Road To Heaven by Bill Porter

Bill Porter had an interesting childhood. His father was a farmer, then bank robber. He got pardoned because his sisters were waitresses where the governor used to dine, and they talked him into a pardon. Then he became a hotel millionaire. The money was frozen in a divorce, and Porter went into the military and then used the GI Bill to educate himself, but he lost interest, somehow ended up in Taiwan as a monk for 3 years, and then did his travels to write this book.

He is also known as Red Pine, that's his art name, or pen name. 

You can watch the movie if that's your speed, link below. I like the book myself, but I'll graze the movie some more. I've watched it some in the past. 

So it's an adventurous book. He's going out looking for Chinese hermits. In China there is a tradition of respecting hermits. I don't think we have that tradition in the USA, to my knowledge. Anyway, he goes from place to place asking about hermits, until he finds some, presumably. Don't want to give anything away, the book builds the tension about finding some of these guys. 

The hermit tradition goes way back, and some early dynastic choices involved hermits, so the culture historically respects hermits. Hermits were sometimes shamans. Hermits were sometimes Taoist. I took a class on Taoism in college, and I read their basic texts. I didn't know that it originally about the waning and the waxing of the moon. I'm tempted to dig out my classic texts. I feel the idea of proportion, yin and yang, effortlessness, and being natural are very appealing to me. That's not all that Taoism is about but that's a big part of it.  

Visiting Taoist temples, Porter said they were organized like Buddhist temples. Supposedly there is Chʻüan-chen Taoism and Cheng Yi Taoism, which is more a lay practice. I learned about Taoism and Chinese culture, how the monasteries fared through the cultural revolution and changes in politics of China.

One of the things I don't like about reading the 1993 book is that it seems like all the terms have changed. Maybe he just simplifies Chʻüan-chen to Chuan Chen.

Links:

Eight Immortals of Taoism.

He Xiangu, the one female in 8 Immortals

Interview of Porter (YouTube)

Post Magazine profile:

video Amongst The White Clouds

video Chinese Monks (seems to be a different documentary)

book review quote: Porter describes a farmer grinding green rind off of walnuts, the steep and slippery green rocky ascents to hermit hideaways, misadventures with suspicious police. We share a meal of corn gruel and potatoes here or a bowl of noodles and a pot of tea there. One old hermit tells Porter about his few planted vegetables, of gathering wild plants, of coming down once every couple of years. Why do you live there? asks the author. "For the quiet," comes the answer. "Zen monks like quiet."

There's information in Tricycle "Porter, moreover, seems too enamored of his hermits to challenge them with the kind of difficult question that can elicit unusually penetrative responses. One wishes that he’d asked them whether, by entering a hermitage, they hadn’t lost as well as gained-for instance, the friction as well as the fellowship occasioned by others and seemingly so essential to self-knowledge."

And Lion's Roar. 

Ancient Ginkgo tree like Lao Tzu's?

Lao Tzu is spelled Laozi now.