Röda Tallen

På NYROB:s blogg, en ständig källa till intressant läsning, hittar jag den här underbara gubben.

Tomteskägg, skrynklig kortärmad skjorta, fuskläder-manbag och träd - väldigt zen och väldigt 2012

Mannen är Bill Porter, översättare av kinesisk diktkonst och zenbuddism-kännare. Han har levt i åratal på food stamps och hittills inte sålt mer än ett tusental böcker i USA, trots sitt fantastiska översättaralibi "Röda Tallen" (赤松). Så här beskriver NYROB hans bakgrund:

"He had been a doctoral student in anthropology at Columbia University and took Chinese because it was a way to get a scholarship. Around the same time he became interested in Buddhism and eventually found it more spiritually rewarding. In 1972, he dropped out of the program to move to Taiwan and live in a Buddhist monastery. He stayed in Taiwan twenty years, making the translation of Chinese poetry into English his spiritual practice—for him, sitting down in front of the classics and figuring out what a writer from a thousand years ago was trying to say is a meditative experience."

Och så här säger Bill Porter om zen:

“Christianity asks you to believe in things that you can’t see: that there’s a god, that he had a son and so on. In Buddhism there is that too—there’s a paradise and so on. But in Zen Buddhism it’s mainly about your mind and your heart. You believe in something that is in your heart. That is something not abstract but real.”

Definitivt en man jag skulle vilja ha som sällskap när LiL pilgrimsvandrar, om inte annat i bokform.