Cold Mountain Poems: Zen Poems of Han Shan, Shih Te, and Wang Fan-chih

by Hanshan

Popularized in the West by Beat Generation writers Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, T’ang-era rebel poet Han Shan is an icon of Chinese poetry and Zen. He and his sidekick, Shih Te, are known as the laughing, ragged pair who left their poetry on stones, trees, farmhouses, and monastery walls, calling others to “the Cold Mountain way” of simple, honest, joyful living.

J. P. Seaton takes a fresh look at these poets, as well as at Wang Fan-chih, who followed in the outsider tradition a few centuries later. Forceful and wry, all three condemn the excesses of mind and matter that prevent people from attaining true enlightenment. With a comprehensive introduction and commentary throughout, this collection points to where, in a world that’s always moving and so full of suffering, stillness and clarity can be found.

Genres: Poetry, China, Zen, Buddhism, Classics, Religion, Philosophy

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Hanshan was a Buddhist monk, poet, and spiritual writer who lived during the Tang dynasty. Little is known about his life, including where and when he was born, or even whether he actually existed. In the Chinese Buddhist tradition, Hanshan and his sidekick Shide are honored as emanations of the bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra, respectively. In Japanese and Chinese paintings, Hanshan is often depicted together with Shide or with Fenggan, another monk with legendary attributes.

It is said that he was a recluse who lived in a remote region, and that his poems were written on rocks in the mountains he called home. He is said to have written 600 poems, of which 313 were collected and have survived.

Reviews

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read six books by different translators on the poems of Han-Shah) Cold Mountain, who lived during the Tang Dynasty . This is by far the best of the books I have read.

Burton Watson translated these poems with the careful guidance of Yoshitaka Iriya, who was considered the world's best authorities on colloquial Chinese of the Tang and Song Dynasties.

I have compared a few of the poems in these books with other translators, but mostly I went on how each poem by a certain translator affected me, how it touched or didn't touch my soul, so to speak. This one touched me deeply and next to it I would say that Wandering Poet's.

In Comparing all the books, I can say this: Red Pine's book doesn't have the flow, the spiritual feel, not to me anyway. I struggled to read them. Gary Snyder did a very good job on the 24 that he translated, but well, I am not much of a Gary Snyder fan. Wandering Poet has the spiritual flow, but still something is missing in book.

Here are a few of the translations by Watson:

Above the blossoms sing the orioles:
Kuan kuan, their clear notes.
The girl with a face like jade
Strums to them on her lute.
Never does she tire of play-
Youth is the time for tender thoughts.
When the flowers scatter and the birds fly off
Her tears will fall in the spring wind.

Aah! poverty and sickness,
And me with no friends or relations.
There's never any rice left in the pot,
Dust often collects in the kettle.
A Thatched roof that won't keep out the rain,
A broken-down bed I can halrdy xsqueeze into,
No wonder I've gotten so thin-
This many worries would wear out any man!

People ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain? There is no road that goes through.
Even in summer the ice doesn't melt;
Though the sun comes out, the fog is blinding.
How can you hope to get there by aping me?
Your heart and mine are not alike.
If your heart were the same as mind,
Then you could journey to the very center!

[7jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
A poetry collection of three rebel Zen poets of the Tang-era China – Han Shan, his sidekick Shih Te, and a late Tang poet Wang Fan-chih. These poems have their humor, realism, and an awareness of ethical, political, and spiritual topics (the last one Buddhism mixed with some Taoism and Confucianism). Wang’s poems are perhaps the most raw of the three, but then he/they lived in the unrest of a dying dynasty. At the end are notes from the translator, which can shed light on some translation choices and on the background. The translator also made the choices on what poems to include here, because not all of the poems in each poet’s collection was of good quality.

Sometimes from down below
I catch the flash of the stream’s flow.
Sometimes I sit like a stone on a cliff.
My heart is like the orphan cloud,
with nothing to lean on,
so far, so far away,
what of the world’s could sway it?
(Han Shan)

Wang Fan-shih’s poems were sealed away in a cave until early 20th century, so his poems were less known of the three here. First English translations of Han Shan’s poems appeared in 1958, by Gary Snyder (friend of Jack Kerouac). Han Shan and his sidekick are described as a pair of wandering, laughing monks who wrote their poems on bamboo, tress, rocks, building walls…

Cloudy mountains, fold on fold,
how many thousands of them?
Shady valley road runs deep,
all trace of man gone.
Green torrent’s pure clean flow,
no place more full of beauty:
and time, and time, birds sing,
my own heart’s harmony
(Shih Te)

All three are names used by various poets to hide behind. Han Shan is a place name, and at least two poets have used the name; Shih Te was used as the ‘disciple’ name for those who didn’t want to hide behind a great name – he and Wang have less poems here than Han Shan.

Wang Fan-shih is the most attached to realism of his time; the poverty, the suffering, the hunger, old soldiers coming home and not recognised because they left so young, etc. His sharp views on the rich and foolish ones are the most in-your-face, though the other two also have their moments.

Listen you, enjoy your time,
you really don’t have very long.
You were born just a moment ago,
in another moment you’ll be gone
(Wang Fan-shih)

I found Han Shan’s poems the most interesting, but also could appreciate the others’, especially Wang’s rawness (Shih’s was beautiful but not really standing out from the others). I gave this collection 3.5 stars, mainly because I wasn’t wowed, but it is still worth it for those interested in this era and these sort of poets.

[Jessaka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful words
do not flow like prose
chop, chop, chop.

Those words came to me last night as I was reading this book. For me, if they don't flow, they don't work. But the translation in itself was beautiful.

The introduction to Han Shan's poems is excellent. I learned so much more from it, but at the same time there was much that I had learned from the other Cold Mountain books. He also has a commentary on the poems, but it is at the end of the book, so you have to go back and forth if you want to match it up with the poem. Perhaps, it was easier for me the way that Red Pine had placed the commentary after each poem. Still, I am not much into commentary as I am into reading and getting what I want out of each poem.

A poem that chops:

Diving gave me this
hidden dwelling place:
T'ien-tai, it said, and no
more
Gibbons shriek; the mist
in the ravine is freezing.
Mountain colors, run
straight up to my grass
gate.
I've dressed a pine in
leaves. That's my fancy
hall.
I've cleaned out the pool
and channeled the
spring.
Sweet, to let the world go.
Ferns, I'll harvest, to live
out the years left.

Now, if I look at this poem another way, I can say, it chops like Haiku, and that is okay. Thinking this way I can actually now relax with the poems.

He wrote in his introduction:

"At the tip of Han Shan's peak, there is the perfect mystical vision. You'll know these poems when you read them, even in my English, I deeply hope. I assure you that some of them would take your breath away if you could read the original Chinese."

I would have loved to have my breath taken away, but I do not know Chinese.


People ask about the Cold
Mountain way:
plain roads don't get through to
Cold Mountain.
Middle of the summer, and the ice
still hasn't melted.
Sunrise and the mist would blind a
hidden dragon.
So, how could a man like me get
here?
My heart is not the same as yours,
dear sir...
If your heart were like mine,
you'd be here already.


Comparing this to Bruce Watson:

People ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain? There is no road that goes through.
Even in summer the ice doesn't melt;
Though the sun comes out, the fog is blinding.
How can you hope to get there by aping me?
Your heart and mine are not alike.
If your heart were the same as mind,
Then you could journey to the very center!

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I
Ranges, ridges, daunting cliffs, I chose this place
with divination’s aid.
The road’s for the birds, no man tracks there.
And what is the yard? White clouds clothe
dark stone. I lived here years, watching
springs with The Great Change become winter.
Here’s a word for the rich folks with cauldrons and
bells:
Fame’s empty, no good, that’s for sure.


VIII
Master of the sword and brush,
I met three brilliant and virtuous rulers.
In the East they got my letters,
but they were not pleased.
In the West I strove
in battles for them,
but all to no reward.
Mastered the brush and mastered the sword . . .
Today? I’m old of a sudden . . .
What’s left of my life is not worth a word.

IX
People ask about the Cold Mountain way:
plain roads don’t get through to Cold Mountain.
Middle of the summer, and the ice still hasn’t
melted.
Sunrise, and the mist would blind a hidden dragon.
So, how could a man like me get here?
My heart is not the same as yours, dear sir . . .
If your heart were like mine,
you’d be here already.

XIV
Oh Wise Gentlemen, ignore me!
Like I ignore you fools.
I’m not stupid, I’m not wise,
from now on I’m just gone.
Into the night, singing in moonlight,
into the dawn, dancing with white clouds.
That’s the way to occupy your hands and mouth!
I can’t just sit still while my hair grows!

[rahul]

XVII

My old landlady
got rich a couple years ago.
Used to be poorer than me.
Now she laughs that I don’t have money.
She laughs that I’ve fallen behind.
I laugh that she’s gotten ahead.
Both of us laughing, no stopping us.
Lady of the Land, and the Lord of the West.

[Crito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elegant is the bearing of the fine young man;
He is widely read in the classics and history.
Everyone addresses him as "Professor";
Everyone refers to him as "the scholar."
Yet he hasn't been able to get a government job
And he doesn't know how to handle a hoe.
All winter he shivers in his worn hemp shirt:
"My books have brought me to a pretty pass!"

Pretty incredible stuff. While there are clear Buddhist and Taoist angles to it, Hanshan has the lovely ironic cynicism of other Chinese poets that I enjoy so much. Great work by Burton Watson in the translation and presentation. Also gorgeous Chinese script on some of the poems by this book's previous owner.

[Jules S · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Since I came home to this Tiantai temple,
how many winters and springs have passed?
The mountains, the streams, they haven’t changed,
but the man’s grown older.
How many other men will stand here,
and find these mountains standing?”

++++++

“The birds at play: when I can’t stand them
any longer,
I go sleep in my thatched hut.
The cherries in the trees glow bright
as the tips of burning incense,
and the willow branches sway.
Sun runs up green ridges.
Sunlit clouds wash in the green pool.
Everybody knows: if you want out of the dust,
head up the south side of Cold Mountain.”

++++++

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This brief collection gathers one hundred poems from the T’ang Dynasty poet Han-Shan. Most of the poems included consist of a single eight-line stanza of unrhymed verse of varied meter. [With a few exceptions that had more or fewer lines (often four or twelve.)] I do like that they didn’t pad out edition that I read with a lot of inane babble [as publishers are want to do when a volume is on the thin side.] Part of the reason that they may not have done so is that there is virtually nothing known about the author. It’s not even known whether there was a Han-Shan (i.e. as opposed to a group of people whose poems were anthologized under one name.)

The poems reflect Taoism’s disdain for pretension, authority, or scholarship for scholarship’s sake. Many of the poems reflect Zen sensibilities (which became entwined with Taoist sensibilities.) That is to say, like Zen koan, they seek to interrupt the tendency to overintellectualize matters. That said, in places the poems take a bit of a mocking attitude toward Buddhism. Nature plays prominently among the poems. And some of the poems are humorous or irreverent.

There are footnotes that are helpful in explaining verse that references teachings and events that would have been known to Han-Shan’s readership back in his day, but which most individuals who aren’t experts on Chinese folklore, literature, or religious teachings wouldn’t be likely to get, otherwise.

I enjoyed these poems tremendously. While I can’t say how they related to the original text, the translations were -- on their own – works that conveyed wit and wisdom. I’d highly recommend this collection for poetry readers.

[Jacob Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

A poem in this translation warns:

"You want to learn to catch a mouse?
Don’t take a pampered cat for your teacher.
If you want to learn the nature of the world,
don��t study fine bound books.”

So given what an elegant little hardcover this is, you should keep your expectations in check. But there's one entry that I really loved (Han Shan VII) and several others that made it worth reading. Some express a bitter reality in a moving way (“Why’s my heart always, always spinning? … a grief like love, unbearable”); others succeed through lovely descriptions of nature:

"Han Shan has so many strange, well-hidden sights
…
Moon shines in the dripping water;
wind brings the very grass alive.
Freezing trees flower with snow,
dead, bare trees leafed out in cloud."

[Aazib Chaudhry · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Do you have the poems of Han-shan in your house?
They're better for you than sutra-reading!
Write them out and paste them on a screen
Where you can glance them over from time to time."

I mean they aren't that good.

[Jessaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful words
but do not flow like prose
chop, chop, chop.

Those words came to me last night as I was reading this book. For me, if they don't flow, they don't work. But the translation in itself was beautiful.

The introduction to Han Shan's poems is excellent. I learned so much more from it, but at the same time there was much that I had learned from the other books. He also has a commentary on the poems, but it is at the end of the book, so you have to go back and forth if you want to match it up with the poem. Perhaps, it was easier for me the way that Red Pine had placed the commentary after each poem. Still, I am not much into commentary as I am into reading and getting what I want out of each poem.

A poem that chops:

Diving gave me this
hidden dwelling place:
T'ien-tai, it said, and no
more
Gibbons shriek; the mist
in the ravine is freezing.
Mountain colors, run
straight up to my grass
gate.
I've dressed a pine in
leaves. That's my fancy
hall.
I've cleaned out the pool
and channeled the
spring.
Sweet, to let the world go.
Ferns, I'll harvest, to live
out the years left.

Now, if I look at this poem another way, I can say, it chops like Haiku, and that is okay. Thinking this way I can actually now relax with the poems.

He wrote in his introduction:
"At the tip of Han Shan's peak, there is the perfect mystical vision. You'll know these poems when you read them, even in my English, I deeply hope. I assure you that some of them would take your breath away if you could read the original Chinese."

I would have loved to have my breath taken away, but I do not know Chinese.

[max · Rating 4 out of 5]

My discovery of this brilliant collection of 101 poems was a revelation. The Shambala Pocket Classic Edition is an out of print jewel measuring approximately three and a half by four inches.

The poems of Han-shan are short, pithy, and frequently epigrammatic. They are filled with timeless, often poignant observations about life: striving, working, struggling, failing, reflecting. Each one is usually eight lines. The poet has a sharp eye for detail, for human psychology, and the quest for spirituality. For their lyrical beauty and personal meditations about the transience of life, many of them call to mind the best productions of Horace and Catullus in Latin or Mimnermus and Sappho in Greek.

To appreciate the splendor of these little gems, you do not need to know a single thing about the philosophy, beliefs, or gnomic expressions of Zen Buddhism, which permeate the entire collection.


Here's one of my favorites:

A crowd of girls playing in the dusk,
and a wind-blown fragrance that fills the road!
Golden butterflies are sewn to the hems of their skirts;
their chignons are pinned with mandarin ducks of jade.
Their maids wear cloaks of sheer crimson silk;
purple brocade for the eunuchs who attend them.
Will they give a glance to one who's lost the way,
with hair turned white and a restless heart?

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

While captivated by the fact that Cold Mountain is both a mountain and poet (or rather, conglamorated into a poet; in fact, a number of poets living on a mountain), I'd say that only about half of the Han Shan poems really do it for me. But they are quite something nonetheless - humour, wisdom, hardship, beauty... The Shih Te poems, on the other hand, I could pretty much take or leave. The tone is more detached, more arrogant; they have a sense of morality that bores me. But the unexpected diamond-jewel of this book is the Wang Fan-chih collection. The translator subtitles it 'Cold City Streets', and these dark, funny, tragic short poems read like mid-twentieth century blues songs:

I've been hungry so long,
My stomach's a hole I fell in.
Lost child, suffering,
'Mama, how could you have born me?'

[Kristyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

J. P. Seaton has given us the most accessible translation of the poems of Han Shan I have read, along with Shih Te and Wang Fan-chih, who were new to me.

I particularly liked this poem:
"How can reading a book keep you from dying?
How can reading a book keep you from being
poor?
So why all this love of learning? To read,
as if loving to read made you better than others?
Just this: real humans, if they don't love
learning,
where shall they find peace for this body?
Bitter herbs are the best medicine,
but they are hard to swallow...
Try some garlic sauce. That'll help you get it
down."

[Robbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I will come back to Han Shan my whole life. Find the Gary Snyder translations. Can I quote a poem here? --

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail.
In summer, ice doesn't melt
The rising sun blurs in swirling fog.
How did I make it?
My heart's not the same as yours.
If your heart was like mine
You'd get it and be right here.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently reading again and again and again. I am a magpie for this collection. Very shiny.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, clever, irreverent, angry, and insightful.

[Ad · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "Cold Mountain Master Poetry Collection" - here in an excellent translation by Sinologue / Japanologue Burton Watson - is a corpus of over three hundred poems attributed to a legendary Tang era (618–907) recluse who took the nickname Hanshan (Cold Mountain) from the isolated hill on which he lived in the Tiantai Mountains. The collection contains a preface by a government official, Lüqiu Yin, who claims to have personally met Hanshan. The story he tells about Hanshan and his sidekick Shide is very beautiful, but unfortunately it is all fiction.

Lüqiu Yin claims to have met Hanshan and Shide at the kitchen of Guoqing Temple. When he greeted them, they gave a big laugh and fled. Later, he tried to give them clothing and even a dwelling, but they fled deeper into the mountains and finally went into a cave which closed itself. Their tracks disappeared. This led Lüqiu Yin, who was the local governor, to collect Hanshan's writings, which were written on rocks and cliffs. The Preface also identifies Hanshan as an incarnation of the Bodhisattva of wisdom, Mañjuśrjī, and Shide as Mañjuśrī’s companion Samantabhadra, two figures from the Buddhist pantheon who were especially venerated on Mt Tiantai.

But if this is all legend, what is then the truth? The most reasonable conclusion is that the Hanshan collection was composed by several - possibly a great many - anonymous poets over the course of the Tang dynasty (from the 7th to the 9th c.). All writers must have been Buddhist monks connected with the Tiantai temple complex. And then gradually a myth evolved around the collection attributing it to an iconoclastic, reclusive monk named Hanshan - this happened at a time when such types of monks had become highly popular in late Tang Chan literature. Poems were possibly later added to the collection which had been deliberately composed in the voice of such a monk.

The collection contains over 300 poems, which often share the same phrases and images. When we look at the themes, these are in the first place of radical reclusion (one fifth of the total, and probably the most famous part); poems stressing the impermanence of the world and a carpe diem theme; poems satirizing worldliness, the wealthy, the ignorant; and explicitly religious poems (mostly Buddhist, but also Daoist). Because of this Buddhist flavor, in the past in China the collection was not regarded as literature.

The Hanshan collection became very popular in Chan Buddhist circles in the Song dynasty (960-1279). With the Chan movement it spread later to countries as Japan and Korea, where it became even more popular - the major Rinzai Zen priest Hakuin (1686–1768) wrote an extended commentary on the collection. Its popularity extended even to the West: Beat poet Gary Snyder made selected translations from Hanshan in the 1950s; and Snyder’s enthusiasm was in turn fictionalized in Jack Kerouac’s novel, The Dharma Bums (1958). There are now four full English translations of the Hanshan poems (notably by Paul Rouzer), plus many partial ones, as by Arthur Waley and Burton Watson.

I particularly like this translation by Burton Watson, which pairs sound scholarship with an excellent sense of poetry. Watson's translations all concise, he never use a word too much; but they are also rhythmic and concretely visual. Watson and Hanshan are an ideal combination.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a student of the Chinese written character; and I know Han-shan's poems have found a devoted following in the U.S. through the aegis of Gary Snyder's Stanislavski-like improvisations on Han-shan in Lu-ch'iu's edition. But just as we would not limit Whitman's impact to the poetry culture, insisting rather that he belongs to American (indeed world) culture, Burton Watson has tried to bring Han-shan through sinology to his world audience.

Here, e.g., is a lyric monkish in its use of Zhuangzi in three distinct English modalities; first Watson's admirable version; next Snyder's iconic poem [both of these from the late Fifties]; finally, a modernist "construal" by Red Pine:

Wonderful, this road to Cold Mountain --
Yet there's no sign of horse and carriage.
In winding valleys too tortuous to trace,
On crags piled who knows how high,
A thousand different grasses weep with dew
And pines hum together in the wind.
Now it is that, straying from the path,
You ask your shadow, "what way from here?"
____
The path to Han-shan's place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges -- hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs -- unbelievable rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?
____
The Cold Mountain Road is strange
no tracks of cart or horse
hard to recall which merging stream
or tell which piled-up ridge
a myriad plants weep with dew
the pines all sigh the same
here where the trail disappears
form asks shadow where to?

The third, the Red Pine, is 48 words: six words per eight lines. This discipline bespeaks not a role, as in the second, the Gary Snyder, but wants to enact that spartan quality of the wanderer. It's easy to ignore Red Pine's discipline, to mis-construe it as the modernist virtu of using no undue word.

Snyder's, by contrast (again, the second in this sequence, though probably the earliest), is urbane ("laughable"), manly ("unbelievably rugged"), candid in its verbal dexterity -- like a Hank Williams vocal. "And now I've lost the shortcut home" -- the implied emphasis, surely, is on his having known one.

Watson's doesn't make his reader keep up with his dramatic little shifts in tone. Nor is it distilled down to an essence, as is the Red Pine. Watson understands the tension in the voice between devout inward substance ("too tortuous to trace") and the shift toward outward-attending focus: "you ask yourself". The literary idioms in the Watson also convey the original's urbanity ("Now it is that . . ." "who knows how high").

In short, I find much to recommend this little selection from Han-shan put out in 1961 by Nathaniel Tarn's Cape Editions, and then later republished by Watson's home-press, Columbia University. These surely don't replace Gary Snyder, but capitalize on him --

[Murat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Han Şan (Soğuk Dağ/Doruk), Çin'de 6-9. yüzyıllar arasında (büyük ihtimalle 7. yüzyıl olduğu belirtiliyor) yaşamış bir şair/münzevi. Bir köylü çocuğu olarak okumaya özeniyor, uğraşıyor didiniyor, memur olmaya çalışıyor. (7. yüzyılda ne memuru diyenler "Çin Keju sistemini" araştırabilir, sonrasında Konfiçyus'un Kamu Yönetimine etkilerine göz atabilir, konudan uzaklaşmamak adına burada kesiyorum ve ilgilileri için bir kaç bağlantı bırakıyorum: https://chiculture.org.hk/en/china-fi... , google araması makale: Ming Dönemi Çin Memurluk Sınav Sistemi ve Edebi Makale Türü, Dr. Sema Gökenç Gülez )

Evet, hızla ileri sararsak, Han Şan "KPSS" de başarılı olduktan ve memuriyete adımını attıktan sonra gördüğü/yaşadığı haksızlıklar ve kişisel hayal kırıklıkları sonrası soluğu uzaklarda, dağlarda alıyor..

O dönemde bunu yapan keşişler, tapınakların bendesi olurken, Han Şan'ın özgürlük tutkusu buna da izin vermiyor. Özgür ve fakir bir "deli"/dilenci/keşiş olarak şiirler yazıp yaşamını noktalıyor. Yaşadığı dönemde Bölge Amiri ününü işitip şiirlerinin kitap haline getirilmesini emrediyor ve bu sayede 300 şiiri derleniyor.

Tabii ki yaşadığı dönem itibariyle bu bilgilerin hepsi şüpheli, gerçekte bir Han Şan'ın olduğu bile şüpheli. Han Şan'dan sonra yazılan kimi şiirlerin ona atfedilmesi gibi olasılıklar mevcut. Bu 300 şiirin birbirleri ile çelişen yanları da gerçekliği sorgulatıyor. Bu kitapta yer alan 100 şiirden kimisi oldukça dünyevi iken kimisiyse Zen Budizm'inin önemli eserleri olarak addediliyor.

Ben, şiirleri okurken her şeyi bildiği/erdiği iddiasında bir aziz değil; dürüst ve gerçek bir insan gördüm. Sevdim. Zen de genel olarak tek bir doğruyu dikte etmeyen yaklaşımı ile ilgimi çekmekte.

Önsözde Han Şan'ın, Zen Kaçıkları kitabının merkezinde olduğu bilgisi de paylaşılıyor. Kısaca, Zen'e ilgisi olanların okumasında fayda var.

Kitap, Türkçeye dipnotları ile birlikte Almancadan çevrilmiş. Giriş kısmında, okuyucunun genel bağlama hakim olabilmesi için doyurucu ön bilgi verilmiş, çeviri yöntem ve seçimleri olabildiğince açık paylaşılmış, dipnotlar da oldukça faydalı. Kitaptan bir şiirle noktalıyorum:

" vardım mı bi kez soğuk doruğa
biter bütün dertlerim
kafa karıştıracak şey kalmaz
ve yürek karartacak
huzur içinde
bir şiir kazırım kayalara
koyveririm
dalgalansın bağlanmamış bir
kayık gibi dünya."

[Richard Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this volume of poetry a lot.

Han-than, a Tang era zen poet, is somewhat popular in China, but for some reason is one of the most popular poets in the West from that era. I'm not sure quite how that happens, but I can say that I really liked the poetry. I agree with the others that there's something important here.

I'm not sure I'd like the poet himself. He talks about the wife he left to go live on Cold Mountain (the English translation of the name he also calls himself) and I don't understand him. I guess he just bailed on her. I only hope it wasn't as bad as it sounds.

But his poetry, filled with nature imagery, ruminations on the pointlessness of ambition, and laments about growing old, makes a lot of sense. It's easy to connect with him on a human level. This collection, translated by Burton Watson, is written in natural language with a hint of poetic language, just the way I most like it. He doesn't try to make it rhyme, and he supplies enough of the missing articles and verbs that it scans well in English. Good stuff.

Here is a representative sample of both the poetry and the translation:

I sit alone in constant fret,
Pressed by endless thoughts and feelings.
Clouds hang about the waist of the mountain,
Wind moans in the valley mouth.
Monkeys come, shaking the branches;
A bird flies into the wood with shrill cries.
Seasons pass and my hair grows ragged and grey;
Year's end finds me old and desolate.

You can hear the poet's voice. You can see the wild natural setting where he has hidden himself. You can feel his loneliness. I think it's just about perfect.

Recommended.

[Nelda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cold Mountain Poems: Zen Poems of Han Shan, Shih Te, and Wang Fan-chih are ancient poems written by monks in the Cold Mountain area of Southeast China. The translator J.P Seaton gives valuable insights into the written characters or language of the Chinese, giving the reader a greater understanding of the poems. However, such notes were not always necessary as many of the poems speak for themselves of natural wonder, meditation, sacrifice, aging, dying, grief, fear, poverty, service, and devotion—really, the gamut of human existence—whether Buddhist or Taoist or not.

I’d just come off the Rick Bragg book The Best Cook in the World, with its eloquent descriptions of hog jowl and pecan pie, to be met here with “taste that never wavers…” and “pigs cheeks fried skin-on. Don’t care how bitter someone else’s life might be, as long as yours is sweet and greasy.”
I went to sleep with the laughter of the rich landlady and the lowly tenant’s laughter for (at?) each other ringing in my ears and the description of monks’ work as harried and necessary as that of the housewife’s. Ambiguity plays well in a poem like the one about the social services that monks provided for the poor. Is the final line about the seeming lack of gratitude by those poor…or are they so poor, they are unable to show their gratitude?

I enjoyed the poems though some left me without a full understanding. I think it would help to have had a greater knowledge of Buddhism, Taoism, Nirvana, and the like. Still, the book was worth my time for its lovely descriptions of Cold Mountain and the emotional themes presented.

[Dianelw · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are beautiful spare poems from 9th century China. I have come back to them once again, viewing them through a new lense. Recluse, legend, fictional or real poet? No one knows. The stories say he left poems written on rocks in the mountains and someone later collected them. Here are two of my favorites. They both speak to exploring the mind and consciousness. It's from a Buddhist perspective, and yet, he is also like a yogi who has learned to still the mind. And that is what happens when we walk in mountains, too!

As for me, I delight in the everyday Way*,
Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness I am completely free,
With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever.
There are roads, but they do not reach the world;
Since I am mindless**, who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night,
While the round moon climbs up Cold Mountain.

*The everyday mind-that is the Way (Zen Master Ma-tsu Tao-i)

** Buddhist term indicating the state in which all ordinary processes of discriminatory thinking have been stilled.


Cold cliffs, more beautiful the deeper you enter—
Yet no one travels this road.
White clouds idle about the tall crags;
On the green peak a single monkey wails.
What other companions do I need?
I grow old doing as I please.
Though face and form alter with the years,
I hold fast to the pearl of the mind.*

* The pearl is the Buddha-nature within the mind of every person.

[Sreena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Han Shan's verses often possess a playful and whimsical quality, blending humor with profound wisdom.

"Alone, I dwell in the mountains,
yet my heart is connected to all beings in the universe."

I really loved this line that explores the dichotomy of solitude and connection, urging us to find solace in both their own company and the company of others.

In the wilderness,
I find peace.
The mountain echoes my thoughts,
and the river whispers ancient wisdom,

These words resonate deeply, evoking a sense of tranquility and oneness with the natural world.

A book that will leave a lasting impression, inviting us to return to its pages time and time again for inspiration and solace. "Amidst the chaos of the world, I find serenity in the words that dance upon these pages."

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections of poetry I have come across, and one of the best volumes to understand the admixture of Chinese taoism and buddhism in the Tang era. Cold Mountain's words are simple and approachable, yet he teaches nuanced lessons about the way and the structure of our experience in the world. Amazing book

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems didn't bowl me over at first, but by about midway through I was really liking more and more. Not all of the poems are for me, but some are just for me.

I appreciate the notes and found them helpful, but the poems can stand without them for the most part. The introduction is fine and useful, but I would have liked some more information about the poems' structure.

[Scott Ballard · Rating 5 out of 5]

If only I could be like the tree at the
River’s edge
Every year turning green again.

-

Pines and bamboos sing in the wind that
Sways them;
Sea tides wash beneath the shining
Moon.
I gaze at the mountain’s green borders
Below
And discuss philosophy with the white
Clouds.
In the wilderness mountains and seas are
All right,
But I wish I had a companion in my
Search for the Way.

[Keenan · Rating 3 out of 5]

寒山曾经写过一首"有人笑我诗":

有人笑我诗，我诗合典雅。
不烦郑氏笺，岂用毛公解。
不恨会人稀，只为知音寡。
若遣趁宫商，余病莫能罢。
忽遇明眼人，即自流天下。

按照英文的注解，他说他自己的诗与"诗经"不同，无需陶渊明这样的人去注解。自己的诗歌虽然“知音”不多，但他自信终有一天会被人理解，誉满天下。不过，一千年后，除了Jack Kerouac与他的崇拜者以外，好多中国人不知道这位有趣禅疯子的诗。我还是认为寒山的诗值得一读。

“有谁能够超脱俗事的羁绊，与我共坐在白云之中呢?”

[Christopherseelie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful selection of poems that convey something of the transformation experienced by the mythic author, a Zen hermit said to have attained enlightenment.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If someone would poke out the eyes of the hawks
We sparrows could dance wherever we please!"