The meaning of life-as expressed in a single Chinese landscape painting- a new work of meditative philosophy by the renowned translator of the Chinese classics and author of Hunger Mountain.
David Hinton's many translations of classical Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling contemporary poems that convey the texture and density of the originals. He is also the first translator in over a century to translate the five seminal masterworks of Chinese philosophy- I Ching, Tao Te Ching,Chuang Tzu,Analects, andMencius. Hinton has received many national awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, both major awards for poetry translation, and most recently, a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
“In extraordinarily deft and patient hands, David Hinton delivers
us into the unknowable. Using as his guide the Chinese
landscape painter Shih T’ao and other sage
poet-painter-wanderers, he takes us to the very brink
of existence and consciousness, beyond linguistic dualities of
past and future, propelled by the life force that drives
through us, from one step to the next . . . you can almost
hear the footfalls of his thinking and Ch’an practice . .
. until we find ourselves in the strange surroundings of empty
mind and full heart, and finally, equanimity. It is an uncanny
journey, essential for all.”—Gretel Ehrlich, author of Facing
the Wave and This Cold Heaven
“A pellucid gem of a book—I couldn’t put it down. Through the
vision of a single, inexhaustible painting—whose depth opens
onto the mysteries of meditation, calligraphy, poetry, and
existence itself—Hinton gradually discloses for us the whole
vast and fathomless landscape of Taoist and Ch’an (Zen)
spirituality. At first we gaze wonder-struck into the
many-mountained distance; soon we find ourselves immersed; and
then we dissolve into the ch’i-mist drifting up the forested
slopes.”—David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous
“[Hinton is a] rare example of a literary Sinologist—that is, a
classical scholar thoroughly conversant with, and connected
to, contemporary literature in English.”—New York Review of
Books
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