COLD MOUNTAIN (Shambhala Pocket Classics) [Paperback]

Han-shan (Author), Burton Watson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0877736685 | ISBN-13: 978-0877736684 | Edition: 2 Revised

One of the most popular classics of Zen-Taoist literature--now in a fine-quality miniature edition. The legendary Han-shan (of the 7th-century), whose name means "Cold Mountain," has been revered for centuries as one of the great poet-recluses of Asian literature. Unabridged. Two-color interior.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Aah! Poverty And Sickness
Above The Blossoms The Orioles Sing
All My Life I've Been Lazy
All Your Days Are Like A Drunken Stupor
Among A Thousand Clouds And Ten Thousand Streams
As For Me, I Delight In The Everyday Way
As Long As I Was Living In The Village
Be Happy If There's Something To Be Happy About!
The Birds And Their Chatter Overwhelm Me With Feelings
Body Clothed In A No-cloth Robe
Buddhist Priests Don't Keep The Commandments
By Chance I Happened To Visit An Eminent Priest
A Certain Scholar Named Mr. Wang
The Clear Water Sparkles Like Crystal
Cold Cliffs, More Beautiful The Deeper You Enter
Cold Mountain Is Full Of Weird Sights
The Crane With A Twig Of Bitter Peach In His Bill
A Crowd Of Girls Playing In The Dusk
A Curtain Of Pearls Hangs Before The Hall Of Jade
Do You Have The Poems Of Han-shan In Your House
Elegant Isw The Bearing Of The Fine Young Man
The Greatest Sages From Ancient Times
Han-tan Is My Home, She Said
Have I A Body Or Have I None
Here Are Four Or Five Young Fools
Here Is A Tree Older Than The Forest Itelf
Here We Languish, A Bunch Of Poor Scholars
Here's A Man With A Good Head And Belly
High, High From The Summit Of The Peak
How Cold It Is On The Mountain
How Pleasant Were Our Bodies In The Days Of Chaos
I Call To My Friends Picking Lotus
I Came Once To Sit On Cold Mountain
I Climb The Road To Cold Mountain
I Divined And Chose A Distant Place To Dwell
I Lie Alone By Folded Cliffs
I Look Far Off At T'ien-t'ai's Summit
I Sit Alone In Constant Fret
I Spur My Horse Past The Ruined City
I Think A Lot About The Days Of My Youth
I Think Of All The Places I've Been
I Took Along Books When I Hoed The Fields,
I Used To Be Fairly Poor, As Poor Goes
I Wanted To Go Off To The Eastern Cliff
I'm Not So Poor At Reports And Decisions
If You Have Wine, Call Me In To Drink
If You Sit In Silence And Never Speak
If You're Looking For A Place To Rest
In An Abandoned Garden
In My House There Is A Cave
In The Beginning, He Parted Heaven And Earth
In The House East Of Here Lives An Old Woman
In The Late Sun I Descended The Western Hill
In The Old Days When I Was So Poor
In The Third Month, When The Silkworms
In Vain I Slaved To Undersand The Three Histories
Last Night In A Dream I Returned To My Old Home
Last Year In The Spring When The Birds Were Calling
Living In The Mountains, Mind Ill At Ease
Man's Life Is Less Than A Hundred Years
Man, Living In The Dust
Men These Days Search For A Way Through The Clouds
My Father And Mother Left Me A Good Living
My Mind Is Like The Autumn Moon
The New Grain Hasn't Ripened Yet
North Of The City Lived Old Man Chung
Now I Have A Single Robe
Often I've Heard How Emperor Wu Of The Han
On Cold Mountain Lives A Naked Insect
Once I Was A Student With Books And Sword
The Peach Blossoms Would Like To Stay Through The Summer
People Ask The Way To Cold Mountain
The Place Where I Spend My Days
Reading Books Won't Save You From Death
The Rich Man Feasted In His High Hall
So Han-shan Writes You These Words
Some People Are Always Bragging Of Their Conduct
Someone Criticized The Master Orf Cold Mountain
Story On Story Of Wonderful Hills And Streams
Talking About Food Won't Make You Full
A Thatched Hut Is Home For A Country
They Laugh At Me For Being A Hick
Thirty Years Ago I Was Born Into The World
This Month, When Farmers Stay Indoors To Shun The Heat
Today I Sat Before The Cliff
Want To Know A Simile For Life And Death
What A Fine Shop This Is!
When I See A Fellow Abusing Others
When People See The Man Of Cold Mountain
Where White Clouds Pile On Jagged Peaks
Why Am I Always So Depressed
The Wife Of Lord Tsou Of Ti-yen
Wise Men May Be Free Of Greed
Wise Men, You Have Cast Me Aside
Wonderful, This Road To Cold Mountain
Yes, There Are Stingy People
Yesterday I Saw The Trees By The River's Edge
You Cannot Take My Will And Roll It Up
You Have Seen The Blossoms Among The Leaves
Young As He Was, Lord Tung
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Chinese

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Product Details

• Paperback: 141 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 2 Revised edition (November 10, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877736685
• ISBN-13: 978-0877736684
• Product Dimensions: 4.5 x 2.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,791,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Cold cliffs, more beautiful the deeper you enter...", June 20, 2001

By 

tepi "tepi" - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang poet Han-Shan (Paperback)

Burton Watson has always struck me as an eminently civilized scholar and as a fine translator. He wears his scholarship lightly, and doesn't overburden the text with extraneous matter. His many translations from Chinese and Japanese Literature are of uniformly high quality, and are well worth having as they are books one often returns to.

What little is known of the eccentric hermit Han Shan will be found in Watson's brief, interesting and informative Introduction. The book then goes on to offer a selection of one hundred of Han Shan's 8-line poems which provide us with glimpses of the poet's life on 'Cold Mountain,' and his thoughts and feelings about reality, life, and the world in general. Here is a brief example, with my obliques added to indicate line breaks :

"Cold cliffs, more beautiful the deeper you enter - / Yet no one travels this road. / White clouds idle about the tall crags; / On the green peak a single monkey wails. / What other companions do I need ? / I grow old doing as I please. / Though face and form alter with the years, / I hold fast to the pearl of the mind" (p.73).

The first line here reminds me of a famous haiku by Santoka Taneda, one of Japan's best loved poets and also a Zen-man like Han Shan. A translation of it will be found in John Steven's marvelous edition of Santoka, who translates:

"Going deeper / And still deeper - / The green mountains."

I think that both Han Shan and Santoka were getting at the same thing. Stevens comments: "Deeper and deeper into the human heart without being able to fathom its depth. . . ." ('Mountain Tasting,' p.37).

The human heart, yes, but also self, nature, time, reality, the mystery of existence, "the pearl of the mind," and, ultimately, the world of Buddha, or, for others, God. And deeper into the poems too as, to borrow the words of Robert Bly, "Baskets that Hold God."

Although Watson's 'Han Shan' is an early work, it's wonderfully readable and his translations are of a quality that put him pretty well on a level with US poet Gary Snyder, who has also done a translation of Han Shan's poems. They will be found in his book, 'Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems,' and readers might find it interesting to compare the versions of these two very different translators, one an academic and the other a Zen adept.

Both Watson and Snyder are excellent in their different ways, and either would serve the needs of anyone who hasn't yet had the good fortune to read Han Shan. Read him once and you'll love him and never forget him. He's a fount of wisdom and very human, and his poems can be read with enjoyment by anyone.

And if you like Han Shan, as I'm sure you will, take a look at Santoka as you'll almost certainly like him too. In Han Shan and Santoka we see life and truth as reflected in two very special sensibilities, and we can all learn a lot from both.

Details of John Stevens' book are as follows :

MOUNTAIN TASTING : ZEN HAIKU BY SANTOKA TANEDA. Translated by John Stevens. 126 pp. New York and Tokyo : Weatherhill, 1980 and Reprinted.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great introduction to the works of a Zen monk/poet., March 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang poet Han-Shan (Paperback)

My first introduction to the poetry of Han-Shan, whose name means "Cold Mountain" in English, was through this collection of poems translated by Burton Watson. Of all the other translations of Han-Shan I have read, I still think Watson's is the best from a literary point of view. Watson has a clean and direct style of translation which compliments the simplicity of Han-Shan's verse wonderfully. The poems chosen for this collection touch on such subjects as the impermanence of life, the quest for enlightenment, and the simple enjoyment of living alone in the midst of Nature. Although Han-Shan was well read in Chinese and Buddhist literature, his poems are not dogmatic or inexcessible to the Western reader in any way. In fact, they have a freshness and immediacy that seems very modern.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When I'm totally fed up with "civilization"...., January 24, 2003

By 

OAKSHAMAN "oakshaman" (Algoma, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: COLD MOUNTAIN (Shambhala Pocket Classics) (Paperback)

I first read this Gem-like little book because Kerouac mentioned it in his _Dharma Bums_. I'm glad he did- this is one of the most profound and satisfying books that I've ever read. It is the book I tuck into my breast pocket when I'm totally fed up with civilization and just have to get away into the back country.

This is the finest example of the writings of the tradition chinese mountain man hermit. Yet, the chinese version of the hermit was most unlike the western pattern. These men didn't reject nature and the natural world to find the divine- they merged with it. These were men who could live life with an almost dionysian intensity complete with wine and wise cracks. These men could cut to the marrow of what is truly important in life. I'm sure old Han-shan must have driven Confusius and the imperial bureaucrats nuts....

The last poem of the 101 states: "Do you have the poems of Han-shan in your house? They're better for you than sutra reading." I couldn't agree more.