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 is 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. Am somehow excited to break a million even if it's bots.

Weird accumulation of hits on this blog since I've decided to sunset it.

3/20/25 634,160

4/8/25 638,567

4/12/25 638582

4/22/25 643178

5/6/25 654,450

8/2/25 827, 837

10/12/25  975,561

10/24/25 992,126

11/3/25 surpassed 1 million views, have 1,001,154

12/25/25 1,049,339 are those just AI?

The Yellow River Odyssey

Porter has many travel in China books, that I have greatly enjoyed, and poetry translations of Stonehouse and Cold Mountain, and translations of sutras. 

Bill Porter's The Yellow River Odyssey, about his trip in 1991, published in 2014, he visits Bodhidharma's cave. You can still go to the cave where he stared at the wall for 9 years. (You could also just meditate, all Buddhas would probably prefer you to trod the path rather than worship other people who trod the path, but faith and veneration of those who came after us is quite important, it does boost the practice to think of all the heroes of Buddhism.) Bodhidharma is credited with bringing Buddhism to China, and a founder of Chan Buddhism. 

There's a cool statue at the top of the mountain of him.

Bodhidharma lived during the 5th and 6th century. I think it's really cool you could know something about someone from that long ago. You can read some of his translated writings.

Then Porter goes to Longmen Caves (Vairocana in the center):

Links:

Been writing about the non-Buddhist culture Porter aspects of his book (One, two, three). This book has more Taoism and Confucianism than his other books, which is not uninteresting to me. I'm fascinated by the interplay between Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism in China. 

Gandhara

Finishing up The Silk Road by Bill Porter (2016) written from his trip in 1992 along the silk road. I love this book because it's adventure, good storytelling, mythical storytelling of places that he's at, and there's a lot of Buddhist tourism, visiting archaeological sites.

I've never read about Sabashi temple: Other famous sites nearby are the Ah-ai Grotto, Kizilgaha caves, the Kumtura Caves, the Kizil Caves and the Simsim caves near Xinjiang, China.

Then he makes some difficult crossings to Islamabad, but before he flies home he goes to Taxila. 

He's in Gandhara and he's mentioned John Marshall. There's an exhibit of his photographs online about Taxila, which is in the south east corner of the Gandhara territory 

The Art of Gandhara by Kurt A. Behrendt, 2007, Metropolitan Museum of Art, see artwork below:

Ashoka was the governor of Taxia. He a a brutal murderous ruler, but saw the light, and spread Buddhism and did many interesting things. Some of his pillars still exist today. 

When Hsuan-tsang came to Gandhara in the 7th century there were thousands of monasteries. (See The Life Of Hiuen Tsiang by Beal, Samuel (1914).

Gandhara was a mixture of many cultures and you get Greek styled Buddhist art, mixed in with Persian and Indian.

Porter and his friend visited the Dharmarajika Stupa

I would love go to the Peshawar Museum in Peshawar Pakistan. 

There is so much here, it's overwhelming, I'm defintely skimming hoping to circle back, but my entry into it started with a travelogue by Bill Porter, and I'm grateful for his travel in China books. I've read 4 of the 6 of them, going to track down the last 2. I've been obsessed with this book, it feels a little empty to finish it. What am I going to do next?

Wikipedia: Gandhara Buddhist Art

Silk Road

“EVER SINCE WE HUMANS FIRST BEGAN to walk, we have worn paths to our neighbor's house and to the next village and beyond. And ever since we discovered the wheel and learned to tame four-footed beasts, some of our trails have become roads. Among the more monumental examples are the hewn rock ramparts of ancient Rome's Appian Way and the poured concrete cloverleafs of the LA freeways. A much older, much longer, and at the same time less tangible example of our peripatetic nature is the Silk Road.”

So begins Bill Porter’s The Silk Road (2016).

I've much admired Porter's travel books from China, and his translations under the name Red Pine.

Today I'm thinking about Kukai, it's his birthday, and his great travels into China to bring back Vajrayana to Japan, and his heroic journeys. 

Kukai (774-835) traveled to the city where the silk road began to find a teacher in Xi'an.

Xi'an was also home to the famous Buddhist traveler Hsuan-tang (602-664) (Wikipedia). "His travelogue is a mix of the implausible, the hearsay and a firsthand account."

P. 20: "As for Huo's own grave mound, its most noteworthy feature was the series of fourteen stone carvings at the base. They were ancient, but they looked almost modern in design. Among the most famous was one of a horse trampling a bearded foreigner, which made us feel a bit uneasy. Finn and I weren't Huns, but we do get a little rowdy from time to time. Fortunately we have so far survived our Hunnish lapses."

P. 24 Famen Temple. Supposedly there's a Buddha finger there. Ashoka supposedly sent it in the 3rd century, but it took till the 6th century for the Buddhists of China to realize what they had. “ For a nominal fee, Finn and I even got a certificate proving that we did, indeed, pay our respects to the same finger that pointed to the Middle Path 2,500 years ago.”

Bill Porter quote about syncretism

"Meanwhile, back on the veranda, Daniela [Campo] manifested another bag of fruit, more mangoes, and tangerines, too. We had a long discussion about Zen and Taoism. She was an advocate of the view current among most Western scholars—and some Eastern ones too—that Zen didn't come from India but resulted from the intersection of Chinese Taoism with Indian Buddhism. The proposition would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove either way, and would ultimately depend upon how one defined terms as much as the marshaling of so-called facts.

I've never liked the idea. Over the years, I've combed through the biographies of hundreds of early Zen monks. Among those who had an affiliation prior to becoming monks, most were Confucians. Taoists were rare. But I would suggest that Zen didn't derive in whole or in part from Taoism or Confucianism, or even from Buddhism as it existed in China at the time. Zen was something new. Who else besides Zen masters delivered wordless lectures or offered sermons in a cup of tea--no Taoist or Confucian I've ever heard of, and no Buddhist prior to Bodhidharma." (p. 308) Zen Baggage

Daniela Campo was doing her Ph.D on Empty Cloud (Xuyun (1840-1959) in 2006 when Porter was traveling in China and traveled with her for a time. There is a biography of Xu Yun by Ji Dyn Shakya.

I finished the book and I miss it already. What a great book. There was a sad bit when he started thinking about his friend who committed suicide because he couldn't find a job to support his family.

I got really excited about the idea of Buddhist Hall of Fame when he mentions visiting one. Then I thought about the Triratna Buddhist refuge tree of inspiration. Then I thought about how I'm writing a book about the great Buddhas, and that's already an idea I'm into.

Bill Porter visits Ch’an sites

Bill Porter (Red Pine) went to China in March 2006 to visit Chan sites, and the book came out in 2009. I count 23 books on his Wikipedia page, among other publications. I've read 6 of his books, this will be my 7th. Porter starts in Beijing. Lots of good Chinese Buddhism history in this book. I like that he’s authentic and not a poser. He prefers Zen to Ch'an, he likes the Z and feels all the words are pointing to the same Dharma. He interviewed abbots and China is really just beginning to recover from the cultural revolution. The smart monks head to the mountains during the Cultural Revolution. Porter has a book about that: Road to Heaven. This book is about the recovery of Buddhism in China in 2006 after the Cultural Revolution from 1966-76.

If you only read one of Porter's travel books, I'd read this one. There are tons of great stories and interesting characters, great historical summaries, and stories about Zen and poetry. I've been picking up a little about Porter through reading all his works, and I really like him. I know some people are jerks in real life when you meet them, but I can imagine sitting on a porch with Miles Davis in the background sipping tea with him. 

My favorite story is that just before Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre, he was in Wuhan after seeking out the hermits, and people asked him for money for some pro-democracy protests. Porter thought he was giving 10 yuan, but accidentally gave 100 yuan. They were so excited the got him to speak in front of everyone. Back in Taiwan later, he was talking to someone in the CIA and they'd heard about it, the Chinese leaders were saying the protests were led by a foreigner. His reluctant words after accidentally giving too much were cast as him being a ringleader. I'm surprised they let him travel in the country after that, except that it wasn't true. Yikes. It's nice to read stories about Wuhan, when we have the negative association now as somehow the birthplace for Covid. Supposedly Porter's book about the Hermits was translated into Chinese and is a great source of national pride, so maybe he's seen more as a hero than a ringleader for democracy.

Quotes:

“No one knows when the Buddha's followers began making images of their teacher. According to an account attributed to the early Buddhist sect known as the Mahasanghikas, when Shakyamuni left this earthly realm for a few months to teach his mother in the heavens atop Mount Sumeru, two kings from neighboring regions had their artisans fashion statues of the Buddha so that his followers wouldn't be distressed by his sudden disappearance. One of the statues was carved from sandalwood, and the other was made of burnished gold, and both were said to be life-size. (Cf. Ekottara-agama-sutra: 28)

This account was compiled within two or three hundred years of the Buddha's Nirvana, which occurred in 383 BC, and it may or may not be true, but it suggests how important the Buddha's image was to his followers. According to the archaeological evidence currently available, the earliest representations of the Buddha were not statues but shadow images suggesting his presence: the fig tree beneath which he sat at Bodhgaya, the lion seat from which he delivered his sermons, the eight-spoked wheel that represented his teaching of the Noble Eightfold Path, a stupa that held his remains, or his footprints, which showed he had left the dust of delusion and its karmic wake behind. It wasn't until the first century BC and the first century AD that artisans in Gandhara (Pakistan) and Bactria (Afghanistan) - and slightly later in Mathura (Uttar Pradesh) - worked their way up from footprints to a human figure.” (P35)

“He didn't think much of Thich Nhat Hanh's Buddhism. By the time we left, he made it clear he didn't think much of my understanding of the Dharma either. But I had met so many accommodating Zen masters, it was somehow refreshing to meet a jerk. And a jerk who served such fine tea was worth enduring.” (P222, and what follows is a fun narrative about the jerk monk).

“When I asked her how she gauged the level of understanding among the students, she said, "There's no one way of determining how much someone understands. But we can usually tell when we give them a task they've never done before. Someone whose practice is good isn't easily upset when things go wrong. Someone who doesn't practice or who doesn't practice correctly is constantly upset. Just because you sit in the meditation hall doesn't mean you're making progress. This is why we watch and listen to the nuns who study and practice here to decide how best to help them. Some of them understand right away. Others seem to take forever. In any case, we tell them to be patient. Zen isn't for people in a hurry.” (P237)

Fascinating sites he visits (incomplete):

Yunju Temple contains the world's largest collection of stone Buddhist sutra steles in the world.

Yungang Grottoes are ancient Chinese Buddhist temple grottoes near the city of Datong in the province of Shanxi. They are excellent examples of rock-cut architecture and one of the three most famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China. The others are Longmen and Mogao.

Huayan Temple (Datong): After the founding of the Communist State, the government provided great protection for the temple.

Nine Dragon Wall: At least 7 versions of this, but this one was near Datong, which Porter calls Tatung. He has a different system than the one used on Wikipedia so it's hard to look up his stuff.

White Horse Temple: Considered the first temple in China.

Bodhidharma’s stupa: 

Daxingshan Temple: The temple had reached unprecedented heyday in the Tang dynasty (618–907), when Śubhakarasiṃha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra taught Chinese Esoteric Buddhism in the temple. Daxingshan Temple was completely damaged in the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, after the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907, most parts of the temple were ruined in wars and natural disasters, and gradually it became unknown to public. Most of the present structures in the temple were repaired or built in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and modern China. (Not sure if this is the same temple, when Porter visits it's because it's the only women's monastery for Zen in China. There are a few others but they are Pure Land. The entry doesn't mention that, so I think I've got the wrong temple, but I thought it was interesting anyway. The jerk monk thought it was inherently false that it was the one zen women's monastery. I have to think Porter is correct, and either this is the wrong temple and I was redirected there by mistake, or it's just not widely known in English language. The language barrier makes Porter's travels that much more interesting.)

There was nothing on google for “tsangfoken hidden buddha gully”

Some past Porter and Red Pine book and movies links on Going For Refuge:

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

Red Pine travel to south China

I’ve met people from Nanchang and Yantai in the park recently. Their children play with my daughter. That's not in south China, which is where this travel book explores. This area isn’t even that much studied by the Chinese, let alone in the English language. In south China there are over 50 ethnic groups.

I’m reading Red Pine’s book about South China travel that came out in 2015. But it’s based on his audio recording from his trip in 1992. 

It’s not really Dharma but I also enjoy culture and you can pick up bits when a Buddhist writes. He visits temples. I feel like the more I know about different cultures, the better. The better to understand people around me, and the better to understand the Dharma styles those areas, in the south of China. I also got this book with his traveling to the spots of the Zen Patriarchs. Thought I would read this book first because it's shorter. An I learned about the Tai ethnic group in China that follow Theravada Buddhism.

If I wasn't vegan I'd want to travel to the frog festival of Pingan. The mythology of locations is interesting. There are two tribes that descend from tree stumps, and all manner of dragon coupling. It feels like conditions create different cultures. Mythological thinking is so fascinating. I like the god of literature. Mythology is messy. Abraham is important in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The Four Guardians are in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. 

I’ve read too many fantasy novels, where the author’s experiences seem fantastic. Black rice and river moss. Women who play music tea leaves. History lost and found about great explorers with huge boats that sail the seasonal winds east and west. I want a new novel from Shelly Parker-Chan. Accidentally giving cultural signals for love, Porter has a woman coming to his room. He must politely decline an offer of love, after accidentally giving the signals. The Ani women don't hide their breasts and genitals. Two tribes descend from stumps and two tribes descend from union between humans and dogs, after a dog tricks the king into giving his daughter in marriage. The myths are so good other tribes co-opt them. Back through the mist of time they didn't worry about appropriation. These fantastical myths and stories are fun, some local color in Bill Porter's travels.

I read the book in the park and talk about it in with the Chinese whose English isn't so good. It's better than my Mandarin.

Quotes

 “My friend Gary Snyder once told me that two most important questions friends of the earth should ask are, Where does my water come from? Where does my garbage go?” (P. 159)

“It was Hsishuangbanna's most famous pagoda, and it was known far and wide as the White Pagoda. It was first built in 1204, and it had been rebuilt many times since then. It looked like the last time hadn't been very long ago. As with the Black Pagoda, the main ingredients were cement and white paint, with yellow and red trim. There was also a shrine hall, but pilgrims did their bowing outside at the base of the pagoda. On closer inspection, I discovered why. The pagoda was built on a huge boulder, and when I walked over to the southwest corner of the boulder, I noticed a small niche at the base. The niche was covered with glass, and there was a slot for people to insert donations. I looked inside and saw the reason for their veneration. It was the Buddha's foot-prints. Yes, the Buddha's footprints. By some mysterious power the Buddha had traveled here from India and left his footprints on the surface of the boulder. Buddhist pilgrims came here from all over China, as well as from Burma and Laos and Thailand, to pay homage to the footprints, which, according to the sign, the Buddha left when he visited that part of the world at the age of 62.

According to historical records, the pagoda itself wasn't erected until 1,700 years after the Buddha's visit. It wasn't surprising, though, to see footprints at a Theravadin Buddhist shrine. When Buddhism first developed as an organized religion, there were no statues of the Buddha, because it was felt that the human form somehow misrepresented the Buddha's message of liberation from all form. Instead, his disciples used his footprints to represent his transcendence from this world of dust. A pair of footprints was the only thing in the way of symbolism that early Buddhist shrines contained. I joined half a dozen other pilgrims in paying my respects before the niche, while a hundred flags flapped their prayers above us.” (P168-9)

“ Kashyapa was one of the Buddha's greatest disciples, and he reportedly came to Chickenfoot Mountain 2,400 years ago. To understand Kashyapa's importance, it's necessary to go back to when Brahma, the Lord of Creation, offered the Buddha a flower and asked him to preach the Dharma. The Buddha took the flower and held it up. His devotees and disciples were puzzled-all except Kashyapa, who smiled. This marked the beginning of Zen: the direct transmission of understanding with a flower and a smile. Kashyapa thus became the First Patriarch of Zen in India. Though there are no records attesting to it, Kashyapa was said to have come to Chickenfoot Mountain following the Buddha's Nirvana. And he took up residence in a cave below Huashoumen.” (P204)

Links:

Kirkus review "As satisfying as any trip by Paul Theroux but with a much less prickly and much more forgiving narrator."

Moon Hill

Frog Festival

Huating Temple

Stone Forest

Cheng Ho which Wikipedia says is spelled Zheng He. Fascinating fellow who was castrated and became a great diplomat and sea explorer, seven journeys to India. In a weird way the history of his life wasn't really taken up, China is weird in some ways in that at times they seem indifferent to their history. He seems like an interesting fellow but this is the first time I've ever heard about him. He was muslim and went to Mecca. 

Chickenfoot Mountain

Final stories and thoughts on Road To Heaven.

Imagine a time where going into the mountains was a way to seek promotion. Porter reports that in Stephen Owen's book about 8th Century China, if you went into retreat, and then got a promotion, they called that the "Changnan shortcut". 

I spent my summers near Hayesville North Carolina and these mountains were known for being a hotbed of survivalists and right wing wackos. I saw a bumper sticker, "Heston is my president" meaning the head of the NRA was their real president. The grocery stores say, "American Owned" like there is some great foreign grocery conspiracy.

My friend who likes the wilderness drives onto remote public lands and camps out of his car. He has a special tent attached to the end of his car.

Porter ends going through the 8 Immortals.

I certainly think this is a monument book in terms of Chinese culture. I'm not sure if it has any great insights, though Porter said he hoped it would inspire people to practice more intensely and a not just lead comfortable lives. Something like that. Anyway, quite a wonderful book to read on many levels.

Chinese Monks

Bill Porter who became Red Pine is older in this one, so this is an update. There's a real respect and devotion that I really like.

Bird sounds, dogs barking, insects, beautiful panoramas. As the effects of the Cultural Revolution wear off more people come there. One guy says Porter's book Road To Heaven opening things up a little bit, re-educated the Chinese about their cultural heritage. 

A young fellow recognizes him. Porter leaves some money under his bowl of water. The fellow lets bugs bite him. He bows very deeply. 

A woman carved out a cave. It took 3 people 2 months to chisel out a cave. Red Pine talks about translating poets. He was just doing it, and somehow someone got interested in publishing them. I've ordered all the red pine books from my library. I have a copy of his book on the Heart Sutra, maybe I'll give it a reread. He had a Taiwanese wife, and he wasn't allowed to go to China until 1989. He wanted to inspire Americans to a more austere practice, they are too comfortable. He didn't know his book would be a hit in China, but it was.

She gets up at 430am and meditates first thing. She goes for a walk around 6, and by 8 after refreshing herself she makes breakfast. She farms, chants and copies texts, and reads them till 11. Her favorite text is Tao Te Ching. She eats rice porridge and vegetables. If she's not hungry, she doesn't eat. Lay people bring her rice and noodles. She eats potatoes, yams and cabbage in the winter. She eats ginger to cope with the dampness. She has a bush that tastes like mint to Porter, but she thinks it smells like patchouli and it's "heat clearing" in the summer.

He first came in 1989, and he says he's 71 which is 7 years ago, so around 2014-15 the footage was shot. He reports he's lived in Seattle for 21 years, so that's 1993 onward. He talks about his first translation of a Pure Land sutra about the 16 contemplations, it starts out about the sun setting.

The monks seem more like hipsters as he goes along, they have fruit from somewhere else, they they say all the right Buddhist things. He speaks to the camera.

Another monk says tourism isn't bad if the monks are closed off and can practice in part of the monastery and the tourists come and light incense in another part.

The sun sets. One monk thinks words don't really help people, teaching them to meditate, chant and study gets more done. He doesn't like to talk much. He didn't feel like the Dharma healed people's problems. Just giving a hint of the Dharma life possibilities is better. You can see the lights of a city encroaching on the remote mountain monastery. It took Pine 5 hours to hike to it.

A female monks points out that she doesn't have to go to the village any more, presumably people bring food now. They used dynamite to blow up and get rocks for construction. She feels like that Tao is receding. The loss of hardship weakens the practice. Those with weak will quit. She chants the Shurangama Sutra (Some of the main themes of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra are the worthlessness of the Dharma when unaccompanied by samādhi power, and the importance of moral precepts as a foundation for the Buddhist practice. Also stressed is the theme of how one effectively combats delusions that may arise during meditation.). She makes him some bread, garden vegetables and soup, while he stares off into the distance. They show her lips move while she reads a sutra.

He takes a walk with an acupuncturist. He meets a fellow who wants to go over Taoist lineage. He gives him a poem to stick in his pocket. Another guy practices Tai Chi and martial arts. It ends with footage of a guy carrying huge bags up the mountain. 

Chinese Monks. This one has commercials, feel really violent next to the peaceful setting. I'll only watch it once, I'll watch the other one over and over probably.

Among The White Clouds

With the documentary in the background while I read, I can hear the birds on the mountains. I can hear the different way people talk in Chinese. When he talks in English, I take a break from reading and listen. It's usually about his attempts to find someone. Sometimes I take a break and read the text translations of what people are saying. They talk about Buddha nature, the nature of the mind, the struggle for existence. Some of the hermits can't read. They meditate. You can see them gathering stuff to eat. Getting water. Taking down laundry. Making tea. Cooking a meal. Eating. Chanting to Buddha statues. There are some young monks with an older monk. A woman alone. All sorts of scenarios. Endlessly varied, unique.

Among The White Clouds. I can't believe this is free on YouTube, but it is. Quite amazing.

I have a fantasy of living by mountains filled with Buddhist hermits, but I can understand their language, and I bring them food and whatever they need. The Chinese tradition of mountain hermits is as old as time, but unique.

One of the things you notice is their humility. They're just simple people carrying on. America has such a hype culture that it's hard to imagine Americans talking that way, but I bet some would. What you feel is great devotion.

Road to heaven

 

I guess Porter, or Red Pine, translates poetry, so he's open to the poetry of life. 

I'm getting more interested in Tao. Last night I listened to a podcast with Benjamin Hoff. The emphasis on nature and natural, in harmony with Buddhism, is interesting. 

It's sad the hermits retreat further into the mountains to get away from the tourists, who get superficial teachings.

Chapter 6 starts out talking about Buddhism coming to China and there's been a recent discovery where they think some statues are from 2,200 years ago. 2,300 years ago in Pakistan. 

My theory is that Buddhism swept the globe but died out because it's such a hard and subtle path, but there was a crazy awakening during the Buddha's life, and for 100's of years following it. What an amazing thing. 

Chapter 6 has some good discussion about the differences and integration of Buddhism into Taoism. 

Paragraph

The story is almost magical. Sometimes it's like I went here, I went there, I've always wondered how to keep to the interesting essential things in travel writing without creating only a few poems. He writes a lot of stuff, and I looked on good reads and 411 people read this and his next one only 60 read, but I guess I'll reading Finding Them Gone next.

Traveling to engage with literature, history and spirituality seems like a wonderful idea. I think the only other books that I have that do that are Natalie Goldberg and Sangharakshita. Milarepa isn't looking he's providing literature and culture and history.

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.