Layman Red Pine At the Bookworm

Bill Porter, known within the Buddhist community as Layman Red Pine, regaled a crowd at the Bookworm with stories of Chinese Zen Masters. An American who came to China years ago out of an interest in Zen Buddhism, he now writes books about Buddhism in China.

Red Pine told us about his journey through the mountains of China visiting Buddhist hermits, who are those monks who retire to mountains and caves for years, even decades, to live a life of austerity and devotion. Those who are able to live that life come out with a “Ph.D. in Zen,” and are able to teach others. He told us about the monasteries and Zen communities, those monks who are the only ones truly practicing communism in today’s China, that is to say, truly doing what Marx called “sharing the means of production.” He told us about the difference between zen and Zen: the former saw religion as the formal practice of meditation; the latter saw everything one does, from eating to shitting to meditating to chopping wood, as Zen—there is no separation.

And, he told us about legendary Zen masters, which is what his latest book is primarily about. The first Bodhidharma developed this particular style of Buddhism with an emphasis on meditation, but after several generations, there were only a handful of people on this path. Then, all of a sudden, its popular exploded within a couple generations to over a thousand devotees, as it proved to be a viable model.

He told us a story of supposedly the greatest Zen master in China of the past few enturies, Sun Lu(?). Both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai revered him, even while they destroyed temples and ransacked monasteries. One day, Zhou Enlai summoned Sun Lu? To Beijing, instructing him to come by himself. When he arrived and saw that hundreds of people accompanied him, Zhou Enlai was furious. He said, “I told you not to bring anyone!” Sun Lu responded, “I didn’t. These are all ghosts of dead people.” At that moment, they all vanished. After that encounter, Zhou Enlai ordered the protection of temples and monasteries throughout the country.

Red Pine’s own story was fascinating. He came to Taiwan on a graduate fellowship and, upon reading Alan Watts, realized that he was more interested in Buddhism than in academia. He learned Chinese, hung out in monasteries, and realized that he was not cut out to be a monk, for reasons not least of which was the celibacy requirement. He translated Tang Dynasty poetry, read the news on Chinese radio, and then began to track down Buddhist hermits, all the while basically being broke. Nowadays, he is married with kids, living in small town Washington State, still writing and translating, and I think still being broke.

A Tale of Two Hotpots

If you want a quick and easy meal, don’t eat hotpot. But if you are willing to work for your meal and are open to unexpected surprises and challenges, might I recommend trying out the hotpot restaurant nearest you.

Hotpot is a special kind of meal that sounds like what it is: a pot of hot liquid, in which you place various vegetables, meats, fungi, and other things. I recently went to a couple hotpot establishments, one in Beijing and one in Chengdu. Although the meals were essentially the same, the two experiences highlight the differences between the two kinds of cuisines.

The restaurant I went to with some Chinese classmates in Beijing was lined with large landscape paintings and dark-stained antique furniture. The feeling, as in many Beijing restaurants, was decidedly ceremonial. After the waiters served us an assortment of vegetables and meats to place in our pots, a man walks in with a ball of dough and asks for our attention. He begins to stretch, pull, and eventually sling dough around while simultaneously doing a little dance. He was clearly having a lot of fun. Still somewhat perplexed as to what this guy was doing, when he came around and gave each of us several long strands of dough, that he had just made some freshly hand-pulled noodles to cook into our pot.

When a few friends—Matt, Riley, and Jill—and I traveled to Sichuan, a province famous for spicy food and, indeed, where hotpot originally comes from, we knew we had to find some hotpot. After roaming the streets of Chengdu, we were delighted when we finally did find a very unassuming hotpot place, and though I was not quite sure what exactly I had ordered, and came to regret the duck intestines later, we were all in all quite happy. I cannot say that it came as a complete surprise that, halfway through the meal, we all began individual permutations of sweating, sniffling, and crying. Whatever they put in the sauce, it had a few extra notches of spicy kick! See our contorted faces below.