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Two Arrows Zen, 21 G Street, Salt Lake City, UT (2026)

10/10/2026

October 11, 2026, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Zen master, poet, author, and peace activist whose teachings helped bring mindfulness and Engaged Buddhism to an international audience. Known affectionately to his students as Thầy, meaning “teacher,” he spent nearly eight decades in monastic life, developing an approach to Buddhist practice that united meditation, ethical responsibility, and compassionate action.

Born in central Vietnam in 1926, Thích Nhất Hạnh entered Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế as a novice monk at the age of sixteen. His training was rooted in Vietnamese Thiền Buddhism, the Vietnamese expression of the Chan tradition that developed in China and later became known as Zen in Japan. He received Dharma transmission in the Lâm Tế lineage, the Vietnamese branch of the Linji tradition associated with Japanese Rinzai Zen.

His early monastic training took place during a period of profound political and social upheaval. As the Vietnam War intensified, Buddhist communities faced a difficult question: Should monks and nuns remain within their monasteries practicing meditation, or should they enter society to help those suffering from violence, displacement, and poverty?

Thích Nhất Hạnh maintained that these responsibilities could not be separated. Meditation and compassionate action were expressions of the same Buddhist path.

During the 1960s, Thích Nhất Hạnh became a leading figure in the development of Engaged Buddhism, an approach that applies traditional Buddhist teachings to social suffering, conflict, and the conditions of everyday life.

In 1965, he and his colleagues established the School of Youth for Social Service, which mobilized thousands of volunteers to rebuild villages, establish schools and medical facilities, assist displaced families, and provide humanitarian relief. The organization sought to remain independent of the competing political and military forces in Vietnam.

In 1966, he founded the Order of Interbeing, a community of monastic and lay practitioners committed to the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. These teachings applied the Bodhisattva Precepts to contemporary life, emphasizing compassion, nonviolence, freedom from ideological attachment, and responsibility for the well-being of others.

His understanding of interbeing emerged from the Buddhist teaching of dependent origination: nothing exists independently, and all phenomena arise through innumerable causes and conditions. He often illustrated this teaching through ordinary objects, explaining that a sheet of paper contains the clouds, rain, sunlight, and labor that made its existence possible.

For Thích Nhất Hạnh, recognizing interdependence carried ethical consequences. Harm to others, to communities, and to the natural environment could not be understood as separate from one’s own existence.

In 1966, Thích Nhất Hạnh traveled to the United States to advocate a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War. During that visit, he met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., beginning a friendship grounded in their shared commitment to nonviolence.

In January 1967, King nominated Thích Nhất Hạnh for the Nobel Peace Prize, describing him as a Buddhist monk whose work united scholarship, spiritual discipline, and practical efforts for peace.

His public opposition to the war and refusal to align himself with either side resulted in his exclusion from Vietnam. He would spend thirty-nine years in exile, continuing his work from Europe and participating in international peace initiatives, including the Buddhist Peace Delegation in Paris.

In 1982, Thích Nhất Hạnh and Sister Chân Không established Plum Village in southwestern France. It became the center of an international Buddhist community dedicated to mindfulness, ethical training, and the practice of peace in everyday life.

One of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s most enduring contributions was making traditional Buddhist meditation accessible through ordinary human activities. Walking, eating, breathing, washing dishes, and listening became opportunities to cultivate awareness.

His teachings emphasized that mindfulness was not simply a technique for relaxation or stress reduction. It was part of a broader path involving ethical conduct, concentration, insight, and the transformation of suffering.

He also taught that personal and collective suffering could not be addressed independently. Peace within oneself and peace within society were interconnected processes requiring sustained attention, understanding, and compassionate action.

His books, including The Miracle of Mindfulness, Peace Is Every Step, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, and No Mud, No Lotus, introduced millions of readers to Buddhist teachings on impermanence, suffering, compassion, and interdependence.

After returning to Vietnam for the first time in 2005, Thích Nhất Hạnh eventually settled at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, the monastery where his Buddhist training had begun. He died there on January 22, 2022, at the age of ninety-five.

His legacy continues through the Plum Village monastic community, the Order of Interbeing, and a worldwide network of lay practitioners and meditation centers.

Within the broader history of Zen, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s work represents an important development in the transmission of Asian Buddhist traditions to contemporary society. While firmly rooted in Vietnamese Thiền, his approach emphasized that the Bodhisattva path must encompass both contemplative practice and direct engagement with human suffering.

A century after his birth, his teachings continue to raise a fundamental question within Buddhist practice: How does awakening express itself in the world?

His answer was found not only in meditation halls and monasteries, but in the activities of daily life, in the care of others, and in the understanding that individual liberation and the well-being of the world are inseparable.

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Reading, Listening, and Resources

Plum Village — The Life Story of Thích Nhất Hạnh
- https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/biography

Plum Village — Extended Biography: His Life, Teachings, and Engaged Buddhism - https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/biography/thich-nhat-hanh-full-biography

The Order of Interbeing — History and the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings - https://plumvillage.org/community/order-of-interbeing

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Letter - https://plumvillage.org/letter-from-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nominating-thich-nhat-hanh-for-the-nobel-peace-prize-in-1967

Thích Nhất Hạnh — Mindfulness, Suffering, and Engaged Buddhism - https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/interviews-with-thich-nhat-hanh/thich-nhat-hanh-on-mindfulness-suffering-and-engaged-buddhism

Plum Village — Walking in Mindfulness: Recorded Dharma Talk - https://plumvillage.org/gems/event/Walking-in-Mindfulness-JNeHTrZuZ9GtRJ6R4xQKej/preview

The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute — Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Vietnam Peace Movement - https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/fellowship-reconciliation

Plum Village — Official Memorial and Teachings Archive - https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/memorial

10/08/2026

October 8, 2026, marks the 22nd anniversary of Yamada Ryōun Roshi becoming the fourth abbot of Sanbō Kyōdan, an independent Japanese Zen organization founded by Yasutani Haku’un Roshi in 1954. His succession marked an important transition in a lineage that played a significant role in introducing and developing Zen Buddhism in Europe, North America, and other parts of the world.

Born in Manchuria in 1940, Yamada began studying Zen at age sixteen under Yasutani Haku’un Roshi. Following his initial training, he continued his practice under his father, Yamada Kōun Roshi, the organization’s second abbot. He completed his formal Zen training in 1978 and received Dharma transmission from his father in 1985.

Yamada also maintained a professional career in business and finance. A Harvard Business School graduate, he held senior positions at Mitsubishi Bank and Mitsubishi Securities, reflecting Sanbō Zen’s longstanding emphasis on the possibility of rigorous Zen training within lay life.

Sanbō Kyōdan emerged from the Sōtō Zen tradition while incorporating the systematic kōan study associated with Rinzai Zen. Its founder, Yasutani Roshi, had trained under Harada Sōgaku Roshi, whose approach combined elements of both traditions. The resulting method emphasized zazen, direct realization of one’s true nature, and the continued deepening of insight through kōan practice.

Under Yamada Kōun Roshi, the organization became particularly influential in international Zen practice, including its engagement with Christian priests and religious communities. Kubota Ji’un Roshi, the third abbot, continued this international expansion before transferring leadership to Yamada Ryōun in 2004.

In his statement accepting the abbacy, Yamada emphasized that Sanbō Zen's foundation was zazen itself. He saw sitting meditation as more fundamental than kōan study, Dharma lectures, sutra recitation, or ceremonial regulations.

Under his leadership, Sanbō Kyōdan continued its international teaching activities and expanded its network of authorized teachers. In 2018, the organization formally changed its name to Sanbō Zen.

The Connection to Two Arrows Zen

Sanbō Zen also shares an important historical connection with Taizan Maezumi Roshi's White Plum lineage.

Maezumi received Dharma transmission in the Sōtō tradition from Hakujun Kuroda Roshi in 1955 and Inka from Yasutani Haku’un Roshi in 1970. He also received Inka from Kōryū Osaka Roshi in 1973. These transmissions helped integrate Sōtō and Rinzai methods within the White Plum lineage.

Two Arrows Zen teachers Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi and Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi received Dharma transmission from Genpo Merzel Roshi, a Dharma successor of Taizan Maezumi Roshi. Both later received Inka from Sidney Musai Walter Roshi in 2018.

Although Sanbō Zen and the White Plum Asanga are separate organizations, their histories intersect through Yasutani Roshi and the transmission of Zen practice in the West.

Yamada Ryōun Roshi's October 8, 2004, succession represents a continuation of this broader history, including the development of lay Zen practice, the integration of meditation and kōan training, and the international transmission of Japanese Zen Buddhism.

Reading and Resources

Yamada Ryōun Roshi — Original Statement Accepting the Abbacy, October 8, 2004 : https://ssl.sanbo-zen.org/announce_e.html

Sanbō Zen International — History and Succession of the Four Abbots : https://sanbo-zen-international.org/en/about/history/

Sanbō Zen — Fundamental Position and Teachings : https://sanbo-zen-international.org/en/about/position/

Yamada Ryōun Roshi — Did You Sit This Morning?: https://sanbo-zen-international.org/en/about/message/detail001/

White Plum Asanga — Taizan Maezumi Roshi and the White Plum Lineage : https://whiteplum.org/founder/

Two Arrows Zen — History and Dharma Lineage : https://twoarrowszen.org/about/history/

10/08/2026

October 8 marks the birth of Kyogen Carlson Roshi (1948–2014), an American Sōtō Zen teacher, author, and co-founder of Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland, Oregon. His work contributed to the development of Zen in the United States, particularly through the establishment of lay training programs, community-based practice, and interreligious dialogue.

Born in Los Angeles in 1948, Carlson studied sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, during a period of political and social upheaval. His interest in questions of human suffering and spiritual practice eventually led him to Shasta Abbey in Northern California, where he began formal Zen training in 1972 under Jiyu Kennett Roshi, an English-born Buddhist teacher who had trained in Japan.

Carlson was ordained in 1974 and spent nine years serving as Kennett’s personal attendant. He received Dharma transmission and authorization to teach before moving to Portland in 1982 with his wife and fellow Zen priest, Gyokuko Carlson Roshi.

In 1986, the Carlsons established Dharma Rain Zen Center as an independent Sōtō Zen community. The center developed an approach that combined traditional monastic discipline with opportunities for lay practitioners, families, and children. It also became an early American Zen community to establish formal pathways for authorizing lay teachers.

Carlson’s teaching placed particular emphasis on the Bodhisattva Precepts. In his essay Precepts as Path, he described the precepts not simply as ethical restrictions but as a complete framework for examining habitual behavior, understanding karma, and developing spiritual practice.

He was also active in Buddhist organizational leadership, serving as president of the Sōtō Zen Buddhist Association and participating in the American Zen Teachers Association. During his later years, he worked to establish dialogue between Buddhists and evangelical Christians, collaborating with Christian theologian Paul Louis Metzger.

Carlson died unexpectedly on September 18, 2014, shortly before his 66th birthday. His writings include Zen in the American Grain: Discovering the Teachings at Home (1994) and the posthumously published collection You Are Still Here: Zen Teachings of Kyogen Carlson (2021), edited by Sallie Jiko Tisdale.

His work remains part of the history of American Sōtō Zen, particularly the development of a practice tradition that accommodates monastic and lay life while maintaining the central importance of zazen, ethical conduct, and Dharma transmission.

Reading and Resources

Dharma Rain Zen Center — Obituary and Biography of Kyogen Carlson Roshi : https://dharma-rain.org/about/our-soto-zen-tradition/obituary-for-kyogen-carlson/

Dharma Rain Zen Center — History and Founding : https://dharma-rain.org/about/history-of-dharma-rain/

Kyogen Carlson — Precepts as Path (2014) : https://dharma-rain.org/precepts-as-path/

Zen in the American Grain: Discovering the Teachings at Home (1994) : https://stationhill.org/authors/kyogen-carlson/

You Are Still Here: Zen Teachings of Kyogen Carlson (2021) : https://www.shambhala.com/you-are-still-here-9781611809329.html

10/07/2026

It seems appropriate that the day after Bodhidharma Day there should be a Huike Day—or at least a conversation about the man who, according to Zen tradition, received Bodhidharma’s Dharma and carried it forward in China.

Most people who know Huike know one scene: a monk standing in the snow outside Bodhidharma’s cave, eventually cutting off his arm to demonstrate the seriousness of his desire for the Dharma. Then comes the famous encounter in which Huike asks Bodhidharma to pacify his troubled mind. Bodhidharma tells him to bring the mind forward. Huike searches for it and cannot find it. Bodhidharma replies, in effect, that the mind has now been pacified.

But Huike had a life before that encounter, and an important—and considerably more complicated—life afterward.

The earliest substantial biography comes from Daoxuan’s seventh-century Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks. It identifies him as Huike, also called Sengke, with the lay surname Ji, from Hulao, in what is now Henan Province. More importantly, Huike was apparently no inexperienced spiritual seeker. Daoxuan describes him as thoroughly acquainted with the Chinese classics as well as Buddhist scriptures and as possessing a reputation for unusual insight even before meeting Bodhidharma.

That changes the familiar picture considerably.

Huike was approximately forty years old when, according to Daoxuan, he encountered Bodhidharma, who was then teaching in the region around Mount Song and Luoyang. Huike recognized him as a teacher and studied with him for about six years, investigating what the source calls the “One Vehicle.”

In other words, the person who approached Bodhidharma was already an educated Buddhist practitioner with decades of life behind him. The meeting was not simply a novice discovering Buddhism. It was an accomplished Chinese seeker encountering a foreign meditation teacher whose approach apparently offered something Huike had not found elsewhere.

This is also where history and Zen legend begin to separate.

Daoxuan’s early biography does not say that Huike cut off his arm in the snow to convince Bodhidharma to teach him. Instead, it says that Huike later encountered bandits who severed his arm. He cauterized the wound, wrapped it and continued begging for food without telling people what had happened. The familiar story of Huike deliberately severing his arm before Bodhidharma developed in later Chan literature and eventually became one of Zen’s great images of determination.

By the fifteenth century, the story was so firmly established that Sesshū Tōyō’s 1496 painting Huike Offering His Arm to Bodhidharma could portray the scene without explanation. The painting is now designated a National Treasure of Japan.

The arm story, then, may tell us less about the literal circumstances of Huike’s injury than about how later Zen understood him: as the embodiment of uncompromising commitment to practice.

After Bodhidharma’s death, Huike did not disappear into the lineage chart. Daoxuan says that Bodhidharma died near the Luo River and that Huike participated in his burial. Soon afterward, around the beginning of the Tianping era in 534, Huike traveled north toward Ye, one of the major political and Buddhist centers of northern China. There he began teaching publicly.

His teaching apparently attracted considerable attention—and opposition.

Daoxuan describes a meditation teacher named Daoheng, whose community numbered in the thousands. People sent from Daoheng’s circle to challenge or undermine Huike instead listened to him and became persuaded by his teaching. The resulting dispute escalated into denunciation and involvement by secular authorities. The account itself contains chronological and narrative difficulties, so it should not be read as a straightforward modern biography, but it preserves an important early memory: Huike’s teaching was controversial within the Buddhist world of his own time.

Huike also appears to have lived very differently from the later image of a patriarch presiding over a large monastery. The early record depicts a wandering and austere teacher moving through Ye and Wei, teaching monks and laypeople, sometimes communicating teachings through ordinary speech, verse and song. His circle included severe ascetic practitioners who possessed little more than a robe and begging bowl.

One surviving exchange with Layman Xiang is particularly revealing. Xiang writes that trying to eliminate delusion in order to obtain nirvana is like abandoning a form while searching for its shadow. Huike answers that ignorance and wisdom are not ultimately separate and asks why, if the body and Buddha are not fundamentally different, one must search elsewhere for liberation.

That sounds remarkably close to the Huike of the “pacify my mind” encounter: stop searching for some separate object called awakening and examine directly what is already present.

And then there is the lineage.

Later Zen tradition presents a beautifully simple succession:

Bodhidharma → Huike → Sengcan → Daoxin → Hongren → Huineng.

Historically, it was not nearly that tidy.

Daoxuan actually laments the difficulty of identifying Huike’s successors and says that his line did not leave an obvious flourishing heir. Sengcan, later remembered as the Third Patriarch, appears only briefly in the early record; the clear patriarchal succession from Huike to Sengcan becomes established in later Chan histories. Modern scholarship therefore treats the early lineage as a tradition that gradually took its classical form rather than as a continuously documented institutional genealogy.

Even Huike’s death remains uncertain. The traditional dates are 487–593, and later accounts describe an elderly Huike being executed after opposition from rival religious figures. The surviving early sources are not sufficiently consistent to reconstruct the circumstances of his death with confidence.

That uncertainty may actually help us see Huike more clearly.

Behind the snow, the severed arm and the famous kōan was a Chinese Buddhist intellectual and ascetic who had already spent decades studying before meeting Bodhidharma; who studied with him for years; who buried his teacher; who wandered through a politically unstable northern China; who taught monks and laypeople; who attracted both disciples and enemies; and whose teachings survived even though the historical details of his succession remain surprisingly difficult to recover.

Bodhidharma may be remembered as the figure who brought the ancestral tradition into China.

Huike is the person through whom it had to become Chinese.

And perhaps that is reason enough for a Huike Day.

READING / FURTHER STUDY

Daoxuan — Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks (Xu Gaoseng Zhuan)
One of the earliest important historical sources for Bodhidharma and Huike. The surviving Chinese text is available here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NLC892-ZHCH0776-197450_%E7%BA%8C%E9%AB%98%E5%83%A7%E5%82%B3_%E7%AC%AC18%E5%86%8A.pdf

Eric Greene — “Another Look at Early Chan: Daoxuan, Bodhidharma, and the Three Levels Movement”
A useful scholarly study of Daoxuan and the problems involved in reconstructing early Chan history.
https://doi.org/10.1163/008254308X367022

John R. McRae — Seeing Through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism
One of the best accessible scholarly treatments of how the early Chan patriarchal lineage developed historically.
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/seeing-through-zen/epub-pdf

Wumenguan / Gateless Gate, Case 41 — “Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind”
The classical kōan version of the encounter between Bodhidharma and Huike.
https://wwzc.org/wumenguan-mumonkan-case-41-bodhidharmas-pacifying-mind/

Kyoto National Museum — Huike Offering His Arm to Bodhidharma, Sesshū Tōyō, 1496
Useful background on one of the most famous artistic representations of the Huike story.
https://www.kyohaku.go.jp/eng/collection/meihin/suibokuga/item06/

Red Pine — The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
Includes translations of texts traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma and useful historical notes concerning Huike and the early lineage.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865473997/thezenteachingofbodhidharma/

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10/06/2026

Sunday morning practice offers a chance to begin the day with meditation, teaching, conversation, and community.

Join Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi and the Two Arrows Zen community for Sunday Wake Up on Sunday, October 11, a welcoming morning of sitting meditation, a Dharma talk with Diane or a senior student, and discussion over coffee and tea.

No previous Zen experience is necessary, and chairs are always welcome.

Sunday, October 11
8:30–10:15 am
Artspace City Center
230 S 500 W, Suite 155
Salt Lake City

10/04/2026

October 3 2026 marked the 83rd birthday of Bill Porter, better known by his pen name Red Pine, born in Los Angeles in 1943. For more than five decades, Porter has translated Chinese Buddhist scriptures, early Chan writings, Taoist texts, and classical poetry while documenting religious and literary traditions in China. He has published more than thirty books and received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a PEN Translation Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the inaugural Asian Literature Award of the American Literary Translators Association.

The path to Buddhist monasteries and Chinese mountain hermitages began in circumstances far removed from monastic life.

Porter’s father, William Arnold Porter, grew up on an Arkansas cotton farm and as a young man joined relatives in a series of bank robberies. Police intercepted the group in Detroit in 1926; the other members were killed, Arnold Porter was wounded, and he went to prison. His family later moved to Detroit, where his sisters Pearline and Pauline worked at the Cadillac Hotel restaurant and helped bring his case to the attention of Michigan’s governor. He received a pardon after serving six years.

Following his release, Arnold Porter used his share of proceeds from the sale of the family farm to enter the hotel business. The enterprise expanded rapidly. By Bill Porter’s birth in 1943, his father was a multimillionaire operating 52 hotels, eventually through the family’s Continental Hotel System.

Bill Porter consequently spent part of his childhood surrounded by considerable wealth. He attended the Black-Foxe Military Institute in Los Angeles, where one of his classmates was Joe DiMaggio Jr. Through that friendship, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe entered the Porter family’s social world. Porter later recalled Monroe visiting the family home with DiMaggio and remembered her simply as elegant.

The family fortune did not last. Porter made several attempts at college, spent three years in the U.S. Army in West Germany beginning in 1964, then earned a degree in anthropology from UC Santa Barbara and entered graduate study at Columbia University, where he studied anthropology and Chinese.

In 1972, Porter left Columbia and moved to Taiwan. He lived in Buddhist monasteries, spent several years among monks and nuns, studied Chinese, practiced Buddhism, and later settled in a farming community outside Taipei. He supported himself through teaching and English-language radio work.

Translation began partly as a way to learn Chinese more deeply. Porter discovered that translating a text exposed what ordinary reading could allow him to overlook. His early work centered on Hanshan, or Cold Mountain, followed by the Buddhist hermit-poet Stonehouse, or Shiwu. His first Cold Mountain collection appeared in 1983, followed by The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma in 1987.

He published under the name Red Pine — 赤松. Porter has said the name came to him after leaving monastic life; only later did he learn that Red Pine was also the name of an ancient figure in Chinese Taoist tradition.

Over the following decades, Red Pine translated texts central to the study of Chan and Zen, including The Diamond Sutra, The Heart Sutra, The Platform Sutra of Hui-neng, The Lankavatara Sutra, and writings associated with Bodhidharma, Sengcan, Yongjia, and Huangbo. His 2022 volume Zen Roots: The First Thousand Years gathers nine foundational Buddhist and early Zen texts.

A distinctive feature of Porter’s Buddhist translations is his engagement with the Chinese commentarial tradition. Rather than presenting sutras in isolation, he frequently places the text alongside interpretations from generations of Buddhist teachers, while also supplying Chinese source texts, textual histories, notes, glossaries, and variant readings.

Porter distinguishes translating Buddhist scripture from translating poetry. With sutras, he has said, the translator must question every phrase and find contemporary language capable of carrying the teaching without burying it beneath unnecessary technical terminology. With poetry, the task is to reach behind the words toward the experience and person from whom the poem arose.

His work extends far beyond Buddhist scripture. Red Pine has translated the Tao Te Ching and poets including Cold Mountain, Stonehouse, Tao Yuanming, Wei Yingwu, Liu Zongyuan, and Xin Qiji.

In 1989, Porter turned his attention to another old Chinese tradition: religious hermits.

Following the destruction of monasteries, temples, and religious institutions during the Cultural Revolution, many assumed that China’s centuries-old hermit tradition had largely disappeared. Porter decided to find out.

With photographer Steven R. Johnson, he traveled into the Zhongnan Mountains, south of Xi’an, an area associated with Buddhist and Taoist recluses for centuries. Instead of finding an extinct tradition, they encountered monks, nuns, Taoists, and other practitioners still living in mountain huts, temples, and hermitages.

Those journeys became Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, published in English in 1993. The book recorded not only the hermits’ teachings but their ordinary lives: growing food, gathering firewood, carrying water, surviving winters, meditating, chanting, and maintaining contemplative practices outside modern institutional life.

Then an unexpected reversal occurred: Porter became famous in China.

A Chinese translation of Road to Heaven appeared in 2001 as Konggu Youlan, commonly rendered Secluded Orchids in an Empty Valley. It initially sold only a few thousand copies.

Several years later, while researching Zen Baggage at Bailin Monastery, Porter met publisher Tang Xiaoming of Beijing Reader Publishing. Tang was struck that an American writer had traveled into the Zhongnan Mountains and documented a living religious tradition many Chinese readers knew little about or assumed had disappeared. He believed the book had simply failed to reach its audience.

Tang republished it in 2009.

The new edition sold roughly 100,000 copies within several years. Zen Baggage sold another 50,000, and Chinese publishers began commissioning additional travel books from Porter. Later reporting placed mainland sales of Road to Heaven at roughly 250,000 copies.

The reversal was unusual. Porter had written Road to Heaven to introduce Western readers to a Chinese religious tradition. Chinese readers then began using an American traveler’s account to rediscover parts of their own Buddhist, Taoist, literary, and contemplative heritage.

By 2012, Porter’s recognition in China was evident at an appearance at Beijing’s enormous Wangfujing Bookstore, where television crews followed him, journalists interviewed him, and readers lined up for autographs. His publisher arranged approximately twenty interviews during that visit.

Porter later recalled realizing how much had changed when, during a visit to Confucius’s birthplace at Nishan around 2010, a stranger recognized him and said he owned one of his books. Porter remarked that this had never happened to him in America.

His visibility eventually reached Chinese popular culture. Road to Heaven appeared in the widely watched television drama Ode to Joy, where a principal character holds up the book and recommends it.

Porter later returned to the Zhongnan Mountains with a Chinese film crew, roughly twenty-five years after his original journey. Rather than finding the hermit tradition disappearing, they encountered another generation of Buddhist and Taoist practitioners.

The result was the 2015 documentary Hermits (隱士), which follows Porter through the mountains as he talks with men and women living in seclusion. The film avoids elaborate narration, staged scenes, artificial lighting, and musical scoring. Porter asks practical questions: What do they eat? How often do they leave the mountain? What is their practice? How do they survive the winter?

An earlier film, Searching for Hermits in China with Red Pine, directed by Jack Estes in 1994, also accompanied Porter into China to visit Buddhist and Taoist monks, nuns, and hermits associated with the world described in Road to Heaven.

Porter’s work also influenced filmmaker Edward A. Burger, who read Road to Heaven, went to China, studied with a Zen hermit, and later made the 2005 documentary Amongst White Clouds. Porter does not appear in the film, but his book helped lead Burger to the Zhongnan Mountains.

Porter himself is now the subject of Dancing with the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation, directed by Ward Serrill. The documentary follows his life from his unusual Los Angeles childhood through Buddhist monasteries in Taiwan, travels through China, classical poetry, Buddhist scripture, and more than half a century of translation.

The title comes from Porter’s description of translation itself. The poet or monk whose words he translates may have been dead for a thousand years, yet translation requires an attempt to encounter the person through the surviving words — what Porter describes through the metaphor of “dancing with the dead.”

More than fifty years after arriving in Taiwan, Porter continues to translate, write, and travel. His recent work includes translations of Tao Yuanming and Xin Qiji, and in 2026 he was again traveling in China while working on a project connected with the poet Su Dongpo.

On October 3, Two Arrows Zen marks the 83rd birthday of Bill Porter / Red Pine and more than five decades devoted to translating and documenting Chinese Buddhist, Taoist, poetic, and contemplative traditions.

READING

Bill Porter / Red Pine — Copper Canyon Press
https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/authors/bill-porter/

Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits
https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/road-to-heaven/

Zen Roots: The First Thousand Years
https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/zen-roots/

The Platform Sutra
https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/the-platform-sutra/

The Lankavatara Sutra
https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/lankavatara-sutra/

Red Pine: Channeling Silent Voices — China Books Review
https://chinabooksreview.com/2026/09/10/red-pine/

Finding Zen and Book Contracts in Beijing — Ian Johnson, The New York Review of Books
https://www.nybooks.com/online/2012/05/29/zen-book-contracts-bill-porter-beijing/

Lone Moon Lights Cold Spring — interview with Bill Porter
https://emergencemagazine.org/conversation/lone-moon-lights-cold-spring/

My Life: Red Pine — South China Morning Post
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1495760/my-life-red-pine

WATCHING

Hermits (隱士) — Porter returns to the Zhongnan Mountains, 2015
https://youtu.be/lm-PuRXepxE

Open Buddhist University — Hermits
https://buddhistuniversity.net/content/av/hermits

Searching for Hermits in China with Red Pine — Jack Estes, 1994
https://letterboxd.com/film/searching-for-hermits-in-china-with-red-pine/

Amongst White Clouds — Edward A. Burger
https://youtu.be/39jSwdJg8ec

Dancing with the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation — official site
https://redpinemovie.com/

Dancing with the Dead — trailer
https://vimeo.com/867231004

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Tuesday	6:45am - 9am
	5:15pm - 7pm
Wednesday	6:45am - 9am
	5:15pm - 7pm
Thursday	6:45am - 9am
	5:15pm - 8:15pm
Friday	6:45am - 9am
	5:15pm - 7pm
Sunday	9:30am - 11:30am