From the Chiasmus Archive: November 11, 2018 "THE ZEN REBELS: OBSCURE HERMITS AND EXISTENTIAL REFORMERS. HAN-SHAN "THE MASTER OF COLD MOUNTAIN" (PART 8)"

(Image from the public domain.  Han-shan (left,) Fengkan (Centre), Shih-tê (right).  Companions of Han-shan.  Which could all be various embodiment's of the "Master of Cold Mountain")

After the 'Blue Eyed Barbarian' Bodhidharma, who came from Southern India – teaching from the Laṅkāvatāra Sutra.  It was of course unknown the impact that he had, as the first patriarch of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China.  Revealing that silent illumination as the essence of meditation and attainment, to which it also represented a clearer embodiment that is the meaning of the Buddha Nature.  Despite it being, what may appear at the time, the simplicity of stillness and focus of mind, it was taught the purpose of focus, is to view nothing - the void.   Without the chanting and reciting of the various sutras.  We learn through the early origins of Ch'an, it that the second patriarch (Dazu Huike) further enabled Zen to imprint with Taoism, which in turn set a precedence that became the philosophical backdrop to Zen Buddhism.  Before we look at the extension of the Chinese Zen teachers and their influence on their Japanese counterparts, who in turn, during the 12th century where able to take the teachings of Zen and craft it to what we now know as Japanese Zen. Particularly the impact of the Japanese Zen masters and pupils that followed thereafter.  We have to look back slightly as there is a character, who could be defined as one the most interesting of the various individuals who inherently has maintained a significance within the linage of the Zen.  It is the 6th century Chinese mythical hermit Han-shan ("The Master of Cold Mountain")

“My home was at Cold Mountain from the start,          
Rambling among the hills, far from trouble.          
Gone, and a million things leave no trace          
Loosed, and it flows through galaxies          
A fountain of light, into the very mind—          
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:          
Now I know the pearl of the Buddha nature          
Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.”

Such a elegant defining of Zen and Taoist expression translated form Chinese to English,  one of three hundred poems that were scrawled on rocks, trees and walls in and around  Mount Tiantai in the period of Tang Dynasty, a place well known at the time of its Taoist and Ch'an (Zen) hermits.  But, Han-shan may have been more myth than actuality, as there is no evidence, apart from the poems and depicted art, that he existed at all.  In the years that follow through into Zen literature, is the prolificness of Han-shan's poetry in which showed a great understanding of both Taoism and Zen Buddhism - yet, at times he also initiated a sharp critique at the establishments of Buddhism and Taoism.  This is why to this today, he is still immortalized  in China and Japan as the Master of Cold Mountain.  Although I wonder if Han-shan was a creation at the time, devised by a hermit as a story that transcended reality.  Cleverly initiating a pseudonym, a concept.  Portrayed as an entity which exists and does not exist simultaneously, thus, this individual  has wittingly freed himself from the constraints of attachment.  By creating a proxy reality whilst cultivating reality.  The story teller of the original mind.     

“The path to Han-shan's place is laughable,         
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.          
Converging gorges—hard to trace their twists          
Jumbled cliffs—unbelievably rugged.          
A thousand grasses bend with dew,          
A hill of pines hums in the wind.          
And now I've lost the shortcut home,          
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?”

Except,  Han-shan didn't travel alone.  He had, according to legend, two friends that traveled with him.  There names were Shih-tê and Fengkan also fellow poets, contributing to the collection of “Cold Mountain Poems”.  All three men were painted extensively in Chinese and Japanese Buddhist art, being depicted as three jolly eccentrics (and a tiger).  Able to laugh freely at the world whilst maintaining that unmistakable Zen perspective, that within the fleeting aspects of life; to laugh is also to understand its absurdity.  A rebellion of nature without rejecting it.    Which I feel is represented with this poem:

“Ha ha ha.  If I show joy and ease my troubled mind, 
Worldly troubles into joy transform.          
Worry for others--it does no good in the end.          
The great Tao, all amid joy, is reborn.  
In a joyous state, ruler and subject accord,          
In a joyous home, father and son get along.          
If brothers increase their joy, the world will flourish.          
If husband and wife have joy, it's worthy of song.          
What guest and host can bear a lack of joy?          
Both high and low, in joy, lose their woe before long.          
Ha ha ha.”

Despite Han-shan's ambiguity and mythical presence, his poems and the poems of his friend Shih-tê remain a Zen fixture, translated many times over the decades, promoted in the West as early as the 1950s and 1960s as a free spirited antihero of three possible different incarnations, the use of words and even imagery, which represent the Zen Freedom.  The releasing of the burden which torments us, that being both life and death.  For Han-shan, to what could be deemed as a mysterious trickster, to  live is enough.  This is what we can learn from his poetry.  

       
“However remote in the night's depths, 
Stars incline towards each other in constellations.          
Amid the shadows of many rocks, I raise but one lamp,          
For the moon arches, drawing me out          
In radiance, every facet cooly lit.          
It is my mind, suspended."

To be free:

"Children, I implore you get out of the burning house now. 
Three carts await outside to save you from a homeless life. 
Relax in the village square before the sky, everything's empty. 
No direction is better or worse, East just as good as West. 
Those who know the meaning of this are free to go where they want."

___

Authored by Adrian Glass