Bill Porter (Red Pine) on Chinese Hermits

[00:00:00] Well, Porter, thanks for coming on.

[00:00:02] Well, sure. My pleasure. It's good to.

[00:00:05] I'm always appreciative of other people sort of like these these books that I write and have, you know, interest in them.

[00:00:12] And so happy to talk with you today about it.

[00:00:15] Yeah, so you have a great book on Chinese hermit culture and tradition, which I found fascinating called Road to Heaven.

[00:00:24] There's also like I mentioned before we started rolling a couple of cool documentaries that I've I've come across.

[00:00:29] So to start us off, could you give a little summary of this tradition?

[00:00:35] Well, it goes back to the beginning of Chinese civilization that whenever they first started writing things down or writing things about what happened earlier in their in their early phases of civilization.

[00:00:52] There are always these hermit stories from the very beginning.

[00:00:56] And I use the word hermit because I don't know what other word to use, because we don't really have a word for what it is.

[00:01:06] It's sort of it.

[00:01:09] What it is, it's sort of a development out of the shamanic tradition of Central Asia, going back to the certainly to the Neolithic, if not before that, where certain members of a society have certain gifts

[00:01:24] and they to refine those those gifts, they often go into the mountains for to be alone for a while and to gather plants and ingest certain substances that give them visions and so forth.

[00:01:43] So that's always been the case throughout, you know, what we'd call Central Asia, Northern Asia, East Asia.

[00:01:53] And the hermits developed out of that around, say, around 5000 years ago, we get the earliest stories we have regarding this in China.

[00:02:08] We count events that happened around 2500, 2600 BC.

[00:02:13] Where an emperor would try to these early legendary emperors would often try to give their throne to a hermit.

[00:02:22] Because one famous occasion with Emperor Yao tried to give his throne to a hermit named Xi You.

[00:02:30] And Xi You was so mollified by the prospect of having to take over a throne,

[00:02:37] he went down into the stream nearby and washed out his ears. So those words wouldn't remain in his ears. And another hermit

[00:02:45] named Chao Fu was standing nearby. He said he got disgusted at Xi You for polluting the stream.

[00:02:53] So there's always been this attitude that hermits represent these people who are, shall we say,

[00:03:01] free of the material attachments we have to society, to our way of living our lives. And they're wiser in short.

[00:03:15] And more detached and are likely to benefit society because of that.

[00:03:23] And so this starts, I can say around about 5000 years ago, we get these stories. Of course, as the shamanism developed into Taoism and then Buddhism shows up and even Confucianism develops in China.

[00:03:39] Each of these three spiritual traditions all

[00:03:42] include this in their practices that certain members who undertake these spiritual paths reach a point where they also go into the mountains for a period. I like to tell people it's like spiritual graduate school.

[00:04:03] You don't do it because, oh, it sounds so cool and I'm going to go in the mountains because you won't last one winter.

[00:04:09] These are for these are people who have developed. They have some skill, some talents that other people don't have and they and some attraction to a path, a spiritual path. And so they practice with the teacher, whether it's Confucian Buddhist or Taoist. It all comes to the same thing. They reach a certain point where certain certain members want to experience the spiritual path.

[00:04:37] And they want to experience it for themselves because when you study with a teacher, you're reading books. You're listening to your teacher. Those are your teachers words. So you go into the mountains to find your own words.

[00:04:52] Your own voice. That's what they that's what is the foundation for this.

[00:04:59] This this tradition that what I call the hermit tradition.

[00:05:04] That's for people who go into the mountains and it's just like graduate school. The average hermit.

[00:05:11] Based on my interviews goes in the mountains about the same length of time as a graduate student in the West, about 3 to 5 years is typical. You get a lot of 10 year or 10 year periods too.

[00:05:23] And some people never come down.

[00:05:26] That would be maybe 3 to 5%.

[00:05:29] Just don't come down or they come down. They say, oh, I gotta go back up because they enjoy that solitude.

[00:05:36] Yeah, it's being alone.

[00:05:40] That is is the ground upon which this tradition.

[00:05:46] Nourishes itself to be alone.

[00:05:51] But not alone in sense of being in a cave so much and cut off from other people because.

[00:05:56] Hermits aren't on every 99.9% of the mountains in China have zero hermits.

[00:06:05] There are hermit mountains in China.

[00:06:08] Usually it's associated with the development of Chinese civilization wherever you get centers of early Chinese civilization.

[00:06:15] You get hermit mountains.

[00:06:17] There's always some people in that advanced society that go into a nearby mountain.

[00:06:24] And that that mountain then becomes a hermit mountain where people go for graduate school for to to after receiving this training, they go into the mountains to experience it.

[00:06:36] Personally, rather than through words and so they become the great teachers in China.

[00:06:42] Whether they almost most of them come down the mountain 3 to 5 years, some maybe 10 years or so, but they become the great teachers of.

[00:06:53] Buddhism and Taoism and even the Confucians have beginning around 2000 years ago, the Confucian started building academies in China.

[00:07:03] They built every single Academy was built on a foot of a mountain.

[00:07:09] And then students who would study there would build huts nearby and then they would come every day for classes in the Academy and they would go back to their huts.

[00:07:18] And so even the Confucians cultivated this this tradition.

[00:07:23] In fact, during the Tang dynasty, if you wanted to be an official in China, you had to take exams.

[00:07:30] You know, on writing essays about topics of political interest and even writing poetry, you examine all this.

[00:07:40] And that was the main way to become an official until some some people were unable to pass the exams.

[00:07:48] And what they would do and they developed a name for this South of C on the ancient capital Chang on where the June on mountains.

[00:07:56] And they developed a phrase called the June on shortcut.

[00:08:03] If you can't pass the exams, people would go into the mountains and build a hut and wait for somebody to notice them.

[00:08:11] And that was their way to become an official because if you were seen living in the mountains in a hut, people assumed, you know, you had some capacity for transcending the material world and being, you know,

[00:08:25] able to converse at a higher level than most people.

[00:08:30] So this and that was the Confucians. So, of course, the Dallas too.

[00:08:37] Of course, they're the Dallas are.

[00:08:39] Don't come down the mountain as often as the Buddhist or the Confucian still because their practice involves a longer period of training.

[00:08:47] That's a good because it's a physical, a physical peer training that they go through cultivation of different bodies, bodies that we can't see unless you're a practitioner.

[00:09:01] The Buddhist are probably the people who come down the soonest. They three to five years. They usually get it or not.

[00:09:09] Or not.

[00:09:11] And then, or they die, you know, that everybody survives up in the mountains. It's a very hard life. Even if you have been in training with it with a teacher for some years and you, you know, that you.

[00:09:23] You feel that you want to go into the mountains for this experience.

[00:09:27] That doesn't mean you're going to make it, but what helps a lot is that you go to a place where other people are practicing a hermit mountain.

[00:09:36] And so, though the old hermit are always helping the new hermits.

[00:09:41] They'll learn learn stuff like maybe to teach them sometimes the new new guys and women most term it's for women. Incidentally, I'd say at least 60%.

[00:09:53] Because it's easier for a daughter to get permission from her parents to practice a spiritual path than it is for a son was that.

[00:10:01] The son is a family social security.

[00:10:05] A daughter you're losing money on a daughter.

[00:10:07] You have to supply the dowry to get rid of her and then she's never coming back, except twice a year.

[00:10:13] So a daughter doesn't really help a family, the family that that raised her.

[00:10:19] Whereas his son, of course, is that's his son's duty is to take care of the family that raised her raised him.

[00:10:26] And so it's really it can be difficult for a son.

[00:10:31] I mean, you don't necessarily really have to get your parents permission, but it's emotionally. It's really hard to walk away from your parents.

[00:10:39] And so daughters can do that a lot easier.

[00:10:43] But anyway, when you go when you go into the mountains, you're not necessarily ready for mountain life.

[00:10:49] You don't usually know anything about wild plants.

[00:10:53] Which ones are medicinal and how you recognize them and what time of year do you do you pick them up, pick them or dig them up or whatnot?

[00:11:02] And so the old hermits.

[00:11:05] The knowledge of how to survive in the mountains has been passed on for 2000 years by people have been who have been living those mountains. So when you do go up as a practitioner.

[00:11:15] You do begin learning a lot about how you're going to survive there.

[00:11:20] Usually everybody knows how to plant spinach or some greens.

[00:11:26] And of course, when you go up your ears still going to.

[00:11:30] You're still going to rely on on other people who aren't living on the mountains.

[00:11:34] For example, you need a staple carbohydrate.

[00:11:39] And it's either rice or wheat flour.

[00:11:42] And so somebody has got to supply that because you can't grow that on a mountain.

[00:11:47] So you're going to need somebody to help you.

[00:11:49] To a large extent, it's just the local villagers who are at the foot of the mountain because every village likes to have hermits on their nearby.

[00:12:02] The hermits if there's a hermit on your mountain, it's going to rain on time.

[00:12:06] Or if somebody in the villages has gone mad as a physical illness.

[00:12:13] You go up and the hermit can provide treatment.

[00:12:16] Because medical knowledge is also being passed down generation by generation.

[00:12:21] So these hermits without even planning to do it become healers of different kinds.

[00:12:30] That's not their object, but that's just what happens on the mountain.

[00:12:33] You learn a whole new set of information and skills you develop in order to survive.

[00:12:43] So you need maybe you have a relative who comes to see you once or twice a year and brings up some stuff.

[00:12:53] I once figured it out.

[00:12:55] It's there hermits are short about ten dollars a month.

[00:12:59] They need ten dollars a month from some from somebody.

[00:13:03] And so sometimes it's fellow practitioners who stayed in the city and they come up to visit you once or twice a year.

[00:13:14] Sometimes it's a local villager, sometimes it's a relative.

[00:13:17] And to a large extent, once you've been on the mountains for a year or two,

[00:13:23] you can almost support yourself by selling wild herbs.

[00:13:28] Because herb collectors are always going into the mountains in China.

[00:13:33] And the one mountain where there are hermits living, a herb collector knows they don't have to do any work.

[00:13:40] The herb collector just goes up the mountains.

[00:13:41] The hermits have all the herbs and so they don't have to go look for them.

[00:13:47] So a lot of hermits support themselves by collecting wild plants and selling them to these herb collectors.

[00:13:59] Anyway, so it's a very thin margin for survival in the mountains.

[00:14:07] So you might say survival is not guaranteed just because you're a spiritual practitioner.

[00:14:20] These are people who really go out on a limb and sometimes they don't come back down the mountain alive.

[00:14:27] Somebody you find the body because they fell off of a cliff, they're always walking.

[00:14:34] They have to live where it's steeper.

[00:14:37] I figured a hermit has to live two hours beyond the farmer commute.

[00:14:44] Just like we will commute an hour at least to a job sometimes.

[00:14:49] So will farmers in China, the flatlanders, they will go up in the mountains walking at least an hour to gather stuff.

[00:14:58] And even to plant if there's a part of the mountain that's a little bit flatter.

[00:15:02] So hermits have to live about two hours beyond the nearest village.

[00:15:08] Just so they don't get overwhelmed by the farmers?

[00:15:11] Yeah, because a hermit can't compete with the farmer.

[00:15:17] Those are their mountains really.

[00:15:20] Those villagers have been living there a lot longer than the hermits.

[00:15:24] And so they've been going in those mountains since they were kids with their parents to do stuff,

[00:15:29] to hunt wild animals and so forth.

[00:15:32] And sometimes if there's like I say if a mountain levels off at a certain point,

[00:15:37] well it's going to be flat to plant maybe for them.

[00:15:41] And they'll establish a field and go up there once a month to check on it.

[00:15:45] So hermits can't touch land like that.

[00:15:49] So they have to develop a series of patches where they plant stuff.

[00:15:56] And of course, hermits almost never cut down trees.

[00:16:00] That's very rare.

[00:16:03] And you need the wood for fire.

[00:16:08] The hermits only collect deadfall.

[00:16:11] And so I figured out hermit territory is about 15 minutes.

[00:16:17] If you're on a hermit mountain, every 15 minutes,

[00:16:21] you have to walk about 15 minutes before you're out of that one hermit's territory.

[00:16:28] It's like wild animals.

[00:16:30] Hermits have to have an area where they collect wild wood.

[00:16:35] And also they have to build their hut or have a hut near a water source too.

[00:16:40] And then they have these little patches that they clear.

[00:16:43] And of course they're competing when they grow vegetables.

[00:16:46] So they're competing with wild animals too.

[00:16:50] Not usually bears.

[00:16:51] And of course, bears are all gone and so are the tigers now.

[00:16:55] So that's not a threat?

[00:16:57] Not anymore.

[00:16:59] There used to be.

[00:17:01] There were definitely a lot of bears in the Zhongnan Mountains

[00:17:03] when I was doing my interviews.

[00:17:05] But they're gone now.

[00:17:07] And so are the South China tiger about the size of a German shepherd.

[00:17:11] That's unheard of now also.

[00:17:14] But I've known a lot of hermits who've had interaction with tigers.

[00:17:20] I've never met a hermit who was harmed by them.

[00:17:22] Of course, I'm only meeting the hermits who are alive.

[00:17:29] And they're all vegetarians.

[00:17:30] I've never met a hermit that eats meat.

[00:17:34] Is that just a food accessibility thing or is there a religious component to that?

[00:17:37] Yeah, it's part of their practice.

[00:17:41] Not to harm other animals.

[00:17:44] It's both about the Taoists and the Buddhists and the Confucians too.

[00:17:51] So that's sort of how they live their lives.

[00:17:54] And when they go up the mountains again,

[00:17:56] they're trying to get beyond books and learning.

[00:18:02] A hermit will not have more than two or three books.

[00:18:05] In fact, that's a library.

[00:18:07] Most hermits only have one or two books if they have any at all.

[00:18:10] They know what their spiritual path entails.

[00:18:16] And now it's just becoming a matter of internalizing it

[00:18:20] to the point where they develop their own voice,

[00:18:24] their own way of expressing it.

[00:18:25] And then they go down the mountains or not.

[00:18:29] Or some stay in the mountains and people come up to see them all the time for instruction.

[00:18:35] So that in a nutshell is the hermit tradition.

[00:18:38] Yeah.

[00:18:39] With the books, would it usually be something like the Tao Te Ching

[00:18:43] or a couple of Buddhist sutras or poems or something like that?

[00:18:47] Some kind of spiritual text that would help guide them?

[00:18:49] Yeah, you wouldn't find any poems.

[00:18:53] But yes, Taoists would have a half a dozen different books

[00:18:56] that they would choose from based upon their study with their teacher.

[00:19:01] Same thing with the Buddhist sutras.

[00:19:03] The same thing, yes.

[00:19:05] When you first started looking for them,

[00:19:07] everybody was telling you that they were no longer around

[00:19:10] and that this tradition had kind of died off.

[00:19:12] Why was that thought to be the case?

[00:19:17] Well, because nobody had been up into the mountains for a long time.

[00:19:23] The only people who go in the mountains in China are herb collectors and local farmers.

[00:19:28] There were no hiking clubs.

[00:19:30] People didn't go hiking in China.

[00:19:32] That was just not especially during the second and the last century or so,

[00:19:37] the last hundred years.

[00:19:39] The cultures become increasingly urban and also traumatized urban,

[00:19:45] restricted urban.

[00:19:46] People don't go into the mountains.

[00:19:50] So people thought they were…

[00:19:54] Given all this happened in the 20th century,

[00:19:58] it was assumed that that tradition no longer existed.

[00:20:02] I only went there because I had translated the works of these poets

[00:20:09] who lived that kind of life, like Cold Mountain

[00:20:13] and another monk who lived later named Stonehouse.

[00:20:20] I translated their poetry and wondered if people like that really existed

[00:20:27] or whether it was a literary conceit.

[00:20:31] Like Walden Pond, which is supposed to be this idea of living alone.

[00:20:40] But even Walden Thoreau is still coming back to get his clothes washed by his mother.

[00:20:50] You can present in a literary fashion a life that's not necessarily true.

[00:20:54] This is like a little bit exaggerated.

[00:20:57] Exactly.

[00:20:57] So I was wondering about that and I published these books.

[00:21:04] I was supporting myself after I moved out of the monastery.

[00:21:08] I lived on this mountain in Taiwan and I got married, had kids,

[00:21:14] and needed a job so I worked for an English language radio station.

[00:21:18] It was the United States Army station we abandoned when we recognized China.

[00:21:23] They heard about me and asked me if I would do local news.

[00:21:28] So I started doing local news and reading the Chinese newspapers

[00:21:32] and translating the stories and doing interviews.

[00:21:36] I was interviewing this man named Winston Wong

[00:21:42] who ran the world's largest plastics company Formosa Plastics.

[00:21:48] His father is the richest man in China, Wang Yongqing.

[00:21:52] But Winston Wong was in charge of Nanyia Plastics.

[00:21:58] And I told him, this is maybe the last interview I'm going to do

[00:22:01] because I've applied to the Guggenheim Foundation

[00:22:03] to go to China to find people like Cold Mountain and Stonehouse.

[00:22:09] And he thought that was a wonderful idea.

[00:22:13] And I asked him, since you do plastics,

[00:22:17] have you seen the movie The Graduate?

[00:22:19] He said, yeah, I've seen the movie The Graduate.

[00:22:21] I said, what would you tell a young man?

[00:22:22] Would you say plastic son, plastics?

[00:22:25] He said, no, I would tell him to follow the Tao.

[00:22:29] And he was serious.

[00:22:31] And he said, that's amazing.

[00:22:33] You know, you probably would be interested in these people

[00:22:36] that I'm looking for.

[00:22:37] I want to go to China to find people like Cold Mountain and Stonehouse.

[00:22:41] He said, well, I applied to the Guggenheim

[00:22:43] and I was expecting a letter of acceptance in a few weeks.

[00:22:49] And he said, well, if they don't give you the money, I will.

[00:22:53] A couple of weeks later, I got a letter of rejection from the Guggenheim

[00:22:56] and called him up and he said, how much do you need?

[00:22:59] So suddenly I had the means to go to China.

[00:23:02] I had never been to China.

[00:23:03] I lived in Taiwan at that time.

[00:23:06] I lived in Taiwan about 15 years.

[00:23:10] No, no, 17 years.

[00:23:12] I'd never been to China because my wife worked for the Taiwan government

[00:23:16] and that would have caused her problems if I'd gone to China.

[00:23:19] So anyway, I went to China

[00:23:22] and I hired a friend who's a photographer to go with me.

[00:23:26] And we went to China.

[00:23:29] We arrived in Beijing on May Day of 1989.

[00:23:33] The whole city, all of Tiananmen had been taken over by students.

[00:23:37] The whole city was on a city-wide vacation.

[00:23:41] Nobody was working.

[00:23:42] Everybody was protesting and having parades and stuff like that.

[00:23:46] So the next day, I went to a Buddhist monastery

[00:23:51] and asked a few monks if they knew any…

[00:23:54] Where can I find some hermits?

[00:23:57] And so there was the one older monk said,

[00:24:00] I think there's still some in the Zhongnan Mountains.

[00:24:03] He just blurted that out.

[00:24:04] And then some official came up and said, oh no, no, no, no, no.

[00:24:07] No, there's no hermits anywhere.

[00:24:09] But I remembered what this monk had said about the Zhongnan Mountains.

[00:24:12] I eventually went into the Zhongnan Mountains,

[00:24:14] found all these hermits and eventually wrote this book.

[00:24:17] I hadn't planned on writing a book.

[00:24:20] I just wanted to know if this tradition existed, that's all.

[00:24:24] But once I met them and I began to realize

[00:24:28] what an important part of Chinese society this was.

[00:24:36] Our hermits are misanthropes in the West.

[00:24:39] They don't want anything to do with society.

[00:24:41] Chinese hermits have everything to do with society.

[00:24:44] That's what their lives are about.

[00:24:46] How to make society better, how to make life better for everybody.

[00:24:50] So it was just I had to write this book after meeting these people.

[00:24:55] And so I ended up writing that book.

[00:24:57] And it just happened when I finished…

[00:25:00] I just finished a manuscript in the fall of 1990.

[00:25:07] This friend of mine, Gary Snyders, an American poet was visiting Taiwan.

[00:25:15] They were going to publish his poetry in Chinese translation.

[00:25:21] I showed him the manuscript and he gave it to his publisher in America.

[00:25:28] So I eventually got it published.

[00:25:30] Which is surprising.

[00:25:32] It's often hard for a writer to get something published,

[00:25:35] especially when you have no reputation and no real skills.

[00:25:44] I'd never written anything before.

[00:25:47] But anyway, so that's how that book came to be.

[00:25:51] Me going into the mountains, seeing people like Cold Mountain or Stonehouse still exist.

[00:25:56] Finding it's a much richer tradition than that.

[00:25:59] Because it's not just the Buddhist but it's the Taoists and the Confucians.

[00:26:02] This general relationship between power centers and people who have seen beyond power.

[00:26:09] And the interest in the power structures in China to access that knowledge and those skills.

[00:26:17] Anyway.

[00:26:18] Yeah.

[00:26:19] What did you notice when you first eventually…

[00:26:22] Because it took a little while like you had to go and figure out where they were.

[00:26:26] But once you found them, what did you notice that stuck out to you about,

[00:26:31] I guess, just the way that these people were?

[00:26:36] What stand out the most was they're the happiest people I've ever met.

[00:26:42] It's impossible to meet happier people.

[00:26:45] These are people who sort of seen through worries, the things that worry us.

[00:26:49] We're always worried about some material thing or some relationship issue

[00:26:53] or some need for a career advancement or whatever.

[00:26:58] These people had let all that go.

[00:27:01] Their biggest worry every day was trying to feed themselves, that's all.

[00:27:05] Whenever they would see me, they would always smile and they would go back in and start a fire

[00:27:11] and start cooking something even though they had next to nothing.

[00:27:14] They would always make some food, make some noodles.

[00:27:19] And they were so willing also to talk.

[00:27:24] Of course you would be too if you were hermit.

[00:27:26] You'd be happy to see have somebody.

[00:27:28] These hermits aren't really totally alone.

[00:27:31] They look in on each other.

[00:27:34] 90% of the time they're totally by themselves,

[00:27:37] but people look in on each other to see if they need some help and check on.

[00:27:42] Say I'm going down the mountain today, can I bring something back?

[00:27:45] You need some salt because there are four things every hermit needs.

[00:27:49] They need a staple.

[00:27:51] You can't supply that yourself.

[00:27:52] You've got to have salt because you'll never get through the winter without salt,

[00:27:56] without salting plants for use.

[00:28:00] And of course your body needs some salt anyway.

[00:28:02] Then you need some cooking oil and then you used to need kerosene for a lamp.

[00:28:09] Now hermits don't use kerosene anymore.

[00:28:13] They have solar panels and small little solar panels so they can have a light at night.

[00:28:23] But anyway, that's what impressed me the most.

[00:28:25] Happiest people, poorest people I've ever met.

[00:28:29] Nobody's poorer than a hermit and nobody is happier.

[00:28:34] One of the things that stuck out to me was that you touched on some of the

[00:28:40] health difficulties earlier and how it's a hard life out there,

[00:28:45] but many of them who, at least the ones who were featured in the book

[00:28:50] and the documentaries and stuff, some of them seem to live pretty long lives

[00:28:54] and seem to be in fairly decent shape, especially compared to in the United States.

[00:28:59] I think the average lifespan for a man is maybe 72 or something like that.

[00:29:06] We obviously have a lot more resources and material goods than they do that you would

[00:29:13] think would be able to help us keep living on longer, but they seem to be way outliving

[00:29:19] with such a hard scrabble and simple life.

[00:29:22] How much of that do you think has to do with just being at peace and happy and having lack of worries?

[00:29:31] In my experience, the biggest thing that ages people in America and kills people is stress.

[00:29:41] And these are the most detached people you'll ever meet.

[00:29:44] So they're stress-free.

[00:29:47] Again, their biggest worry was just food, usually.

[00:29:56] Talk about exercise.

[00:29:59] They're living in usually the steeper part of any mountain.

[00:30:03] That's where hermits live.

[00:30:05] Getting a lot of exercise, they're eating really good food when they can get it.

[00:30:11] They grow all their own vegetables and then they harvest

[00:30:16] and collect wild plants that they can either eat or they can sell or use for medicinal purposes.

[00:30:25] Yeah, it's a healthy existence actually.

[00:30:33] But of course, I only meet the ones who survive.

[00:30:38] A lot of them don't make it.

[00:30:44] I actually knew several hermits quite well who eventually died

[00:30:50] on falls, off a cliff, off steep trails.

[00:30:55] So they can thin the ranks quite a bit too.

[00:31:01] Another thing that I thought was interesting was you had said that since you had originally

[00:31:06] been there that the hermit population has grown quite a bit.

[00:31:10] Is that something that's still continuing?

[00:31:12] Is it still continuing to grow?

[00:31:15] Absolutely, yes.

[00:31:17] When I did my interviews in 89 and 90, there were about 200 hermits in this one

[00:31:22] range of mountains within say a two-day walking distance of where I was interviewing people.

[00:31:28] About 200 hermits.

[00:31:31] That same area, I went back with a film crew,

[00:31:34] about 14, this was in 2014 I think.

[00:31:41] The chief camera guy, the guy in charge of the camera work, had read my book previously

[00:31:47] and he had personally used it as a guide to go into the mountains

[00:31:51] and to film, to photograph hermits.

[00:31:55] He'd gone in the same area where I estimated there were about 200 hermits.

[00:32:02] He had personally filmed over 600.

[00:32:06] Wow, the hermit population had tripled.

[00:32:11] With this film, this Chinese film crew, I met a lot of the new ones and they were different.

[00:32:17] Different hermits.

[00:32:19] Like different people or different in their characteristics?

[00:32:23] Everything.

[00:32:24] Well, other than the quest to follow a spiritual path, that hadn't changed.

[00:32:30] But the hermits in 89 or 90, these were devotees.

[00:32:38] Very few had a high school education.

[00:32:41] Some did, but they weren't highly educated people,

[00:32:45] but they were totally devoted to their spiritual practice.

[00:32:49] These were the survivors of the Cultural Revolution and the Second World War.

[00:32:56] These are the ones I met.

[00:32:58] The ones now have degrees from Beijing University.

[00:33:03] They're millionaires, they're people who become wealthy or successful in society

[00:33:09] and have dropped out.

[00:33:10] These are dropouts who are now the hermits.

[00:33:14] Many, many dropouts.

[00:33:18] Of course, you don't just drop out and go straight to the mountains.

[00:33:23] You won't last one winter.

[00:33:25] These are people who had become successful according to modern Chinese social standards

[00:33:32] in terms of their education and their material wealth.

[00:33:36] These are the new hermits who are realizing there's more to life than this

[00:33:42] and they wanted more.

[00:33:45] They wanted a spiritual achievement.

[00:33:48] These were the new hermits that I'm seeing.

[00:33:52] I saw this was 10 years ago when I walked in the mountains with that film crew.

[00:34:01] There are lots more hermits in the mountains.

[00:34:05] Imagine in the past, as I said, the hermit mountains were restricted to population centers.

[00:34:14] That is changing.

[00:34:16] Now, hermit mountains are springing up everywhere

[00:34:20] because you can.

[00:34:23] Because hermits are always going to need the support of people who live nearby.

[00:34:33] But that's everywhere in China now there's money.

[00:34:37] They're successful people.

[00:34:39] The farmers are richer and they're more able to help hermits than they were in the past.

[00:34:46] The hermit tradition is really alive and well.

[00:34:53] Remember what I said earlier, a hermit needs about 15 minutes.

[00:34:58] They need a hermit territory to collect wood and just for solitude and for wild plants

[00:35:08] and also for a few patches.

[00:35:09] You need about eight or nine of these little patches.

[00:35:12] Maybe 10 by 10 spots in the mountains where you can clear out a spot

[00:35:21] and raise the roots and the leaf vegetables that you survive on.

[00:35:29] What are some of the main things that you've taken away from your visits with these people

[00:35:34] for your life?

[00:35:37] Well, just to see how these teachings, if you think of learning Buddhism or Taoism

[00:35:49] or any of these spiritual traditions as something that's in a book,

[00:35:54] you're shortchanging that tradition.

[00:35:59] The real teaching is beyond the words.

[00:36:03] It's just putting it into your life.

[00:36:06] That's what I took out of meeting people like this.

[00:36:10] Just focusing more on personal experience and applying it in life

[00:36:13] instead of trying to just get everything from a book.

[00:36:17] Right, exactly.

[00:36:18] Thinking, well, gee, I've read all these books.

[00:36:20] I know a lot about Buddhism.

[00:36:23] And yeah, sure, I do know a lot about Buddhism,

[00:36:25] but knowing about Buddhism isn't necessarily Buddhism.

[00:36:31] What the Buddha experienced is Buddhism.

[00:36:34] And the same is true for these other traditions.

[00:36:38] And that's what I got from these people.

[00:36:40] These are people who experienced it in their lives

[00:36:44] and made it part of their daily lives.

[00:36:46] And they were the simplest people, happy, simple people.

[00:36:52] That's my goal, to be happy and simple.

[00:36:54] Yeah, I found the book and the documentaries were fascinating.

[00:36:59] It was so cool to see and learn about how those people were living

[00:37:02] because I'd heard a little bit about that,

[00:37:04] but I didn't know if that was still flourishing in society today.

[00:37:08] So it was cool to find out about that.

[00:37:11] What's amazing though, every single hermit in China is living illegally.

[00:37:18] Can you imagine going into the national parks

[00:37:21] and government land in America?

[00:37:23] That's crazy.

[00:37:28] And yet we think though the Chinese government is being

[00:37:31] really nasty and they are.

[00:37:34] They can be really cruel and restrictive.

[00:37:39] One of the most famous teachers in the mountains was this nun.

[00:37:43] She'd spent 35 years in the mountains.

[00:37:45] Last time I saw her alive,

[00:37:47] there were six Communist Party officials in her hut.

[00:37:50] They had heard about her and wanted to know what they could do to help her.

[00:37:55] Yeah, that's fascinating.

[00:37:56] The Chinese themselves, even in the Communist Party,

[00:38:00] view people who are living, who are doing nothing ostensibly to help society.

[00:38:06] They still view them as the most respected people in China

[00:38:10] and that's the unique thing about the term of tradition.

[00:38:13] They're among if not the most respected people in China.

[00:38:18] Everybody would like to have followed that path.

[00:38:22] What do you think keeps people from doing that?

[00:38:26] Responsibilities.

[00:38:28] You know, they're taking care of their parents.

[00:38:30] Yeah.

[00:38:33] Or their children.

[00:38:34] They've made commitments that are really hard to walk away from.

[00:38:38] That's the crucial thing.

[00:38:41] I mean, there are some who do walk away.

[00:38:45] The Buddha left his son and his wife and walked away.

[00:38:50] You can do it, but it's harder to do that.

[00:38:54] It's easier to make that decision earlier in your life to do that.

[00:39:00] Most of the hermits tend to be under 40 or so, I'd say.

[00:39:08] But I've met a number in their 60s too.

[00:39:11] Anyway, it's never going to be a prominent life choice.

[00:39:20] And of course, crowded mountains won't do.

[00:39:23] That's just...

[00:39:24] You know on crowded mountains.

[00:39:26] But it's just amazing that this tradition is alive and well.

[00:39:31] And still influencing people.

[00:39:33] This book, Road to Heaven, it sold over 2 million copies in China.

[00:39:37] That's amazing.

[00:39:39] I don't know how many I've sold in America, but maybe in...

[00:39:43] Let's see, it's been 30 years almost.

[00:39:47] Yeah, it's been 30 years since I published that book in America.

[00:39:50] Maybe I sold 20,000 copies.

[00:39:53] Maybe 30,000, something like that.

[00:39:56] 2 million in China.

[00:39:58] That's crazy.

[00:40:00] Yeah, but it shows how much interest and reverence there still is in this path.

[00:40:06] Because they see this...

[00:40:08] Oh, this is our culture.

[00:40:11] This is our tradition.

[00:40:12] Oh, I didn't know it existed anymore.

[00:40:15] So they're not looking at it as foreign to them.

[00:40:20] Oh, yeah, forgot.

[00:40:22] Didn't know it still existed.

[00:40:23] But like I say, some people...

[00:40:28] Even in the mountains, a lot of the hermits now have my book.

[00:40:31] That's cool.

[00:40:33] It's so funny.

[00:40:35] But I've inspired a lot of people to become hermits

[00:40:40] or at least to support the tradition.

[00:40:42] For example, I told you that hermits need about 10 bucks a month, that they're short.

[00:40:48] One of the wealthiest businessmen in Hong Kong read my book,

[00:40:51] and he set up a foundation in Xi'an so that every hermit gets $100 a year.

[00:40:57] Oh, that's amazing.

[00:40:59] As long as they've registered with the Buddhist Association or the Taoist Association.

[00:41:05] And another curious thing is a lot of these wealthy people now in China

[00:41:08] have been building huts and stuff, fancy huts up in the mountains.

[00:41:13] And when the government finds out, it tears them down.

[00:41:17] They think they're inauthentic or not...

[00:41:19] Yeah, exactly, because they're frauds.

[00:41:21] That's hilarious.

[00:41:24] The high respect the government has for hermits, but only genuine hermits.

[00:41:31] That's great that they do that.

[00:41:34] They're willing to let these people live there and not really bother them

[00:41:38] and go up there and talk to them and interact with them,

[00:41:41] but only if they think that it's actually for the right reasons.

[00:41:45] Otherwise, they have a screening out process, I guess.

[00:41:49] They do, yeah.

[00:41:51] That's cool.

[00:41:53] I'll have a link to the book in the description.

[00:41:58] Is there anything that you would like to let people know about?

[00:42:03] No. In a week or so, I'm going to be going to Barcelona

[00:42:09] because The Road to Heaven is being published in Catalan.

[00:42:12] And Spanish, in Spain this month.

[00:42:16] It's funny, this book has got legs.

[00:42:21] Yeah, that's crazy.

[00:42:22] Anyway, people can read this book and get an idea about

[00:42:31] how a tradition like this has prospered in China because it's part of the culture.

[00:42:37] It would never work in America because it's not part of our culture.

[00:42:42] You're going to need people who will support you and respect you, too.

[00:42:47] So far, that's not the case in America.

[00:42:51] Thank you so much for coming on and talking with me about this.

[00:42:55] Like I said, I find this stuff fascinating and the book was fascinating.

[00:43:00] Thanks for going out and writing the book and doing the documentaries and stuff.

[00:43:04] It's really cool to see what's going on with this tradition,

[00:43:06] and especially with it growing.

[00:43:08] That's fascinating, too.

[00:43:09] So thanks a lot.

[00:43:10] I really appreciate it.

[00:43:11] Well, thanks for inviting me, Jake.