ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Bill Porter assumes the pen name Red Pine for his translations. He was born in Los Angeles in 1943, grew up in the Idaho Panhandle, served a tour of duty in the U.S. Army (1964–67), graduated from the University of California with a degree in anthropology in 1970, and attended graduate school at Columbia University. Uninspired by the prospect of an academic career, he dropped out of Columbia in 1972 and moved to a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. After four years with the monks and nuns, he struck out on his own and eventually found work at English-language radio stations in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where he produced over a thousand programs about his travels in China. In 1993 he returned to America with his family and has lived ever since in Port Townsend, Washington. His most recent publications are Zen Baggage, an account of a pilgrimage to sites associated with the beginning of Zen in China, and In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu, a translation of one of China’s greatest poets. He is currently working on a translation of the Lankavatara Sutra.