Verses from Cold Mountain

猪吃死人肉，人吃死猪肠。猪不嫌人臭，人反道猪香 猪死抛水内，人死掘土藏。彼此莫相啖，莲花生沸汤

“Pigs feast on the flesh of dead men; men feast on the guts of slaughtered pigs.

Pigs do not recoil at the stench of man; man finds the pig fragrant.

The pig’s bones are tossed into the river; the human corpse is committed to the earth.

If only they would cease devouring one another, a lotus might bloom from the boiling broth.”

Han Shan (寒山) was a Buddhist poet of the Tang Dynasty, active sometime during the eighth or ninth century.

As is often the case with the great Chinese masters, Han Shan’s true identity, his life story, and even his real name remain a mystery. His biography can be pieced together only from the verses he carved into the rock faces of the mountain that became his sanctuary and provided his moniker: Hánshān, or Cold Mountain.

His poetry suggests he was born into an established family, enjoying a comfortable upbringing and a rigorous education. He seems to have mastered the Confucian classics and gained proficiency in diverse fields of scholarship, art, and even weaponry. What eventually drove him to seek seclusion in the Tiantai Mountains (天台山) of east-central China is unknown. Yet his years on the peaks—spent foraging for herbs and wandering alongside fellow recluses—produced a body of work defined by a profound sensitivity to the fleeting nature of human existence and the spiritual resonance of the wild. The hundreds of poems attributed to him are steeped in Buddhist and Taoist thought, securing Han Shan a revered place in the Zen tradition, which emerged from the union of those two paths.

Tiantai Mountains, Zhejiang Province, East China.