Cold Mountain Zen (Paperback or Softback)

An eclectic collection of poetry by Hanshan, the legendary 8th-century Buddhist monk, compiled by Hiroaki Sato, who adds wonderful material on him by Akutagawa and Mori Ogai

The Tang Dynasty poet Hanshan (“cold mountain”) and his friend Shide (“foundling”) are among the most iconic figures in the history of Zen Buddhism. Variously described as Buddhists, mystics, crazy hermits, Taoists, and incarnated bodhisattvas, the two monks have been immortalized for centuries in countless Zen paintings and stone carvings. (In Gary Snyder’s youthful days you could run into them “in the skid rows, orchards, hobo jungles, and logging camps of America.”) In Cold Mountain Zen the acclaimed translator Hiroaki Sato―“the pre-eminent translator of Japanese poetry in our time” (August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books)―has put together an essential selection of Hanshan’s poetry with insightful commentary that includes an account of Hanshan’s friendship with Shide by the renowned Japanese modernist Mori Ogai, as well as a humorous story of a contemporary sighting of the two monks by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Sato’s selection of Hanshan’s poetry follows the loose arc of the poet’s life, from his days as a scholar and official with a wife and child to his reclusive retreat into “the everyday way” of “no mind,” far from the “dusty world,” just barely scraping by through the summer blossoms and the freezing cold with his calico cat in the mountain wilderness. These magical translations―infused with sake and music―transport the wild simplicity and rebellious spirit of the Zen master’s poetry into a vibrant vernacular for our times.

Hanshan (7th to 9th centuries) is said to have been an iconoclastic Chan/Zen Buddhist monk who dwelled alone in a cave in a rock cliff in the Tiantai Mountains. He wore a birch-bark hat and enjoyed talking to the passing clouds, playing the qin (a seven-stringed zither), and writing his poems on the rocks and walls of his mountain home. His poems were later recorded by the Song dynasty official Lu Qiuyin, who wrote in the preface to his edition, “Nobody knows where Hanshan came from.” Over three hundred poems attributed to him have survived. Jack Kerouac dedicated his novel Dharma Bums to him.

Hiroaki Sato―”the master translator” (Forrest Gander)―is a writer and translator of Japanese poetry and prose, classical and modern, who has won a PEN translation prize and two Japanese-U.S. Friendship Commission translation prizes.