Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emmanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine.

In each issue, we feature in-depth interviews, narrated essays, and stories,

exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Bill Porter, famously known as Red Pine, is a translator of Chinese texts and an author. His translated works include The Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra, and his books include Zen baggage and the road to heaven, encounters with

Chinese hermits.

In this interview with staff writer Chelsea Steinauer Scudder, Bill Porter reflects on the hermit

tradition in China, and the years he spent meeting hermits still carrying on this ancient

tradition.

Chelsea spoke to him about his encounters and conversations with hermits and explores his long history with the great Zen and Taoist poets of Chinese history

and why their words remain relevant today.

Well, it is great to be here with you, Bill. You've written numerous travelogues and accounts of your experiences in China using your given name Bill Porter, but a lot of people actually know you by the name Red Pine. The name you use translating Chinese texts and poetry. And I wonder if we could just

begin with hearing how you chose that name and why you use it. Red Pine is a name I started using

when I moved out of the monastery in Taiwan where I'd been living in these two different monasteries for

almost four years, where I was victorious cloud. And when I moved out of the monastery, I needed

a new name. I couldn't use victorious cloud on the street. Just before I left the monastery,

the abbot had given me the poems of Cold Mountain with some, I needed pirated Burton Watson's English translations of one-third of those.

So I had actually started looking at the poems and started translating them.

I discovered that translating is a great way to learn a language.

You can read something in Chinese and think you understand it.

But if you try to translate it, you really discover areas that you don't really know that well.

And so you work hard to get a better understanding.

...