This admirer of Tao Yuanming, the first to pay attention to the hermit of Zhongnan Mountain, was now facing the bustling crowd again.
During the Labor Day holiday, 75-year-old American writer Bill Porter rushed from Nanchang to Shanghai and from Shanghai to Beijing. Everywhere he went, he was confronted with the readers he had accumulated over the years. Since the publication of the hermit's 2001 book, Empty Valley Youlan, which chronicles the life of a hermit, he has published nine books in China. These books, without exception, run through two themes, "Hermit" and "Ancient Poet". Among them, "Empty Valley Youlan" is the most popular, has sold more than 200,000 copies, triggering many people to flock to Zhongnan Mountain to visit you. There are also people who read the book and really become a hermit.
The interview with Bill was arranged in a newly opened bookstore. When I saw him, he was hunched over, sitting at a desk at the end of the bookstore, quickly writing something. The white hair on the head has gradually become scarce, the big white beard on the lower jaw is still plump, the red face, the facial features are slightly rough, looking like Santa Claus, but also like Hemingway. While waiting for reporters, he signed some cards printed with peach blossoms. The new book "A Thought of Peach Blossom Garden" will not be fully available until early June, but readers who come to ask for signatures are already in an endless stream.
Bill Porter, who lived in Taiwan for nearly 20 years, spent most of his time living a secluded life away from the world. Today, he lives in a house built more than 100 years ago in rural Seattle. When he was fine, he would stay at home reading and drinking tea. "Except for going to the supermarket to buy daily necessities, I generally don't want to go out."
However, he did not hate facing crowds at all. "Readers are an incentive," he said, "and if I didn't know my book could affect so many people, maybe I wouldn't have written it." Although he has long been accustomed to traveling and wandering, he still feels that it is a chore to travel to 3 cities in 5 days. In his books, he is always seen treating not too good situations with a generous sense of humor. "It's okay, I'm not tired, I'm going to Beijing by train, I don't have to go by myself." He grinned, and the big white beard shook slightly.
One ancient book, one trip, three hermits
After completing the last book in his contract with the publisher, and going through years of constant walking, writing, and being urged to write, Bill is finally retiring. Originally, he could have stayed in the United States and lived on Chinese fees. But because of a coincidence, more than a year ago, he couldn't hold back and got back on the road.
The opportunity to write "A Thought of Peach Blossom Garden" came from the touch of a reader. Li Xin is the translator of the new book and a friend of Bill's. In 2012, he read a story about Bill from China Daily and went to the United States to find him. One after another, the two became friends.
Li Xin bought a set of lithographed wire bound books at a Chinese antique shop, which were compiled by Wen Runeng during the Jiaqing period, and the second-year edition of the Tao Poetry Review. The former is a japanese poem written by Su Dongpo for each Tao poem, and the latter is a collection of Tao Yuanming's poems. Knowing that Potter liked ancient poetry, Li Xin gave him this set of books as a gift.
Tao Yuanming was Potter's favorite poet, but before reading "Hetao Heji", he did not know that Su Dongpo, 1000 years ago, actually summed all the poems of Tao Yuanming before 1700 years ago. "It was Su Dongpo who really 'discovered' Tao Yuanming." In "A Thought of Peach Blossom Origin", Potter wrote.
Potter slowly traced this history along two ancient books. He found that Su Dongpo's increasingly strong spiritual resonance with Tao Yuanming was closely related to his official frustration. In 1091, Dongpo was appointed as the Taishou of Yangzhou, and from then on, he began to work with Tao Shi. After being demoted to Lingnan Huizhou, he decided to "exhaust and Tao Shi". In the end, when he was demoted to Danzhou, Hainan, all the "Hetao poems" were completed. At that time, he was also close to the end of his life. "When Su Dongpo was seriously frustrated in his career and his life was confused, he needed to find someone to talk to and understand himself by understanding others."
This kind of admiration and singing of the hermit made Bill, who had planned to "return to the garden and live in the field", yearn for it. Therefore, he and Li Xin and another friend met and traveled together to visit Su Dongpo and Tao Shi when they experienced the landscape and water shaped victory. From Changzhou, they took Yangzhou in Jiangsu, Huizhou in Guangdong and Danzhou in Hainan as the main line to find the places where Su Dongpo had visited. Everywhere they went, they would meet with local history researchers to learn about the stories left by Su Dongpo.
The pilgrimage is a performance after performance
"Chinese told me that usually only descendants would sacrifice and pour wine in front of the grave, but I felt that the poets were my relatives." With wine, to the place where the poet had been, to drink with them, to recite a poem, it was a special ritual for Bill to pay homage to spiritual idols. In 2012, he took two bottles of corn-brewed 73° bourbon to a quest for 41 ancient Chinese poets.
This time, because of Li Xin's help, his set of rituals looked more rigorous. Of course, the wine used for worship was replaced by Chinese liquor, and the cup was replaced by Su Dongpo's favorite lotus leaf cup. Before leaving, Li Xin did his homework and examined the local wine mentioned by Su Dongpo in the poem, and prepared them one by one. In Huizhou, they used cinnamon wine, because Su Dongpo recorded in the "Ode to Cinnamon Wine" that he had invited the secret recipe of winemaking from an old master and then successfully brewed it himself. It is said that cinnamon can resist miasma and enhance physical fitness.
After arriving in Danzhou, Su Dongpo brewed Tianmen Winter Wine in the New Year. "Tianmen winter ripe New Year happy, Qumi spring fragrance and give up the smell." This is a verse written by the poet in the first month of 1100 AD. In the academy founded by Su Dongpo in Danzhou, Bill and Li Xin toasted him with Tianmen Winter Wine and recited "Drinking Alone with Tao Lianyu".
Li Xin was a multinational executive, rigorous and strive for perfection. For this trip, they prepared for a year. Bill said he was a casual person. When he went out with bourbon, he never thought about whether the Chinese poets under the Nine Springs welcomed the import of foreign wine, but those were not important. Travel and worship, for him, are just his "self-oriented performances, a performance art." "It was nice if my prior arrangements failed. It's also good to find someone without encountering someone. "He loves accidents in travel. If a trip goes exactly as planned, it will make him feel uninteresting.
In 1999, Bill visited the graveyard of Su Shi's concubine Wang Chaoyun. At that time, he was entrusted by a friend to put down an emerald in front of the tomb. Nearly 20 years later, when Bill came to the Tomb of Wang Chaoyun in the Lonely Mountain of Huizhou again, he groped for a moment to see if the gems that had been put down at that time were still there. The result, of course, is "I didn't find it, maybe it's already in the soil." But did the gem really get into the soil? Or was it taken away? Bill said he hadn't had the slightest desire to inquire.
He visited tao tombs in a military-controlled area several times without encountering them. This time I went again, but I still couldn't get permission to enter. He only stood for a moment, gave the soldier a book, and left. "Su Dongpo is a very persistent person, and I am a person who is easy to give up." Compared with Su Dongpo, Bill felt that he was closer to Tao Yuanming, because "Tao Yuanming's decision is my decision, and I am more similar to him."
Judging purely from the perspective of a hermit, Bill believes that "Su Dongpo is a failed Tao Yuanming." In the last stage of his life, Su Dongpo was still trapped in the dust net. He could only trace the peach blossom source outlined by Tao Yuanming in the spiritual world to water the block in his heart. Even if he lived a poetic and idyllic life, he was not seeking to hide after all, and he always had helplessness in his heart. But "this does not mean that Tao Yuanming is better than Su Dongpo", because Su Dongpo, as a Confucian, is "brave". He underwent several changes of throne in his life, and the strategy of national reform also wavered several times, and he continued to rise and fall in this fierce struggle. "He is willing to suffer for others, and he is willing to help the world."
"Sometimes you can be an official, but under some conditions, you shouldn't be an official." Bill felt that for a Confucian, whether to become an official or not was a very important decision.
The guests in the house are all dummies, and only the servants are real
"In the United States, after the age of 18, people have to think about making money." Bill was a complete exception, and from the time he was a teenager, he lived a life different from that of ordinary people. During his undergraduate studies, he switched three majors between art, psychology, and English literature, but never completed the most elementary courses. A year later, he dropped out of school for the third time. "Before I went to college, I thought there was truth in college, but in fact there was none. The likelihood of attaining truth in meditation is greater. ”
Before the Vietnam War began, he became a deserter and went to Columbia University to study for a Ph.D. in anthropology. I chose anthropology because "anthropology allows me to see different ways of life" and "this life is short, and I want to find a life that suits me". This time, he still couldn't hold on. "In the end, I found that every society, every life, has problems. Ultimately, you have to make your own decisions. ”
If you want to explain his wandering "non-mainstream" life in his early years, you may use a sentence he said himself: "I have seen through the red dust since I was a child, and I am a person who solved the problem of money very early."
Bill was born into a wealthy family. His father, who made his fortune in a hotel chain, had connections in both political and business circles, was close to the Kennedy administration, and was a central figure in the California Democratic Party. But that's just part of the family story. Before becoming a fortune, his father was involved in fraud and robbery. In the process of robbing a bank, several accomplices were killed on the spot, and only Bill's father took a life and was arrested and imprisoned for 7 years.
In the eyes of young Bill, "money is not a very good thing" and "the guests who come to my house are dummies, they all wear masks and have their own purposes". Bill never associated with his father's friends, he only loved to talk to the servants of the family, "they are real people, honest, simple".
Eventually, ancient Chinese poetry and hermits became the anchorage of his soul. In 1972, after leaving Columbia University, he went to Taiwan to practice at Fo Guang Shan, and then moved to Haiming Temple, which is hidden deep in the mountains. Master WuMing was a famous monk in Taiwan, but after living at Haiming Monastery for two and a half years, Bill did not ask the abbot a single question or utter a word of Buddhism. "If you want to bother him, it has to be a real problem. But as soon as I think of a question, I slowly get the answer. They communicate life trivia like "eat or not." "The Dharma is about living a life, and the great practitioners are just talking to you about 'living a life.'" Theories are just thoughts, and these things may tie you up and trouble you. ”
Bill stayed at Hamin Temple for two and a half years. Master WuMing had advised Bill to become a monk, but was politely refused. But he was also "really embarrassed to stay any longer." Before leaving, he received bodhisattva ordination in the temple. He had three scars on his right arm, which were left by that ordination. They were now hidden in his wrinkled, spotted skin, and would have been difficult to identify at a glance had they not been specifically pointed out by himself.
In addition to "Bill Potter", he also has a name: "Akamatsu Resident". After leaving Haiming Temple, Bill moved to a farmhouse by the Seven Stars Mountain Bamboo Lake and lived a semi-reclusive life. In that room, he began translating Hanshan's poems, publishing English works such as the IshiyayamaJu Poetry Collection and the Bodhidharma Zen Dharma under the pseudonym "Akamatsu-goer".
In 1989, in order to see if there are really people like Hanshan in the world, Bill decided to go to Zhongnan Mountain to find a hermit. Before leaving, he interviewed Wang Wenyang, the eldest son of Formosa Plastics Founder Wang Yongqing, and asked this question: "Your father always said to you, Plastics!" Plastics！ Will you still say this to your son in the future? "No. I would tell him to follow the Word, to follow the Word. ”
This writer, who has followed the "Tao" in his heart for half a lifetime, has now settled down. He was older and more financially prosperous than before, and did not need to work as a tour guide to make ends meet and earn money. Home is now the place he wants to stay most. He arranged the home as he liked, with white as the base, wooden furniture as the mainstay, and everything was simple. "The 'Tao' is to live a life." Bill said.
"A Thought of Peach Blossom Garden"
Beauty by Bill Porter
CITIC Publishing Group April 2018 Edition