CITY GUIDE >Culture and Events
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CITY GUIDE >Culture and Events
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One hand claps
By Chitralekha Basu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-14 08:55
"Zen masters do not like to talk They either slap you in the face or hand you a cup of tea," says Bill Porter, matter-of-factly. He should know, having lived with, at various times, and studied the practices of Zen monks since 1972. The idea was reaffirmed when Porter made a journey across the country, from Beijing to Hong Kong, trailing the footprints left by the first six Zen patriarchs - Bodhidharma, Hui Ke, Seng Can, Dao Xin, Hong Ren and Hui Neng - on Chinese spiritual and social life. The findings went into his most recent book, Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China (Counterpoint, Berkley). Indeed, by the time Porter was through with the exhausting six-week tour, he had shipped several consignments of tea, gifted to him by Zen monks, back home to the United States, and was still left with more. As for the famed reticence of Zen practitioners, who believe "to talk about it is to go right by it", Porter did manage to get enough words for a book, but learnt even more by seeing them at work. Watching the 100-year-old Zen master Ben Huan, who suffered during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) but became instrumental in the revival of Zen in China, using his calligrapher's brush with a quiet certitude was worth more words than could ever be spoken. Zen, a special sect of Buddhism that emerged in China in the 7th century, is based on the ideas of experiential wisdom and meditation. Porter was taken by Zen quite early on. As a graduate student of anthropology in Columbia University, he was meditating with a Chinese Buddhist monk. Soon he decided to chuck school, got his dad to buy a one-way ticket to Taipei and was inducted into the Fo Kwang Shan monastery. That was 1972. Porter's life has revolved around centers of Buddhist teaching and practice since then. He visited seats of Zen practice, sites where Zen-inspired poets lived and worked, trailing hermits in the misty hills of China. Although he moved back to the United States in 1999, to settle down in the unruffled and sparsely-peopled Port Townsend in Washington, Zen is too deeply ingrained in Porter's system. It's an inscrutable pull that makes him return to places touched by its aura. |
