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US Sinologist researching ancient poets in city
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He was born into a rich family, but became disillusioned with the material world in his youth. He could have finished his PhD and led a comfortable life as a university professor, but he gave it up. He has many chances to cash in, but he prefers to live modestly.
Bill Porter, 70, is an American Sinologist who, under the pen name Chi Song, or Red Pine, after a legendary Taoist, and has hailed the US enthusiasm for Chinese culture by publishing books on Zen, Taoism and Buddhism, and translating Chinese texts, primarily Taoist and Buddhist, including poetry and Sutras. He is now researching a new book on ancient poets who lived in Hangzhou.
He dropped out of his PhD program of anthropology at Columbia University in 1972 to go to the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Monastery in Taiwan. Only after about three years did Porter believe he could “graduate” and leave the temple.
In the following years he lived in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Since 1989, he has traveled extensively in China’s mainland, and published books including “Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits” (1993) and “Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China” (2008). The earlier book required him to explore remote and sometimes dangerous areas to look for hermits.
On a recent visit of his to China, Shanghai Daily caught up to him.
“Let things go so you can gain real happiness,” Porter said when asked about his life.
“Have fewer desires, and help others more. That is always right,” he said, explaining how to let go.
Those are also the basic theories of ancient Chinese philosophy. Classical verses in ancient books include, “One can be austere if he has no selfish desires,” and, “Do not fail to do good even if it’s small; do not engage in evil even if it’s small.”
Porter has published 15 books that he has either written or translated, yet he still lives frugally. He said he enjoys a simple lifestyle. “I like myself very much,” he said, as a result of knowing “how to live happily.”
He lives in Port Townsend, Washington, about a two-hour drive from Seattle, and is married with a Chinese woman from Taiwan who studies Chinese philosophy as well. They have a son and a daughter.
His “Road to Heaven” book records his journeys to visit Taoist and Buddhist hermits in China and interview them. Most of them lived in temples in remote mountains, and some had settled in caves, isolated from the outside world.
The hermits, unlike the Western stereotype of hermits as antisocial, were seeking wisdom with which to guide society. Seclusion did not necessarily mean individual seclusion — often they were in a relatively secluded monastery. They ate seeds and plants they grew, wore simple clothing and practiced qigong to stay healthy.
At times, Porter and his photographer had to walk on foot-wide plank paths built along a cliff face to reach caves.
“I am quite adventurous,” Porter said, adding that the subjects of his interviews had worthwhile things to say.
He has paid the price of adventure getting hurt at times. In March he broke his ankles ascending a mountain in Zhejiang Province.
He collected hundreds of interviews with Chinese hermits, aiming to “help foreigners understand how to live happily and transcend the self,” he said.
The book was translated into Chinese and published in 2001.
“In the materialistic world, people are like materialistic pests who worry about this and worry about that, and get no peace,” he said.
Porter, with bushy beard, old Chinese cloth shoes and cloth bag, said he was “disillusioned with the materialistic world” when he was only seven or eight years old. The boy, born in a family running a hotel business, felt more comfortable talking to the workers more than to rich relatives.
So when his father went bankrupt, he said he was “actually relieved,” and when he encountered Buddhism at the university, “I didn’t have any problem understanding exactly what it was talking about.”
Now he is preparing a new book, “Finding Them Gone,” in which he will hunt for traces of two poets, Lin Jinghe and Zhu Shuzhen, who lived in Hangzhou hundreds of years ago.
“Ancient Chinese poets are like my old friends,” he said.
“And I believe in my last life, I was a Chinese scholar, because I understand Chinese culture and read ancient Chinese so easily.”
So, what will he be in his next life?
“I don’t know, maybe a butterfly?” he said, laughing in a childlike way.
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