Hanshan: Moon and Cloud

Hanshan (9th c. CE?) was a monk who apparently lived in the mountains of China, but very little is known about him–or, indeed, if he even existed. Judging from his poems, he lived a relatively privileged life until about the age of thirty, and then gave up the world. The overhang or cave where he found shelter was in a place called ‘Cold Mountain’ or ‘hanshan,’ and the wanderer took that name for himself. In the first poem, below, therefore, the moon is both the physical moon hanging over the mountain, and the light of illumination shining upon the poet. Hanshan wrote his poems upon the rocks of the wilderness, and hundreds of them were collected when he disappeared. His poems show elements of both Taoist and Buddhist thought but, like the wilderness in which he lived, he remained free from any restriction. Above Cold Mountain the moon shines alone in a clear sky it illuminates nothing at all precious heavenly priceless jewel buried in the skandhas submerged in the body* * * * Down to the stream to watch the jade flow or back to the cliff to sit on a boulder my mind like a cloud remains unattached what do I need in the faraway world

Tr. Red Pine

*In Buddhist thought, ‘skandhas,’ meaning ‘heaps’ or ‘aggregates’, refers to the five mental and physical aspects that give us apparent identity. The poem is comparing the moon of illumination in the empty sky to a jewel hidden within the five ‘heaps.’