Red Pine

[sabaijai]

Dancing With Words:

Red Pine's Path into the Heart of Buddhism

By Roy Hamric

“All great texts contain their potential translation between the lines; this is true to the highest degree of sacred writings.”

—Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator.

When I first saw Red Pine’s translation of “The Poems of Cold Mountain,” I remember thinking, “This is something important — who’s this Red Pine?”

That was 1983. Two years later came the book that really shook up the Buddhist literary community, Red Pine’s stunning, self-published translation of The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, a tough-spirited book of enlightened free verse — 300 poems chronicling the pains and pleasures of Zen hermit life. The Stonehouse (Shih-wu) and Cold Mountain (Han-shan) translations put a spotlight on Zen autobiographical poetry unlike any books before.

Red Pine’s elegant hand-sewn, self-published translation of “The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma,” in a Chinese red cover, followed in 1987.

Over the years, I avidly bought each new Red Pine translation: Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom (Sung Po-jen); Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching; and his own Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, which put contemporary flesh on early Zen hermit life.

My curiosity about the man who calls himself Red Pine grew with each new book. But facts about his life were clouded in dust jacket blurbs: he lived in the mountains overlooking Taipei in a small farm community called Bamboo Lake; he was connected somehow with Empty Bowl press in Port Townsend, Washington.

Eventually his American name, Bill Porter, appeared on one of his books. Red Pine: Bill Porter. But, no more — none of the American Buddhist magazines, which proliferated during the ‘80s and ‘90s, were of any help.

From the first, his translations seemed inspired. I held his books differently. There was a feeling of verisimilitude, rare in translation. His choices and love for the writers he translated filled a hole in my view of Chinese Zen writers. I felt connected to his poets as real people.

My admiration grew for the role of the translator who passes on obscure, subtle Zen texts and poetry. The translator is the invisible presence in the equation between writer and foreign reader. In translating (trans-relating) a text from one language to another, they serve as a supreme amanuensis who bridges language and brings writers and foreign readers together. Red Pine’s out-of-the-main-stream work is canny and clearheaded, and it has immeasurably enhanced Zen/Taoist literature and practice.

Then last year came his stunning translation of The Diamond Sutra, with commentaries by Red Pine and Buddhist writers from over the centuries. The fruits of Red Pine’s years in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, his travels in China, and his quiet devotion to Buddhist study and practice shine through the work. The translation occupies a unique place in Buddhist literature--serious, scholarly, but with the smell of experience. Work you can trust.

After living 22 years in Asia, Red Pine returned to live in America in 1993, settling in Port Townsend. A coastal town of about 8,000 people on the northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula, it’s a laid-back mix of Victorian houses, fishing boats, artists and writers, and a cottage industry of tourists.

His tie to the town was forged through a band of artists, poets, tree- planters and Asian connoisseurs who earlier had started Empty Bowl press, the imprint he used for three of his self-published books. The books are now collector items. With first printings of 1,000 copies, he sent the books from Taiwan to friends in America. “They would sell them in about a half-dozen book stores and send me some money,” he says.

Kyoto Journal article cont'd here