Hanshan - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Hanshan was a legendary figure associated with a collection of poems from the Chinese Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

in the Taoist

Taoism

Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...

and Chan

Zen

Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...

tradition. He is honored as an incarnation of the Bodhisattva

Bodhisattva

In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is either an enlightened existence or an enlightenment-being or, given the variant Sanskrit spelling satva rather than sattva, "heroic-minded one for enlightenment ." The Pali term has sometimes been translated as "wisdom-being," although in modern publications, and...

Manjusri

Mañjuśrī is a bodhisattva associated with transcendent wisdom in Mahāyāna Buddhism. In Esoteric Buddhism he is also taken as a meditational deity. The Sanskrit name Mañjuśrī can be translated as "Gentle Glory"...

in Zen lore. In Japanese and Chinese paintings he is often depicted together with his sidekick Shide or with Fenggan

Fenggan

Fenggan was a Chinese Zen monk-poet lived in the Tang Dynasty, associated with Hanshan and Shide in the famed "Tiantai Trio" .-Biography:...

, another monk with legendary attributes.

Date

In Lu Ch'iu-Yin's preface to Hanshan's poems, he claims to have personally met both Hanshan and Shide at the kitchen of the temple in Kuo-ch'ing, but they responded to his salutations with laughter then fled. Afterwards, he attempted to give them clothing and provide them housing, but Lu Ch'iu-Yin writes that the pair fled into a cave which closed itself and Shide's tracks disappeared. This led Lu Ch'iu-Yin, governor of T'ai Prefecture, to collect Hanshan's writings, "the poems written on bamboo, wood, stones, and cliffs and also to collect those written on the walls of peoples' houses." However, Burton Watson is of the opinion that Lu-chiu Yin did not exist in reality and that his preface to Han-shan's poems is nothing more than myth. On page 8 in the introduction to his book, he says that Lu-chiu Yin's preface to the poems "...contrary to Chinese custom, is undated. Lu-chiu Yin represents himself as a high official and prefixes his name with a very imposing title. But there is only one mention of anyone by this name to be found in other works of the period, and it refers almost certainly to another person. This fact alone is peculiar enough, if Lu-chiu Yin was in fact as high up in the bureaucracy as his title indicates. Furthermore, the style of the preface, awkward and wordy, hardly suggests the writing of an eminent official. All other sources that tell us anything about Han-shan and Shih-te appear to be later than the preface and based upon it. For all we know, therefore, the whole picture of the two recluses built up in the preface may be nothing more than literary fiction. The poems, however, remain--over three hundred of them....If the reader wishes to know the biography of Han-shan, he must deduce it from the poems themselves."

The collection of poems attributed to Hanshan may span the entire Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

as Edwin G. Pulleyblank

Edwin G. Pulleyblank

Edwin George Pulleyblank FRSC is a sinologist and professor emeritus of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia...

asserts in his study Linguistic Evidence for the Date of Hanshan. He identifies him as the monk Chiyan (智岩, 577 – 654), but that has been disputed by Paul Demiéville among others. The Encyclopedia of China
Encyclopedia of China
The Encyclopedia of China is the first large-entry modern encyclopedia in the Chinese language. The compilation began at 1978. Published by the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, the encyclopedia was issued one volume at a time, beginning in 1980 with a volume on astronomy; the final volume...

gives his date as around 712 and after 793. Jia Jinhua came to the conclusion, after a study of Chan

Zen

phrases in some 50 of the poems, that this particular group of poems may be attributable to the Chan monk Caoshan Benji (840-901).

Translations

The poems have often been translated, by Arthur Waley

Arthur Waley

Arthur David Waley CH, CBE was an English orientalist and sinologist.-Life:Waley was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, as Arthur David Schloss, son of the economist David Frederick Schloss...

(1954), Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...

(1958), and Burton Watson

Burton Watson

Burton Watson is an accomplished translator of Chinese and Japanese literature and poetry. He has received awards including the Gold Medal Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University in 1979, the PEN Translation Prize in 1981 for his translation with Hiroaki Sato of From the Country of...

(1970), among others. The first complete translation to a western language was into French by Patrick Carré in 1985. There are two full English translations, by Robert G. Henricks (1990), and Red Pine (Copper Canyon Press

Copper Canyon Press

Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, specializing in the publication of poetry and located in the picturesque town of Port Townsend, Washington. Since 1972, the Press has published poetry exclusively and has established an international reputation for its commitment to...

, 1983, 2000). There is a collection of 130 of the poems, Encounters With Cold Mountain, by Peter Stambler. And there is a collection of 80 poems, Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry, by Wandering Poet (2005, 2011)

Little is known of his work, since he was a recluse living in a remote region and his poems were written on rocks in the mountains he called home. Of the 600 poems he is thought to have written at some point before his death, 313 were collected and have survived. Among the 57 poems attributed to Han-shan's friend, Shih-te, 7 appear to be authored by Han-shan, for a total of 320. The authority for the total number of poems written is the following poem, translated by Wandering Poet:

My five word poems total hundreds

Seven word seventy-nine

Three word twenty-one

Altogether maybe 600 poems

All written on ancient rocks

Boasting, my brushwork is strong

Who understands my poems

Is the mother of Buddha

(The "words" refer to how many Chinese characters are in each line of the verse, not how many are in the whole poem. All of Han-shan's poems have an even number of lines, i.e., 4, 8, 10 or 14, with an odd number of characters in each line throughout the same poem, i.e., 3, 5 or 7. For example, many if not most of the five-character poems were written with eight lines for a poem of 40 characters in total. Also, most Chinese words are one character each but some are two characters, so there is not always an exact equivalent between the number of characters and number of words.)

All translations here are Red Pine's, except where noted.

Biography

Han-shan's early life was privileged. He was well educated, traveled, served in the military, went to war, competed unsuccessfully for government jobs, and finally married, moved to the country and became a gentleman farmer. As the years passed, he became increasingly dissatisfied with his life and disappointed in the world of men. One day he packed up some books and began to wander. His wanderings led him to a remote place called Cold Mountain, in the Tien Tai range in southern China, where he built a hut, dug a pond and planted some vegetables. The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

I dreamed a place where I have come to dwell

Cold Mountain says it all

Monkeys scream, the valley fog is cold

I gather leaves and thatch a hut among the pines

Dig a pond and lead a trickle from the brook

My bamboo door blends with the color of the peaks

Long ago I left the world behind

Eating ferns, I pass the years in peace

But a hut and garden require maintenance. When the hut turns gray with age and falls apart, and weeds fill the garden, he moves to a no maintenance cave and relies completely on foraging for his food. The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

My hut is at the foot of a green cliff

Weeds fill the garden

New vines climb and hang everywhere

Ancient rocks form tall cliffs

Monkeys strip the trees of mountain fruit

Egrets and cranes eat all the pond fish

One or two heavenly books

I read mumbling beneath the pines

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

My home is in a cave

A cave that’s empty with nothing inside

Clean clear empty echo echo

Nothing in here but the morning sun

A vegetable meal nourishes this weak old body

I am a cloth-covered phantom

Let your thousand sages appear

I am pure as a Buddha

The cave is named 'Hanyan' (寒岩, Cold Cliff), a day's travel from the founding home of the Tiantai

Tiantai

Tiantai is an important school of Buddhism in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. In Japan the school is known as Tendai, and in Korea it is known as Cheontae. Tiantai is also called the "Lotus School", due to its emphasis on the Lotus Sūtra as its doctrinal basis...

Buddhist sect, Guoqing Temple

Guoqing Temple

The Guoqing Temple is a Buddhist temple on Mount Tiantai, Zhejiang Province, People's Republic of China. Originally built in 598 AD during the Sui Dynasty, and renovated during the reign of the Qing Yongzheng Emperor , the temple is located roughly from the city of Hangzhou...

; itself located within the Mount Tiantai range on China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

's southeast coast. He would have been 700 miles from the twin capitals of Luoyang

Luoyang

Luoyang is a prefecture-level city in western Henan province of Central China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north, and Jiaozuo to the northeast.Situated on the central plain of...

and Chang'an

Chang'an

Chang'an is an ancient capital of more than ten dynasties in Chinese history, today known as Xi'an. Chang'an literally means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese. During the short-lived Xin Dynasty, the city was renamed "Constant Peace" ; yet after its fall in AD 23, the old name was restored...

. He is usually associated with two close friends ("The Tientai Trio"), Fenggan

Fenggan

Fenggan was a Chinese Zen monk-poet lived in the Tang Dynasty, associated with Hanshan and Shide in the famed "Tiantai Trio" .-Biography:...

and Shide, who both lived in Guoqing Temple.

See Poem 44:

I usually live in seclusion

but sometimes I go to Kuoching

to call on the Venerable Feng-kan

or to visit Master Shih-Te.

But I go back to Cold Cliff alone,

obeying an unspoken agreement.

I follow a stream that has no spring

the spring is dry but not the stream.

Sometimes Shih-te would make the climb to visit Han-shan at home in his cave. The following poem by Shih-te is translated by Wandering Poet:

I wander into Cold Mountain cave

To visit someone people don’t know

Cold Mountain is my friend

We chew magic mushrooms beneath the pines

We talk of current and ancient events

We see the world as stupid and crazy

Each and every one is hell bound

Will they ever be free?

Once Han-shan arrives at Cold Mountain it becomes clear in the poems that he has transcended the world of men and is now living in heaven. The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

There is a Precious Mountain

Even the Seven Treasures cannot compare

A cold moon rises through the pines

Layer upon layer of bright clouds

How many towering peaks?

How many wandering miles?

The valley streams run clear

Happiness forever!

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

Since I came to Cold Mountain I forgot everything

Nothing worries me anymore

In leisure I write poems on the rocks

Through with the world I set it adrift

He lives by foraging, viewing nature as his host and himself as nature's guest. The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

This mountain guest with quiet heart

Often sighs for the passing years

Diligently collecting vegetables and fruit

Searching endlessly for heaven

In my living room clouds begin to roll

In the forest a round moon shines bright

Why do I not go back?

The perfume of the sweet olive trees keeps me here

The precise dates for Hanshan are much disputed due to textual inconsistencies and anachronisms (possibly due to attempts to give him greater stature, a not uncommon practice). But what is certain is that he can definitely be dated to either the 8th or 9th century CE

Common Era

Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...

. After Hanshan's disappearance, a Taoist

Taoism

Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...

named Xu Lingfu (徐灵府), a native of Hangzhou

Hangzhou

Hangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...

, apparently collected his poems from the various mountains, rocks, trees, and walls they were written on. This collection, however, is not mentioned in any of his written works, and as Xu ceased to write after 825 CE, that puts a lower bound on the date of Hanshan's death, and an upper bound as Xu must have collected Hanshan's corpus before Xu's own death in 841. Legend has it that Hanshan disappeared 12 years before dying, which would bracket his death between 837 and 851 CE. No information exists on his date of birth, so speculation is futile. There are some possible autobiographical details, from which one might infer that his home town was Handan

Handan

Handan is a prefecture-level city located in the southwestern part of Hebei Province of China.- History :Handan was the capital of the State of Zhao during the Warring States period , after the capital moved from Zhongmu. The city was conquered by the State of Qin after the virtual annexation of...

, and that he was born to a wealthy or noble family.

Poem 28

This maid is from Hantan,

her singing has the lilt.

Make use of her refuge;

her songs go on forever

you're drunk don't talk of going

stay until the morning comes

where you sleep tonight

her embroidered quilt fills a silver bed.

Poem 47

Mistress Tsou of Tiyen

and Mistress Tu of Hantan,

the two of them equally old

and sharing the same love of face,

yesterday went to a tea.

But poorly dressed they were shown to the back.

Because their skirts were frayed,

they had to eat leftover cake.

It is worth noting that Handan is the only city besides the twin capitals mentioned in all the poems, and that there is a hill outside Handan called, very similarly to himself (but with a different 'han'), 'Cold Mountain'. Basis for thinking Hanshan well-born comes from Poem 101:

I recall the days of my youth

off hunting near Pingling.

An envoy's job wasn't my wish.

I didn't think much of immortals;

I rode a white horse like the wind!

Chased hares and loosed falcons-

suddenly now with no home,

who'll show an old man pity?

Note that riding white horses and hunting with falcons near Pingling were all reserved to nobility. One might also infer that he did not advance very far in the bureaucracy, because the higher levels of the official examinations required not only a sound mind and a very sound grasp of the classics

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

, but also an unblemished body. He tells us of a foot injury in several poems:

Poem 71:

Someone lives in a mountain gorge

cloud robe and sunset tassels

holding sweet plants that he would share.

But the road is long and hard

burdened with regrets and doubts,

old and unaccomplished,

called by others crippled,

he stands alone steadfast.

Note that in Red Pine's poem 71, line 7, the word "crippled" is incorrect; it is not the word Han-shan used. In the following translation of the same poem by Wandering Poet the word is correctly translated as "failure."

Someone sits in a mountain vale

A robe of clouds, rainbows for tassels

The fragrant forest is the place to live

The road has been long and difficult

With a heart full of doubt and regret

A life has passed and nothing is accomplished

Others call it failure

I stand alone devoted to this Cold Mountain life

Poem 113:

My writing and judgment aren't that bad;

but an unfit body receives no post-

Examiners expose me with a jerk.

They wash away the dirt and search for my sores,

of course it depends on Heaven's will.

But this year I'll try once more,

a blind man who shoots for a sparrow's eye

just might score a hit.

Poem 259:

I love the joys of the mountains,

wandering completely free,

feeding a crippled body another day,

thinking thoughts that go nowhere.

Sometimes I open an old sutra,

more often I climb a stone tower

and peer down a thousand-foot cliff

or up where clouds curl around

where the windblown winter moon

looks like a lone-flying crane.

(Cranes are common symbol of Taoist

Taoism

Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...

transcendence.)

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

In leisure I went to the mountain top

The sun shines sparkling bright

I look around

White clouds and cranes are flying by

Taking all this, along with two other poems (below) together, Hanshan's premier English translator, Red Pine, favors a biography that places him in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, as a son of a noble family who, due to a foot deformity, perhaps caused by a riding accident, never advanced very far in the bureaucracy, only up to a clerk or such. Implicated in the An Shi Rebellion

An Shi Rebellion

The An Lushan Rebellion took place in China during the Tang Dynasty from CE December 16, 755 to CE February 17, 763, beginning when general An Lushan declared himself emperor, establishing the rival Yan Dynasty in Northern China...

, he fled, changing his name and seeking anonymity, eventually settling down far from the capitals, out in the hinterlands of the Taishan mountains, where he would spend his time as a hermit, writing the poems for which he is remembered. This theory is highly speculative and not accepted by all scholars. Since Han-shan's identity is and will remain a mystery, Red Pine's speculations are futile. Wandering Poet finds no place within the corpus where Han-shan says that he was a fugitive or that he was fleeing from justice. In every poem where Han-shan says that he is hiding in the mountains, it is from the madness he finds in the civilized world, not from justice, “Why am I always so depressed? What shall I do? Say, what shall I do? Take this old body home and hide it in the mountains.”. The latter part of Red Pine's theory stems from poems 26 & 81:

Poem 26:

Since I came to Cold Mountain

how many thousand years have passed?

Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,

to dwell and gaze in freedom.

No one visits the cliffs

forever hidden by clouds.

Soft grass serves as a mattress,

my quilt is the dark blue sky.

A boulder makes a fine pillow;

Heaven and Earth can crumble and change.

NOTE: In Red Pine's Poem 26, lines #3 & 4 are translated incorrectly. Some lines in some of Han-shan's poems require more effort to translate than others. However, in poem 26, lines 3 and 4, and poem 81, lines 5 and 6, the translation is straightforward. Following is poem 26 translated by Wandering Poet:

I settled at Cold Mountain long ago

Already it seems like ages

Wandering free I roam the woods and streams

Lingering to watch things be themselves

Men don't come this far into the mountains

Where white clouds gather and billow

Dry grass makes a comfortable mattress

The blue sky is a fine quilt

Happy to pillow my head on the rock

I leave heaven and earth to endless change

Following, for comparison, is poem 26, lines #3 & 4, translated by Gary Snyder:

Freely drifting, I prowl the woods and streams

And linger, watching things themselves

Red Pine's Poem 81:

I labored in vain reciting the Three Histories,

I wasted my time reading the Five Classics,

I've grown old checking yellow scrolls

recording usual everyday names.

"Continued Hardship" was my fortune

"Emptiness" and "Danger" govern my life.

I can't match riverside trees,

every year with a season of green.

(Yellow scrolls could refer to population records, and the astrological quarters 'Emptiness' and 'Danger', which pertain to the Palace and tragedy, respectively, aptly describe the An Lushan's rebellion.)

NOTE: See Red Pine's interpretation of poem 81, lines 5 & 6. Following, for comparison, is poem 81, translated by Wandering Poet:

In vain I struggled to grasp the Three Histories

Uselessly I read the Five Classics

Until I’m old I’ll go on checking figures

Forever a petty clerk scribbling in ledgers

The I Ching always says there’s trouble ahead

My life seems ruled by evil stars

I wish I could be like a tree at river’s edge

Year after year turning green

Following, for comparison, is poem 81, lines 5 & 6, translated by Burton Watson:

When I ask the I Ching it says there's trouble ahead

All my life is ruled by evil stars

Poetry

Hanshan's poetry consists of Chinese verse, in 3, 5, or 7 character lines; never shorter than 4 lines, and never longer than 34 lines. The language is marked by the use of more colloquial Medieval Vernacular Sinitic than almost any other Tang poet. The poems can be seen to fall into three categories: the biographical poems about his life before he arrived at Cold Mountain; the religious and political poems, generally critical of conventional wisdom and those who embrace it; and the transcendental poems, about his sojourn at Cold Mountain. They are notable for their straightforwardness, which contrasts sharply with the cleverness and intricateness that marked typical Tang Dynasty poetry.

Poem 283:

Mister Wang the Graduate

laughs at my poor prosody.

I don't know a wasp's waist

much less a crane's knee.

I can't keep my flat tones straight,

all my words come helter-skelter.

I laugh at the poems he writes-

a blind man's songs about the sun!

(All these terms refer to ways a poem could be defective according to the rigid poetic structures then prevalent.)

Thematically, Hanshan draws heavily on Buddhist and Taoist themes, often remarking on life's short and transient nature, and the necessity of escape through some sort of transcendence. He varies and expands on this theme, sometimes speaking of Mahayana Buddhism's

Mahayana

Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...

'Great Vehicle', and other times of Taoist ways and symbols like cranes.

The following poem begins with the imagery of the burning house and the three carts from the Parable of the Burning House found in The Lotus Sutra

Lotus Sutra

The Lotus Sūtra is one of the most popular and influential Mahāyāna sūtras, and the basis on which the Tiantai and Nichiren sects of Buddhism were established.-Title:...

, then ends with typical Zen and Taoist imagery of freedom from conceptualizations.

Poem 253:

Children, I implore you

get out of the burning house now.

Three carts await outside

to save you from a homeless life.

Relax in the village square

before the sky, everything's empty.

No direction is better or worse,

East just as good as West.

Those who know the meaning of this

are free to go where they want.

This mixed influence is probably due to the high preponderance of Taoists and Buddhists in the same area. The eminent Taoist Ge Hong

Ge Hong

Ge Hong , courtesy name Zhichuan , was a minor southern official during the Jìn Dynasty of China, best known for his interest in Daoism, alchemy, and techniques of longevity...

acclaimed Mount Tiantai as 'the perfect place for practicing the arts of immortality,' which is probably also why so many Buddhist temples were established in the vicinity as well.

Poem 13:

"Brothers share five districts;

father and sons three states."

To learn where the wild ducks fly

follow the white-hare banner!

Find a magic melon in your dream!

Steal a sacred orange from the palace!

Far away from your native land

swim with fish in a stream!

Many poems display a deep concern for humanity, which in his view stubbornly refuses to look ahead, and short-sightedly indulges in all manner of vice, like eating animal flesh, piling up sins 'high as Mount Sumeru'

Mount Meru (Mythology)

Mount Meru is a sacred mountain in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology as well as in Jain cosmology, and is considered to be the center of all the physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes...

. But he holds out hope that people may yet be saved; 'Just the other day/ a demon became a Bodhisattva

Bodhisattva

.'

Poem 18:

I spur my horse past ruins;

ruins move a traveler's heart.

The old parapets high and low

the ancient graves great and small,

the shuddering shadow of a tumbleweed,

the steady sound of giant trees.

But what I lament are the common bones

unnamed in the records of immortals.

While Hanshan eschewed fancy techniques and obscure erudition, his poems are still highly evocative at times:

Poem 106:

The layered bloom of hills and streams

Kingfisher shades beneath rose-colored clouds

mountain mists soak my cotton bandanna,

dew penetrates my palm-bark coat.

On my feet are traveling shoes,

my hand holds an old vine staff.

Again I gaze beyond the dusty world-

what more could I want in that land of dreams?

Following is the same poem translated by Wandering Poet:

Tier on tier of beautiful mountains and streams

Smoky vistas locked in blue green

The mist makes my bandanna wet

Dew coats my grass cape

My feet climb in straw sandals

In my hand an old wooden stick

When I gaze down again on the dusty world

It has become a land of phantoms and dreams to me

He is hard to pin down religiously. Chan

Zen

concepts and terminology sometimes appear in his work, but he criticized the Buddhists at Tiantai. He directed criticism at Taoists as well, and had no problem bringing Taoist scriptural quotations, and Taoist language when describing his mountains, into his poems. He does not mince words, but tells us precisely where to find the path to Heaven. The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

When people look for the road in the clouds

The cloud road disappears

The mountains are tall and steep

The streams are wide and still

Green mountains ahead and behind

White clouds to east and west

If you want to find the cloud road

Seek it within

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

Even with the fastest ship

Or riding a thousand mile horse

You cannot reach my home

People say the place is secluded and wild

A rock cave deep in the mountains

Clouds and thunder all day long

I am not Confucius

My words you will not understand

Poem 117:

I deplore this vulgar place

where demons dwell with worthies.

They say they're the same,

but is the Tao impartial?

A fox might ape a lion's mien

and claim the disguise is real,

but once ore enters the furnace,

we soon see if it's gold or base.

Poem 246:

I recently hiked to a temple in the clouds

and met some Taoist priests.

Their star caps and moon caps askew

they explained they lived in the wild.

I asked them the art of transcendence;

they said it was beyond compare,

and called it the peerless power.

The elixir meanwhile was the secret of the gods

and that they were waiting for a crane at death,

or some said they'd ride off on a fish.

Afterwards I thought this through

and concluded they were all fools.

Look at an arrow shot into the sky-

how quickly it falls back to earth.

Even if they could become immortals,

they would be like cemetery ghosts.

Meanwhile the moon of our mind shines bright.

How can phenomena compare?

As for the key to immortality,

within ourselves is the chief of spirits.

Don't follow Lords of the Yellow Turban

persisting in idiocy, holding onto doubts.

The following poem is attributed to Han-shan's friend, Shih-te. But Wandering Poet recognizes and translates it as authored by Han-shan:

The higher the trail the steeper it grows

Ten thousand tiers of dangerous cliffs

The stone bridge is slippery with green moss

Cloud after cloud keeps flying by

Waterfalls hang like ribbons of silk

The moon shines down on a bright pool

I climb the highest peak once more

To wait where the lone crane flies

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet. In this poem you hear the strong, clear voice of Han-shan, unaffected by the many years:

Old and sick, more than one hundred years

Face haggard, hair white, I’m happy to still live in the mountains

A cloth covered phantom watching the years flow by

Why envy people with clever ways of living?

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet and appears to be written not long before Han-shan's death. It is one of his most powerful poems. His clarity and sharpness of mind do not diminish with age and the passing of time:

Do I have a body? Or have I none?

Am I who I am? Or am I not?

Pondering these questions, I sit

Leaning against the cliff while the years go by

And the green grass grows up between my feet

And the red dust settles on my head

Then men of the world come and thinking me dead

Bring offerings of wine and fruit

Red Pine's poem 307:

Whoever has Cold Mountain's poems

is better off than those with sutras.

Write them up on your screen

and read them from time to time.

Following is the same poem translated by Wandering Poet

If you have Cold Mountain poems in your house

They are better for you than sutras

Hang them up where you can see them

Read them and read them again

Legacy

Hanshan was a sympathetic and important figure for Beat Generation

Beat generation

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

writers Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...

and Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

. In the introduction to his translation which appeared in the Evergreen Review
Evergreen Review
Evergreen Review is a U.S.-based literary magazine founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 through 1973, and was re-launched online in 1998...

, Snyder wrote of Hanshan, "He and his sidekick Shih-te (Jittoku in Japanese) became great favorites with Zen painters of later days -- the scroll, the broom, the wild hair and laughter. They became Immortals and you sometimes run onto them today in the skidrows, orchards, hobo jungles, and logging camps of America." Kerouac's The Dharma Bums

The Dharma Bums

The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after the events of On the Road...

closes with a vision of Hanshan, and at Snyder's suggestion, Kerouac dedicated the book to the fabled poet.

External links

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/HanShan.htm Twenty-seven poems in English translation
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052GACDW Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry by the t’ang zen poet han-shan by Wandering Poet (2005 2011) ISBN 978-0-6151-6006-1

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Biography

Poetry

Legacy

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External links