Related stories

ZHONGGUANCUN: FROM "MADE IN CHINA" TO "CREATED IN CHINA" 4,000-year-old Noodle Dish Discovered in China Brands in Transition: Making it Work in China One Night in Beijing, Luxury in China Wolf Totem English Edition Published in China

Zen Baggage: China in another Light

Bill Porter is no theocrat and his open-mindedness might send shivers up the spine of a serious sectarian, but the author and translator of some of the most beloved Chinese poems is deeply imbued with the spirit of Buddhism. This is evident in his work and even in the most casual of conversations.

Porter’s graciousness was evident during a long lunch and over several beers in which discussions of the ideas in his books, such as the recent Zen Baggage and the older but captivating Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, took precedence over his jet lag and immediate purposes in Beijing—guiding a tour that will help finance his writing—and pushing Zen Baggage during a book talk at the Bookworm in Beijing on July 7. It amounted to an intellectual feast that made the food and beverages at hand a secondary consideration. Hours passed like minutes, and too soon our visit came to an end.

It was this way again during his book talk (no empty seats in the room) where he recounted his travels among China’s hermit Zen monks and referred as much to the ideas of the monks and poets who inspired his translations in Poems of the Masters, The Zen Works of Stonehouse and The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain or in his religious and philosophical translations The Platform Sutra, The Heart Sutra, The Diamond Sutra and the Tao Te Jing (Daodejing) as the book he and the Bookworm were trying to sell that evening. Before an after, he visited with friends who reside in Beijing, but never hesitated to stop and sign a book brought by a fan.

Then again, all of this seems to stem from his practice of “Zen,” which he says does not require adherence to dogma as with some other religions. (He prefers “Zen” to “Chan” in Mandarin Chinese, claiming the word was pronounced Zen in the dialect found in the Gan River watershed of Jiangxi Province, before the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) changed it to Chan in the 17th century and before the idea found its way to Japan as Zen.)

Porter, who also publishes under the name Red Pine, said, “I am too much of an individualist to be ‘religious.’ As soon as I become part of a group, I start looking for a way out…I have always had a serious problem with authority. Zen is a way of life, not just ritual practice,” which he later said sometimes amounts to little more than “denatured shamanism.”

Porter’s inability to “get with the programme,” any programme except his writing, is honestly stated in Zen Baggage, and his descriptions of his own behaviour, such as having trouble rising early when visiting monasteries, as expected, or sitting for long periods with his legs crossed during Buddhist ceremonies, is one of the charms of the book. There is no doubt that Porter is an American, an American who has tried to come to grips with a grand tradition of thought without surrendering himself to the false and superficial.

Yet, Porter said it is a special thing about Zen in China that individuals were and remain enabled to practice it because of its unique, communal, self-disciplined monastic society, one created by Dao Xin, the Fourth Patriarch of Zen, in the seventh century, according to the needs of his day. “This is what made it possible for everyone in China to practice. When Buddhism came to China, it came along the Silk Road with monks who were travelling with businessmen to minister to their needs. When they arrived in China, they found China highly developed and many stayed, but their practice was mainly among the elite and often included magic and rituals. The monasteries, however, were independent, self-contained social organizations that made individual practice possible…Because of this, Zen ‘out-populated’ all the other sects in China.”

Also clearly a subject close to his heart is Porter’s work among the hermit monks of China in 1989, a tale recounted in Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits.

“When I was living in Taiwan, I once asked Ma Jing-yeou about hermit monks on the [Chinese] mainland. He said there weren't any monks or nuns. But I went to see for myself and was surprised to find them all over the place in the Zhongnan Mountains south of Xi’an.”

Among the surprises he found: about 60 percent of the hermits were women. Another: the difference between eastern and western monastic practice. “In the West, people get caught up in hermitage; they go off to escape the world, but in China going off to be a hermit is like going to graduate school. No one would think of going off to be alone until they’re trained and ready to deal with the challenge. In China, it’s part of a spiritual tradition that’s grounded. They want to get trained so they can help others.”

Neither were the monks as isolated as with some monks of old. “They often live within about 15 minute’s walk of each other, and they support each other through their ‘hermit networks.’ The older monks teach the younger how to do Qigong and how to generate heat so they can keep warm and which plants they can collect and eat and those they can sell to maintain themselves. He said he learned that local residents often won’t help a new hermit, but after a few years, they will support them. “They [locals] believe hermits help it to rain on time.” Over time, the villagers will buy or help monks sell wild vegetables so the monks can continue their explorations.

Porter, initially trained as an anthropologist, said he became a translator “so I could improve my Chinese.” Little did he know, when he left his scholarship-funded studies at Columbia University and travelled with $13 in his pocket to a monastery in Taiwan, that his translation of The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain would mark the beginning of a remarkable career that, among other things, amounts to a significant bridge between the cultures of the East and West.

“I am amazed at what has been accomplished here over the past 20 years,” he said.

Porter’s books are available in English at the Bookworm off Sanlitun Nanjie in Beijing and online via various international outlets. Zen Baggage (Konggu youlan) 《空谷幽兰》, translated by Hu Jie and published by the Nanhai Press in March 2009 is available in Chinese via China’s largest online bookstore at http://www.dangdang.com.