Cold Mountain Zen

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.