Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China
By Bill Porter
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About this ebook
In the spring of 2006, Bill Porter traveled through the heart of China, from Beijing to Hong Kong, on a pilgrimage to sites associated with the first six patriarchs of Zen. Zen Baggage is an account of that journey. He weaves together historical background, interviews with Zen masters, and translations of the earliest known records of Zen, along with personal vignettes. Porter’s account captures the transformations taking place at religious centers in China but also the abiding legacy they have somehow managed to preserve. Porter brings wisdom and humor to every situation, whether visiting ancient caves containing the most complete collection of Buddhist texts ever uncovered, enduring a six-hour Buddhist ceremony, searching in vain for the ghost in his room, waking up the monk in charge of martial arts at Shaolin Temple, or meeting the abbess of Chinas first Zen nunnery. Porter’s previously published Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits has become recommended reading at Zen centers and universities throughout America and even in China (in its Chinese translation), and Zen Baggage is sure to follow suit.
“Porter takes the reader to places far off the tourist track and far from the economic and political frenzy of major cities, traveling on buses and sleeping rough in monasteries. He does it without pedantry or zeal and with some humor.” —Library Journal
Bill Porter
Bill Porter was born in Russellville, Alabama, and grew up 20 miles north, in Sheffield. He went to the University of the South, and while he did graduate eventually, it took a while because he liked to travel in the spring. He also spent some time in the Marines to avoid the draft, after which he got married and finished his last few credits at Columbia in New York. It was there in the summer of 1964 that he read Vermont was losing population, so he and his wife Ruth headed to the green mountain state and drove all over, delivering his resumé to newspapers. The Rutland Herald hired him at $50 a week as a beginning reporter, and three years later he was the assistant managing editor. In 1973 he moved to Barre as the managing editor of the Herald's sister paper, the Times-Argus, and in 1985 he went out on his own as a writer. He prepared the annual report for Green Mountain Power for twelve years and won a prize for every one. While he was freelancing he also built up his farm, learned to be a pretty good mechanic, wrote a novel, and started Bar Nothing Books with Ruth. Bill had Alzheimer's for five years before he died in 2022, but he never stopped working on the farm.
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