1. Preface

Thought it might be fun for us tyros to take a closer look at Red Pine’s translation of the poems and recorded conversations of a 14th century Chinese hermit called Stonehouse. These appear in The Zen Works of Stonehouse.

First, a confession. I’m predisposed to admire Red Pine’s work. During the sixties, the chicks, pot, acid, music and anarchy never deflected my ravenous desire to explore the immense pleasure palace that is Chinese literature. For years in Taipei, and Tokyo, San Francisco and Seattle thoughts from the Prajnaparamita sutras, Chan dialogs, Tang poems, Laozi, Zhuangzi, The Lunyu, Mengzi, Daoist alchemy, erotica, lexicography, and etymology found fertile ground in my still-fresh brain. No sooner would I discover, for example, a Chan monk’s commentary on the Book of Changes, and resolve to translate it than I would find, in an old Taipei bookstore, say, a copy of a book called, Study of Thick [Skin] and a Black [Heart] and think, OMG, this has to be put into English. My latent bibliophilic tendencies were toyed with, coaxed out, seduced at every turn because, an adventurer at heart, they led me further and further into a new and marvelous realm. So caught up was I in the next vista, hidden treasure trove, or bewitching character, I forgot to turn around, or sit down. I took a hit of nectar and moved on. Yes I would translate or paraphrase a page or two, perhaps a dozen, or jot down ten pages of ‘travel notes’, or take a blurry photograph or make a quick-and-dirty sketch. Nothing more.

Now as I make desultory preparations for the unsavory but unavoidable visit of Grim, The Reaper, I cannot but admire a man like Red Pine, who walked the walk, saw the sights, and then sat down and wrote and published books about them. In preparing to die (aren’t we all), I heard myself mumbling, “Since I fucked up and didn’t do it, whose translations can I recommend to those in the incoming generation, those karmically handicapped by an inability to read the original texts?” So it’s time to get serious about Red Pine’s work and subject it to a bit of careful scrutiny.

I’m using the Mercury House, San Francisco, 1999 edition of Red Pine’s Stonehouse which conveniently  includes the Chinese text.