand
The only writer I know who could do that justice is Bill Porter, also known as Red Pine, the éminence grise of translators and commentators on Zen and Taoist poetry and texts. In this latest, most personal, travel book, Porter is back on the fertile ground he covered so well in Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits.
Thanks to that book, we know that Taoist hermits continued to practice and live in their remote huts in the Chungnan Mountains throughout the era of China’s Red Guards. The book was a revelation to Westerners and it seems to have fascinated many Chinese as well: the Chinese translation is now in its sixth printing under the title Hidden Orchids of Deserted Valleys.
Porter makes it clear that the average Chinese doesn’t quite know what to make of the legendary Zen temples and monasteries that have become heavily visited pit stops on a sort of Zen Tourist Highway running from Beijing to Hong Kong. Most of the temples are thriving: attracting more monks, building academies, expanding zendos, and refurbishing, enlarging, and promoting themselves in close—maybe too close—cooperation with the Chinese authorities, all under the auspices of a program that seems more intent upon raking in tourists’ money than in preserving the cultural legacy of Zen. The current government’s new relationship with Zen temples seems to be motivated in part by a desire to be more respectful and tolerant than the Communist regimes of the past, and its view that Zen is a non-threatening, home-grown, institution that promotes responsibility and discipline.
Zen being Zen, the abbots of these ancient temples are only too happy to accept whatever benefits accrue from the government’s new view of things. They remember all too well the days when monks were rounded up and abused, and temples were gutted or shut. Now abbots can easily meet the government’s modest expectations while also scooping up hoards of badly needed yuan from the bus loads of Chinese tourists who flock to the temples’ trinket shops to buy T-shirts, tea sets and kitschy souvenirs. The money is wisely used to build sub-temples in remote locations where monks can practice without being put on public view.
Porter’s personality comes through vividly in Zen Baggage, and it contains sketches of his earlier life in Taiwan, his frequent travels to China, and, most revealingly, his on-the-road personae as he makes his six-week, 2,500-mile, temple-hopping pilgrimage, which was largely a catch-up journey to supplement his many previous visits. He is on intimate terms with many of the temple abbots and others that he meets on his trip. In contrast, in Road to Heaven, during his forays into the rugged Chungnan Mountains (home of the hermits), he was on new ground ferreting out the names of hermits and the mountains where they were living, and then he tracked them down. What was most surprising about his first encounters with these Taoist solitaries, both men and women, is how seldom they showed surprise at the appearance of this bearded foreigner–if, indeed, they perceived him as a foreigner. He seemed to have been expected.
Zen Baggage is soaked in wisdom so subtle it is almost invisible. I was three-quarters of the way into it, for example, when I realized I’d easily absorbed a chronology of the major Chinese Zen patriarchs along with the distinctive swerves and turns that collectively make up Zen’s birth, its crucial philosophical debates, its divisions, its flowering in the sixth century, its slow decline, and its diffusion in the world.
Porter’s personal Taoist/Zen style of travel gives his journey an interesting edge. Whether he’s interviewing the abbot of a legendary temple or eating sweet cakes at a truck stop, he lashes it all together in a bundle of concrete details that help illuminate the tales, metaphysics, koans, and esoterica of early Zen. He has read so deeply in Zen, Taoism and Buddhism that he could be the abbot of any of these legendary temples––to the benefit of the temples and monks––but it’s clear that most, if not all, of the abbots and monks he talked with would laugh at such a suggestion. Throughout Asia, Zen too often remains the “property” of individual countries, whereas in the West it’s readily perceived as open to all equally. In all his encounters, you get the feeling that in only a few cases was there a true meeting of minds. Many Chinese sized Porter up as just another Westerner who spoke good Chinese, and had no knowledge of his translation work or of his life (not that he cared), and most probably weren’t interested anyway. The prevailing orthodoxy seemed to be: “We’re the only ones who can translate the texts, who understand Zen––Westerners can’t get it.” But as history reminds us, Buddhism is international: the Chinese texts the abbots depend upon were carried back to China from India by Chinese pilgrims and translated from Sanskrit and other languages. In Porter’s many trips to China over the past two decades, we have an apposite addition to the history of Buddhism: a Western pilgrim who traveled to the East to get Chinese texts to translate into English.
On this latest trip, he bounced down China’s buzzing highways in buses to report to the world (or the English-speaking West), on what grew from those early Chinese translations into Zen. This recounting of how Zen was born and thrived in China (for a while), then died out, and is now being reborn closes China’s Buddhist/Zen circle, for the time being at least.
Along with his translations (11 so far), Porter’s two travel books are singular achievements that break new ground in our understanding of Zen and Taoism in contemporary China. My guess is that we can expect more travel books from him that will flesh out the on-the-ground story of Zen and Taoism, and that they will showcase his two greatest assets as a writer: his independence as a scholar and his practical knowledge of whatever he calls his personal blending of Taoism and Zen.
The travel books most closely resemble the work of his mentor John Blofeld (1913-1987), the British writer and translator of Buddhist texts, who gave Porter the encouragement that led to his first translation in 1983, Cold Mountain Poems. Like Blofeld, Porter uses his unique skills as a translator and his talents as a travel writer to bring to life Buddhism’s past and present.
I was born in Cuba and left with my parents when I was six years old. When I arrived in America, I didn’t even know how to say “yes”. We stayed at this little hotel in Miami and I remember one of the people working at the hotel was teaching me English. I started school and still didn’t speak much English, but knew I had to learn. It’s like when you’re thrown into a pool and forced to swim so that you don’t drown. Though I was young, what I do remember from our arrival is that people were overwhelmingly welcoming. I felt that people had empathy for us and they sympathized with our struggles. That is so much more powerful than some of the dismissive rhetoric that goes on now in the United States because it gives you as a refugee a sense of loyalty to the country and its people.
After staying in Miami, my family moved to New York where we became U.S. Citizens. My father got a job in Mexico, so that’s where we landed next. I attended Junior and Senior High School there and started my career in Mexico selling cereal out of a truck. I worked my way up over 30 years; it wasn’t easy, but it worked for me. One time, after I had managed Kellogg in Mexico for a while. I was talking to my boss and explained that I had been doing a good job and wanted to get transferred. He responded “Sure, where?” and I said I wanted to go to an Anglo Market. The Anglo Markets were the big, sophisticated cereal markets- UK, USA, Canada, Australia. He kept trying to ask me why I wanted to do that. Why wouldn’t I want to be head of Latin America? Eventually, I understood what he was asking: You really think that a Latino can lead Non-Latinos? This bothered me, but that was the general mindset at the time. If you’re Latin, you lead your Latin people but don’t try to cross markets.
Some other major obstacles I faced growing up were culture and language. A big cultural shock was what kids ate for lunch. I didn’t know what a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was but everybody else had one. Other kids found things we did at home strange, especially when they heard me speak the language with my parents. I’ve seen how these barriers affect the lives of other immigrants and refugees in America. Coming to a new county, you have to get used to a totally new world and over time, you do. The idea that refugees and immigrants don’t assimilate is crazy. It suggests that the people claiming such don’t have confidence in the country and the power of our society.
Later in life, I remember sitting around off-site and discussing work/life balance with colleagues. One guy said, if you want to leave work for a given reason, you’re able to but it’s your responsibility to tell your boss. Right then, it hit me. Even though I had been in the company for twenty years, maybe longer, I never asked my boss if I could take time to attend things like my son’s Little League games because the stereotype of Cubans was that all we wanted to do was play Baseball. So, I never gave myself the luxury of saying “Hey, my kid has a game, I’m leaving.” I probably don’t realize how often I have catered to the misconceptions of others in order to hide these stereotypes.
Starting early in my career, I was given the opportunity to manage the Mexico subsidiary of Kellogg Company and we turned it around. That was my first general management job and it gave my name a little more visibility throughout the company. I would say the biggest accomplishment was really changing the strategy and making the company’s business model viable again because it had the most impact on the people involved. They picked me, so I did what I had to do to achieve that goal. I think success is what gives you a sense of accomplishment. At one time in this country, success itself was measured by money. I don’t think that’s entirely true anymore, though it is one of the factors. The real measure of success is doing something that you love. What made me successful and gave me energy was probably, to be frank, the fear of failure. It’s easy to say that it was the excitement of success, but it was more-so the fear that Americans who didn’t believe this refugee could make it would be proven right. So, if other people in the office worked 12 hours, I worked. This is the drive that helped me become the youngest CEO in Kellogg’s 100-year history.
Refugees growing up must ALWAYS think long-term. The idea is that it’s rough today but 10 or 20 years from now, it’s going to be fine because that’s the future you’re actively working towards. It’s also important that you look at the short-term and figure out what you have to do to get there. So, there may be the struggle of 18-hour days but also the ever-present dream that this is all going to pay-off. In terms of empowering refugees as Americans, what I would tell people is to be kind. You have no idea how far kindness to a refugee goes. Good morning, welcome, how are you, good to see you… Especially in the workplace. Oftentimes, there may be someone who is an immigrant or refugee, documented or not, and when you walk in a room, nobody ever looks at them. It’s like they’re there but they’re not. Since 9/11, this narrative of compassion has gone downhill. Shaking someone’s hand, looking them in the eyes, and acknowledging that they’re there can make a world of difference. In work settings, give immigrants opportunities and responsibility but also provide a level of protection because it’s inevitable that not everyone is going to be so kind. I wish we could make everyone think “Oh my gosh, this country actually wants and welcomes me.” Looking back on the impact that kindness, respect, and the feeling that people welcomed me had on myself and my family, I know I want us to have that effect on all refugees.
Currently, I’m Co-Chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm. I also sit on boards, councils, committees, and the like. My goal is to make a contribution in the relations between the US and Cuba. I discovered this aspiration when I went back for the Embassy Opening in 2015. I hadn’t returned to Cuba since I first left at age six. Since then, I’ve been back almost 20 times and I can’t get enough. Home is where the heart is, and I know that’s my place of birth. Every time I get off the plane, I feel the sense that I was born there and belong; it just feels natural. It’s a bit of an abstract goal but something I continue to strive for daily.
Bill Porter assumes the pen name Red Pine for his translation work. He was born in Los Angeles in 1943, grew up in the Idaho Panhandle, served a tour of duty in the US Army, graduated from the University of California with a degree in anthropology, and attended graduate school at Columbia University. Uninspired by the prospect of an academic career, he dropped out of Columbia and moved to a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. After four years with the monks and nuns, he struck out on his own and eventually found work at English-language radio stations in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where he interviewed local dignitaries and produced more than a thousand programs about his travels in China. His translations have been honored with a number of awards, including two NEA translation fellowships, a PEN Translation Prize, and the inaugural Asian Literature Award of the American Literary Translators Association. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to support work on a book based on a pilgrimage to the graves and homes of China’s greatest poets of the past, which was published under the title Finding Them Gone in January of 2016. More recently, Porter received the 2018 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington.
At 6:30 pm on June 12, 2014, the American writer, translator and Sinologist Bill Porter gave a lecture entitled “To Live, To Dance, To Translate” at the Auditorium of the CAFA (Central Academe of Fine Art) Art Museum. The lecture was jointly organized by the School of Humanities, CAFA, and CAFA Art Museum, the poet Xichuan presided over the lecture, and honoured guests included Xu Bing, Vice President of CAFA, Yu Fan, Jiang Jie, teachers of the Department of Sculpture, and poets Zhai Yongming, Ouyang Jianghe, etc., were also presentat the lecture.
Host Xichuan initially told the audience of his experience of his meeting with Bill Porter, whose pen name was Red Pine, his publications of the Chinese edition included “Road to Heaven”, “Zen Baggage”, “The Tour of Yellow River”, “Reading the Heart Sutra”, “Finding Tao in China”, “Silk Road”, etc.; his English translations include “Tao Te Ching”, “One Thousand Poems”, “Cold Mountain Poems”, “In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu”, etc. Xichuan said Bill Poter’s translation was distinctive and creative which also made a contribution to English poetry itself, and he called Bill Porter immortal.
Bill Porter gave a lecture starting from his childhood experiences. He was born into a rich family, but he felt rich people had a deceptive smiling face, so they weren’t “real people”. Instead, he thought the “real people” were the servants of his family. At the age of 15, his parents divorced, and his father soon became bankrupt which made him relaxed and happy. It also made him clear that money was not the target he pursued in his life.
In 1972 Porter went to the Fo Kwang Shan Buddhist monastery in Taiwan, to concentrate on studying Zen. During this period of practice, Bill learned and translated Chinese, and he thought through translating, he would be able to learn another foreign language. In addition, this experience brought him freedom which was the biggest harvest for him, because he found that, although he could learn a lot of knowledge at Columbia University, it seemed like“delusions”, his thinking was controlled by the system. But the practice in the temple helped him depose the “delusion”, and obtain freedom.
In 1989, funded by Wang Wenyang, the son of a rich man in Taiwan, Bill was able to travel in China, and he started an historical record looking for hermits in the Zhongnan Mountains, combining the experience and the historical anecdotes, he wrote a book Road to Heaven. In 2012, at 69, Bill began the last trip – “finding them gone”. This time, along the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, he followed the footprints of 36 poets including Chen Zi-ang, Cao Zhi, Ruan Ji, Ouyang Xiu, Su Dongpo, Li Qingzhao, Bai Juyi and was able to have a dialogue with them across time and space.
In the lecture, Bill Porter wittily told the story of his learning Chinese and practicing in the mountains, engaging in translation for almost 40 years, his discovery that translating was the best way to understand a culture. For Bill, translation was a kind of “dance”, and moreover, the dance relied on Chinese culture. He took the translating process as the metaphor of the story Jiang Ziya Fishing, sometimes he spends a lot of time on the translation, waiting for inspiration through meditation, and with the help of others’ strength.
In the following Q & A, Bill Porter shared the harvest on the road of translation, the feeling of China, and the understanding of Zen. Bill said there wasn’t any correct or wrong translation, as there wasn’t any perfect “dance”, but one needed to see the inner heart, because translation was a performing art which allowed the pursuit of your own happiness. Bill was like a practicing person, he thought Zen had no thought, and the so-called“enlightenment” was also a kind of delusion.
After the end of the lecture, Xichuan gave some small gifts to Bill on behalf of CAFAM, and he himself gave a set of ancient coins of the Tang Dynasty to Bill Porter.
Text: Ye Yuanfeng, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO
In the Tang Dynasty, there was a peculiar Zen master. He didn’t even have a Dharma name, and his practice was very special. He did not live in a temple. He settled himself in an awning like a bird nest on the top of a pine tree. People called him “the Zen Master of the Birdsnest”. Many visitors hiked to the remote forest to seek the monk’s wise advices.
Bai Juyi, was a very famous Chinese poet, also a high level officer at that time. One time, Bai Juyi traveled long distance to visit the Zen Master. He asked Zen Master Birdsnest, “Can you tell me what is the most important thing the Buddha ever said?”
The Zen master replied, “Don’t do any bad things, and do all the good things.”
Bai Juyi thought this answer is far too simple, he sneered, “Even a three-year-old can say this.”
Zen Master Birdsnest said: “Although a three-year-old child can say it, but an eighty-year-old man still finds it very difficult to do it.”
Master Qinluan was a famous Japanese Zen master. At the age of nine, he made up his mind to become a monk and asked Zen Master Cizhen to shave his ordination for him. Zen Master Cizhen asked him, “Why do you want to become a monk when you are so young?” Qinluan said: “Although I am only nine years old, my parents have both died. I don’t understand why people must die. Why must I be separated from my parents? Therefore, I must become a monk and explore these truths.”
Zen Master Cizhen said: “Very well. I’m willing to accept you as a disciple. However, it’s too late today, so I’ll shave you tomorrow morning.” Qin Luan said, “Master! Although you said that you will shave me early tomorrow morning, I am still young and ignorant. I can’t guarantee whether my determination to become a monk will last until tomorrow. Besides, Master, you are so old, you can’t guarantee that you will even wake up tomorrow morning!” After listening this words, Zen Master Cizhen was surprisingly happy, and said joyfully, “Yes! What you said is absolutely right. Now I will shave for you!”
Three Moves by Mencius’s Mother
Mencius, was a famous scholar well-known for his erudition. He was one of the greatest representatives of Confucianism in ancient China.
He had a great mother, who really focused on education. Once his family lived near a graveyard when he was a child. Therefore, he often played near the grave and imitated people’s crying or digging the tombs. When his mother saw this, she said: “It’s not a good place for a child to live in.”
His mother moved the family to a house near a market. Soon Mencius began to amused himself by imitating peddler’s hawking and bargaining. His mother found this place still not good for a child to live in. She decided to move away again.
At last they settled down near a school. Mencius quickly began copying the students’ reading and writing. He also took pleasure by imitating the sacrificial rites on ceremony and formalities of courtesy. He became more polite and hardworking. Then his mother said: this is a good place for a child !.
