Poetry. East Asia Studies. Translated from the Chinese. Reprinting of the 2nd revised edition, including a new preface and beautiful illustrations. In these translations of the mysterious P'u Ming's work, Red Pine demonstrates the way in which the ox became a significant metaphor in Chinese Zen literature.

P'u Ming's Oxherding Pictures and Verses, 2nd Edition

Literature & Fiction

Pine, Red

Poetry

Empty Bowl

Explains solar energy theory, discusses the influence of climate and cloud cover, and shows how to select, evaluate and estimate the costs of a solar heating and cooling system

Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

Copper Canyon Press

Explains solar energy theory, discusses the influence of climate and cloud cover, and shows how to select, evaluate and estimate the costs of a solar heating and cooling system

"A travel writer with a cult following."The New York Times 
"There are very few westerners who could successfully cover so much territory in China, but Porter pulls it off. Finding Them Gone uniquely draws upon his parallel careers as a translator and a travel writer in ways that his previous books have not. A lifetime devoted to understanding Chinese culture and spirituality blossoms within its pages to create something truly rare."The Los Angeles Book Review
A road trip with poetryif that sounds like your kind of thing, then this is the book for you.”That’s China Magazine
To pay homage to China's greatest poets, renowned translator Bill Porterwho is also known by his Chinese name "Red Pine"traveled throughout China visiting dozens of poets' graves and performing idiosyncratic rituals that featured Kentucky bourbon and reading poems aloud to the spirits.
Combining travelogue, translations, history, and personal stories, this intimate and fast-paced tour of modern China celebrates inspirational landscapes and presents translations of classical poems, many of which have never before been translated into English.
Porter is a former radio commentator based in Hong Kong who specialized in travelogues. As such, he is an entertaining storyteller who is deeply knowledgeable about Chinese culture, both ancient and modern, who brings readers into the journeyfrom standing at the edge of the trash pit that used to be Tu Mu's grave to sitting in Han Shan's cave where the Buddhist hermit "Butterfly Woman" serves him tea.
Illustrated with over one hundred photographs and two hundred poems, Finding Them Gone combines the love of travel with an irrepressible exuberance for poetry. As Porter writes: "The graves of the poets I'd been visiting were so different. Some were simple, some palatial, some had been plowed under by farmers, and others had been reduced to trash pits. Their poems, though, had survived... Poetry is transcendent. We carry it in our hearts and find it there when we have forgotten everything else."
In praise of Bill Porter/Red Pine:
"In the travel writing that has made him so popular in China, Porter's tone is not reverential but explanatory, and filled with luminous asides... His goal is to tell interested foreigners about revealing byways of Chinese culture."New York Review of Books
Porter is an amiable and knowledgeable guide. The daily entries themselves fit squarely in the travelogue genre, seamlessly combining the details of his routes and encounters with the poets’ biographies, Chinese histories, and a generous helping of the poetry itself. Porter’s knowledge of the subject and his curation of the poems make this book well worth reading for travelers and poetry readers alike. It’s like a survey course in Chinese poetrybut one in which the readings are excellent, the professor doesn’t take himself too seriously, and the field trips involve sharing Stagg bourbon with the deceased.”Publishers Weekly
"Red Pine's out-of-the-mainstream work is canny and clearheaded, and it has immeasurably enhanced Zen/Taoist literature and practice."Kyoto Journal
"Bill Porter has been one of the most prolific translators of Chinese texts, while also developing into a travel writer with a cult following."The New York Times
"Red Pine's succinct and informative notes for each poem are core samples of the cultural, political, and literary history of China." Asian Reporter
Poets’ graves visited (partial list): Li Pai, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Su Tung-p’o, Hsueh T’ao, Chia Tao, Wei Ying-wu, Shih-wu (Stonehouse), Han-shan (Cold Mountain).
Bill Porter (a.k.a. "Red Pine") is widely recognized as one of the world's finest translators of Chinese religious and poetic texts. His best-selling books include Lao-tzu's Taoteching and The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. He lives near Seattle.

Finding Them Gone: Visiting China's Poets of the Past

History & Criticism

An essential collection from the leading figure of Chinese poetry translation, presenting work of insight, humor, and musicality that continues to resonates across thousands of years. Red Pine is one of the world's finest translators of Chinese poetic and religious texts. His new anthology, Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine, gathers over thirty voices from the ancient Chinese past--including Buddhist poets Cold Mountain (Hanshan) and Stonehouse (Shiwu), as well as Tang-dynasty luminaries Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan. Dancing with the Dead also includes translations from such religious texts as Puming's Oxherding Pictures and Verses and Lao-Tzu's Daodejing, as well as poems and woodblock illustrations from Su Po-Jen's Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom, one of the world's first printed books of art.&#8239;&nbsp; Throughout the book, poems are accompanied by footnotes providing historical context, and each section includes a new and illuminating introduction chronicling Red Pine's relationship to the poet--discovery, travel, scholarship. Dancing With The Dead is more than a book, it is a journey: part travel essay, part road map, part guided meditation. It is a history translated in poem.&nbsp; For Red Pine, "translating the words in a Chinese poem isn't that hard, but finding the spirit that inspired those words, the music of the heart, and asking it to inspire [his heart], that is how, and why, [he] translates."&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;"our luggage is full of river travel poems&#8239;&nbsp; may we ride forth together again."&nbsp; - Wei Yingwu

Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine Translations

Zen Buddhism is often said to be a practice of mind-to-mind transmission without reliance on texts --in fact, some great teachers forbid their students to read or write. But Buddhism has also inspired some of the greatest philosophical writings of any religion, and two such works lie at the center of Zen: The Heart Sutra, which monks recite all over the world, and The Diamond Sutra, said to contain answers to all questions of delusion and dualism. This is the Buddhist teaching on the perfection of wisdom and cuts through all obstacles on the path of practice. As Red Pine explains: The Diamond Sutra may look like a book, but it's really the body of the Buddha. It's also your body, my body, all possible bodies. But it's a body with nothing inside and nothing outside. It doesn't exist in space or time. Nor is it a construct of the mind. It's no mind. And yet because it's no mind, it has room for compassion. This book is the offering of no mind, born of compassion for all suffering beings. Of all the sutras that teach this teaching, this is the diamond.

The Diamond Sutra

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Counterpoint

In 1989, Bill Porter, having spent much of his life studying and translating Chinese religious and philosophical texts, began to wonder if the Buddhist hermit tradition still existed in China. At the time, it was believed that the Cultural Revolution had dealt a lethal blow to all religions in China, destroying countless temples and shrines, and forcibly returning thousands of monks and nuns to a lay life. But when Porter travels to the Chungnan mountains the historical refuge of ancient hermits he discovers that the hermit tradition is very much alive, as dozens of monks and nuns continue to lead solitary lives in quiet contemplation of their faith deep in the mountains. Part travelogue, part history, part sociology, and part religious study, this record of extraordinary journeys to an unknown China sheds light on a phenomenon unparalleled in the West. Porter’s discovery is more than a revelation, and uncovers the glimmer of hope for the future of religion in China.

Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits

History

In the spring of 2006, Bill Porter traveled through the heart of China, from Beijing to Hong Kong, on a pilgrimage to sites associated with the first six patriarchs of Zen. In Zen Baggage, Porter takes readers to places few Westerners have ever ventured, weaving together historical background, interviews, and translations of the earliest known records of Zen along with personal vignettes into a fascinating tale of discovery. Porter's account captures the transformations taking place at religious centers in China but also the legacy they have somehow managed to preserve. Porter brings wisdom and humor to every situation, whether visiting ancient caves containing the most complete collection of Buddhist texts ever uncovered, enduring a six-hour Buddhist ceremony, or meeting the abbess of China's first Zen nunnery. Porter's Road to Heaven: Encounters with Hermits has become recommended reading at Zen centers and universities throughout America and even in China (in its Chinese translation), and Zen Baggage is sure to follow suit.

Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China

Dramas & Plays

The Diamond Sutra: The Perfection of Wisdom

Religion & Spirituality

Buddhism

The three most venerated sutras of Zen in a true pocket-sized edition from a legendary practitioner and translator of Buddhist teachings. These three Sutras, often linked to form a trio of texts that have been revered and studied for centuries, are now available together in this single volume. Red Pine, whose acclaimed translations these particular Buddhist texts are considered canon, provides a sensitive and assured treatment of the classic triumvirate in a gift-sized volume, perfect for sharing with anyone seeking guidance and peace. The Heart Sutra, with its profound and wide-reaching influence on Buddhism, offers the Prajnaparamita teaching of emptiness. The Diamond Sutra, said to contain answers to all questions of delusion and dualism, outlines the bodhisattva path followed by the Buddha. And The Platform Sutra is an autobiography of Hui-neng, the controversial 6th Patriarch of Zen. His understanding of the fundamentals of a spiritual and practical life has served as the introduction to the teachings of Zen that students have been putting into practice for the past 1300 years. In addition to new translations of all three texts, Red Pine has included an introduction that ties all three together and just enough footnotes to explain what needs explaining but not enough to get in the way.

Three Zen Sutras: The Heart Sutra, The Diamond Sutra, and The Platform Sutra (Counterpoints)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Alternative Medicine

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pine, Red. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pine, Red

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pine, Red. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

P'u Ming's Oxherding Pictures and Verses, 2nd Edition

Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

Finding Them Gone: Visiting China's Poets of the Past

Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine Translations

The Diamond Sutra

Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits

Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China

The Diamond Sutra: The Perfection of Wisdom

Three Zen Sutras: The Heart Sutra, The Diamond Sutra, and The Platform Sutra (Counterpoints)