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From Amazon
From 1966 to 1976 the malevolent rage of the Chinese Cultural Revolution struck a devastating blow to all religions in China, destroying countless temples and shrines that had stood for centuries and forcibly returning thousands of monks and nuns to lay life. Bill Porter had been told that the venerable hermetic tradition in China had also succumbed, but he went looking anyway. What he found, Taoist and Buddhist monks and nuns living in huts and caves deep in the mountains of central China, is more than a revelation, it is a glimmer of hope for the future of religion in China.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Porter, a Hong Kong-based writer whose previous books were published under the pen name Red Pine ( The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma ), lived in a Taiwanese monastery for three years in the 1970s and later translated works of some Chinese hermits long admired for their virtue. When travel to China opened up in the late 1980s, Porter began to search for hermits who might have survived under years of communism. His story is unusual, but his "encounters"--actually, brief interviews--produce not subtle observations but statements of gnomic profundity: " . . . the Tao is empty. It can't be explained." Still, Porter showed undeniable bravery as he trekked through the Chungnan Mountains in central China to interview more than 20 male and female hermits. Some hermits are circumspect about politics, having suffered under the Cultural Revolution, while others, like an 85-year-old monk who had lived in a cave for 50 years, are oblivious to the political changes. Porter's historical and literary reflections show sensitivity to his subject, but this book seems aimed only at those interested in such spiritual quests. Some of the photographs are starkly spectacular.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The hermit's life is not all warm and fuzzy,
By A Customer
This review is from: Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits (Paperback)
Unlike most books on Taoism, Buddhism and Zen this book is not philosophically cute, it doesn't warm the mind, and it's photographs don't make you wish you were on the next plane to China. This book just is. It taught me that being a Chinese hermit is sitting on a dirt floor in a cold, damp, stone hut with a leaky roof and snow, not rose petals, blowing around outside. Where other books left me with images of silk robes, and sitting cross-legged on bamboo mats in beautiful pagodas, this book slapped me in the face with a muddy, wet rag. Even the pictures were in black and white and although the hermits radiated an inner beauty and peace, their surroundings looked so bleak and inhospitable. I got a bang out of their disdain and boredom with tourists, and I now respect these wise and wonderful hermits all the more for the physical harshness of their living conditions and the clarity of their minds. As it was with one brilliantly in-tune hermit: "While he was talking, the gruel boiled over, and the watchdog was invited in to clean it up". He then concluded his fascinating discourse with the author with these words, "I'm just a mountain man, you know. I just string words together. They don't necessarily make any sense. How about some hot peppers in your potatoes?" For my little, insignificant mind anyway, raw Zen and raw Taoism.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Road to . . . another road!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits (Paperback)
Bill Porter is all talk and walk. We are glad he had so much fun hiking around China - it is something not many of us get the opportunity to do. We are glad he found a purpose for his wandering - most people know that purposeless wandering can cause a miriad of emotional and mental diseases. We are glad he takes an interest in the lives of those singular people who live in solitude in an environment that is politically, physically, mentally and spiritually challenging.However, Porter seems to be the kind of person who is the first to arrive for a party and the last to leave - he is the dreaded one who spends the entire party boring the other guests to near-mortification with endless stories that somehow all have a common thread - himself!! Please, Bill, keep walking! You need a few more roads under your belt before you will get the true essence of what these hermits are living for into your heart. Now the essence is lost in the crowded vault of your brain, which is too full of words, events, and ego to catch and communicate the subtlty of these lives. We want to know more about the fascinating hermits, and less about your rather predictable cogitations while you walk the roads to their huts.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Travellogue to China,
By Solitary08 "beved8" (South Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits (Paperback)
I was pleased at the start of this book, to have some geographical descriptions but it became more of a travel diary of where to go and what not to do. It is understandable that such an elusive prey as solitary hermits requires determined searching and physical effort, but less of the travellogue and more of the interviews may be useful. If you want to follow in some of Porter and Johnson's footsteps, be sure to have real time stamina and energy. This appears to be an exhaustive examination of the roads to travel. Little here to gain from insight and spiritual discovery, though there are a few gems hidden in the very wordy treatise. Not recommended for impatient travellers.
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