South of the Yangtze

I'm reading my final Bill Porter (Red Pine) travel book: South of the Yangtze. 

Bill Porter has 6 amazing travel books in China, from when he traveled there in the 1989 to 2006:

Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits 1993

Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China 2008

Yellow River Odyssey 2014

South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China 2015

South of the Yangtze: Travels Through the Heart of China 2016

The Silk Road 2016

There's one book called Finding Them Gone (2015), where he goes to poets gravesites, and it's so disappointing to go visit famous poet graves, and nobody knows who they were. I'm not sure if I'm going to read that one, but it's a 7th book. I realize I've miscounted. There's potentially one more to read. That happens a number of times in the 6 books I've read. He talks about going back to places he's already been before, and he's quite a traveler in China, retracing his steps at times. 

I've loved his poetry translations of Stonehouse, Cold Mountain and others. Thought I would link my past blogs on Bill Porter:

Discussing Zen Baggage: That blog post had a lot of Porter links:

Red Pine travel to south China

Road To Heaven by Bill Porter

Chinese Monks

Hanshan, Fenggan and Shide

Chinese Buddhist Poetry

Shiwu

Thoughts on the inspiration of hermit monks.

Fanshan doesn't raise above society's sexism.

Did Hanshan do magic mushrooms?

Pickup

Road To Heaven quote

I loved this lady monk: Mo-shan Liao-jan, my favorite bit from Zen Baggage.

Yulin Caves and Yellow River Odyssey tidbits

Yellow River Odyssey

Silk Road

Quote about Syncretism

Aurel Stein, Paul Pelliot and Langdon Warner

Albert von Le Coq

Yung-Chia's Song of Enlightenment translated by Red Pine

These might not be all the times I wrote about Red Pine or Bill Porter's books, but it's enough.

I'm sunsetting this blog, going for refuge. Follow me at Friendship with Shams, my new Buddhist blog.

On 3/20/25 my counter said I'd had 634,160 visitors to this blog.

4/8/25 the counter leaps up to 638,567, that's more than 4k people visit my blog, it almost makes me want to restart it, but my reasons for ending this blog are sound, follow my new one if you like.

Clicks don't mean deep engagement, it's fairly superficial. I have 2829 visits to my new blog. 638582 now for Going for Refuge.

Quote

“For many decades, I’ve felt that it was my responsibility, together with my hundreds and thousands of colleagues, to address and change the trajectory of climate and biodiversity in order to bequeath a much safer planet to future generations,” she said. “When you have that self-imposed responsibility on your shoulders, it makes the work very, very hard because there are so many things we don’t control.”

From: "What Christiana Figueres thinks the climate movement can learn from Buddhism: Figueres, the architect of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, has been helping people around the world understand the teachings of Buddhist monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh." at Yale Climate Connections

"Thích Nhất Hạnh often used composting as a metaphor for transformation. He summarized the idea with a pithy aphorism: “No mud, no lotus,” referring to the idea that the lotus flower only roots and blooms in the mud. He taught that people spend much of their time in the mud, wading through complex, inescapable, emotional experiences." (op cit)

Wandering Mind

We are the progeny of countless generations of ancestors who had to not become totally fixated on what they were doing. Those who did become fixated didn’t notice a predator, got eaten, and didn’t reproduce. What we are trying to do goes against millions of years of evolution. Having a wandering mind is just how we are constructed. So it’s no big deal when your mind wanders off; you should actually consider it a victory that you noticed it wandered, rather than a defeat that it did its natural thing of wandering. In fact it is extremely helpful if you intentionally relax when you notice you’ve become distracted, and then gently reestablish attention on your meditation object. The mind state you are aiming to create could well be called relaxed diligence. 

Leigh Brasington Right Concentration (2015)

Gandhāran Buddhist texts, believed to be the oldest Buddhist Manuscripts yet discovered

Green Stupa

The Chengling Stupa, also known as "Green Stupa", was built in 867 and has been rebuilt numerous times since then. the stupa is multi-eaves style brick stupa with 9 stories. It has an octahedral shaped hollow tiers and is 30.47-metre (100.0 ft) high. It is composed of a stupa base, a sumeru throne and a dense-eave body. The sumeru throne and banisters were engraved patterns of various flowers and birds.

Linji was an iconoclastic teacher who used shocking language in vernacular Chinese to disrupt the tendency of his listeners to grasp at concepts such as buddhas, patriarchs, bodhisattvas, stages of practice and levels of attainment. He famously said, "If you meet a buddha, kill the buddha."

Linji traveled to Jiangnan where he met Chán master Huángbò Xīyùn, at some point between 836 and 841. He likely stayed with Huangbo at Mount Huangbo for about three years until he had a great enlightenment. Linji questioned Huangbo three times about the central meaning of Buddhism and Huangbo struck him three times. Then Huangbo sent Linji to meet the reclusive monk Dàyú. After exchanging some words with this monk, Linji attained an awakening. He then returned to Huangbo and told him what had occurred. Huangbo slapped Linji, saying “You lunatic, coming back here and pulling the tiger’s whiskers!” Then Linji responded with a loud shout.

Nagarjana's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

Slowly studying the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā of Nagarjuna. Reading very slowly. Watching a bunch of videos around him in the hopes it provides more of a bed to place my understandings.

Some scholar names: Jay L. Garfield, David Kalupahana, and Geshe Ngawang Samten, Joseph Walser, McClintock, and Dunne.

I'm listening to Dr. Jan Westerhoff on YouTube today.

Fascinating talk about rebirth. The argument for rebirth is this. When you start a fire, and then fire burns down the neighbors field, you don't say, that wasn't my fire, my fire was over here. Another example is if I say jalapeno pepper, my mouth just waters. There was no physical cause except the physical cause of thinking of jalapeno, so it's considered that rebirth is similar to that (from Richard Hayes). 

The conceptual problem of not having rebirth is that then when we all die, everyone goes to nirvana.  

He goes in Nelson Goodman's constructivism. I read his Ways of Worldmaking (1978). Causality is complicated. 

One person writes in the comments: "The problem is these arguments for rebirth are so complicated and speculative. Why not just accept rebirth teachings as skillful means and be done with it?"

My response is, why even comment? Why not walk away with your blissfully uncomplicated life? Would you like more people like you? Would you like to be seen as witty and wise without really putting in any work, just declining to see complications? 

Westerhoff has studied philosophy in general, not just Buddhist philosophy and he brings in modern developments into the understanding of karma.

Prof. Asanga Tilakaratne on YouTube. Sound quality gets bad at 21, sorry, couldn't listen any more.

Thupten Jinpa's introduction on YouTube in a short 7 minute video.

quote

"You must also “guard the doors of the sense faculties” lest “evil unwholesome states assail” you. This does not mean you don’t look, you don’t hear, and so forth; it means you do not get carried away by what you see, hear, sense, and cognize. Can you walk past a bakery, with its door open (of course), smell the wonderful aroma of the goods on offer, enjoy that smell, and yet not be tempted into entering and buying something? That’s guarding the door of the nose faculty. The senses are totally necessary for navigating our environment—but they are not an amusement park, at least not if you are intent on developing the higher mind needed for liberation. It’s perfectly OK to enjoy the pleasures that come via the senses—but don’t let your enjoyment of them lead you to becoming even more entangled in the world of delusion. It’s perfectly OK to respond to unpleasant sense contacts by dealing appropriately with the situation. But in neither case should the sense contacts lead to craving and clinging; if they do, then the sense doors are unguarded, and progress on the spiritual path is hindered."

Right Concentration (2015) by Leigh Brasington

Images, memes, quotes, art, rupas, statues

Statues of Mahasthamaprapta and Avalokitesvara on lotus pedestals. China, Northern Qi dynasty, 6th century AD

A source, M source

Second biggest religion in european countries

Interesting that Poland, Slovakia and Hungary has Buddhism as the second biggest religion.

I thought I knew religion, learned about Yazidism, which is the second religion in Armenia. 

Links:

Reddit link to a museum in Taiwan visit.

Longmen Grottoes, Henan (Reddit)

Largest wooden statue Reddit.

Favorite books 2024

Not published in 2024, because I didn't get to any of those. Closest I got was 2015, I started trying to read Right Concentration by Leigh Brasington recently. Can't say if it's good or bad yet, still grinding. 

Four books were free:

Empty Cloud by Xu yun. This is an amazing biography set in China.

Mindfulness with breathing by Buddhadasa. This is a guide to anapanasati by a Theravada monk who doesn't believe in reincarnation. Had to really delve into anapanasati to appreciate this book. No two teachers teach it the same, but it's fascinating to read all the different versions. 

Venerable Ācariya Mun Bhūridatta Thera: A Spiritual Biography by Ajahn Maha Bua. This is an amazing biography of a man who maybe gained enlightenment while on a train. I turn this book on when I can't fall asleep sometimes. You can listen to this one and the next one here.

Mae Chee Kaew was a Thai woman who finally was released from marriage by her husband and could go to a monastery. 

I really like the travel books of Bill Porter, but I think these two stand out for people interested in Buddhism in China:

The Silk Road by Bill Porter

Zen Baggage by Bill Porter

I found his books so fun to read, and to research some of the place he went. He's got a lot of other travel books, about south China, and other places, and I'm reading his one along the Yangtze river at the moment.