In China, from the 20th century to the present, Hanshan is not a very famous person. But in the United States after the 1950s, Hanshan was a celebrity. In the eyes of many Americans, he is the best poet in China and the spiritual idol of hippies. When it comes to the beat generation and hippies, most people think of collapse, decadence, indulgence, drug abuse and so on. However, when Jack Kerouac first used the word "Beat Generation" in 1948, he said that the so-called Beat Generation is a new free generation that combines the spirit of Buddhism and Catholicism.
Simply put, collapse or hippies hide a very simple pursuit: freedom from prejudice. Bring a brand-new world to the world.
1958, Jack Kerouac, the representative writer of the Beat Generation and the author of On the Road, wrote a novel, The Wanderer of Dharma. The title page reads: I dedicate this book to Hanshanzi. In this novel, Kerouac calls Hanshan Zen a madman.
On the Road wrote about a crazy man: Dean moriarty. Sal, the narrator in the novel, takes Dean home. As soon as his period sees Dean, he decides that he is a psycho. Yes, this is indeed a neurotic person. Kerouac, however, saw the vitality of life and the enthusiasm and curiosity for infinite exploration of life from this man's nervousness. Nervousness, or madness, is just a rejection of mediocrity and a yearning for uniqueness. Starting from Dean, Kerouac wrote about a group of people, a group of eccentric people, a group of people who are always on the road: wandering around and doing nothing.
Either in a serious way or in a crazy way. But madness is not a drunken dream; On the contrary, to live seriously is to repeat in the same place, that is, to live a drunken life. The world is full of drunken faces, but there are few crazy smiles. Madness, madness in daily life, is actually a journey of seeking: hoping to find faith on the other side.
There seems to be a serious heart under the surface of debauchery, and there is nowhere to put it. When I arrived at the Dharma Wanderers, I found the beliefs on the other side, namely the Diamond Sutra and Hanshan Mountain. This novel may be of particular interest to readers in China, because we can read how hippies understand the Diamond Sutra and Cold Mountain, and how to find healing power from them.
Jaffe Ryder, the hero of Dharma Wanderer, talks about the reasons why he likes Buddhism and Hanshan: "My impartial attitude towards sex is one of the reasons why I like Eastern religions. I have noticed that Indians often hold this attitude ... You know, when I was still living in Oregon, when I was a young man, I didn't feel like an American at all, because the American middle class ideal, the repressive attitude towards sex, and the censorship system established to eradicate all human values made me hate it. "
Jaffe's prototype is Kerouac's friend and famous poet gary snyder. Gary snyder was not the earliest American translator of Hanshan Poems, but Arthur Wei Lei, who published Twenty-seven Hanshan Poems in 1954. Snyder didn't publish Twenty-four Cold Mountains until 1958, but Snyder's translation had a great influence. Many Americans know Hanshan from his translated poems.
Whether it's the beat generation in the 1950s, hippies in the 1960s or young Americans today, Hanshan is a symbol of freedom, representing a free lifestyle and a free mind. People don't have to focus on success or failure, right and wrong, fame and fortune. People can go their own way outside social habits to explore and experience the infinite possibilities of life itself. This is the message that Kerouac, Snyder and other American novelists and poets want to convey through the image of Hanshan, and it is also the spiritual color they give to madness: in this hypocritical and well-behaved society, madness and immorality will bring us to another lively, lively and creative life. And creation will become interesting because it is alive.
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