Existence: A Story

by David Hinton

Overview

This is the story of existence, and it begins with a painting. Join David Hinton, the premier modern translator of the Chinese classics, as he stands before a single landscape painting, discovering in it the wondrous story of existence—and as part of that story, the magical nature of consciousness. What he coaxes from the image is nothing less than a revelation: the dynamic interweaving of mind and Cosmos, and the glorious dance of Absence and Presence that is the secret of that Cosmos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780834840256
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	763,150
File size:	20 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

David Hinton’s many translations of classical Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling contemporary poems that convey the texture and density of the originals. He is also the first translator in over a century to translate the five seminal masterworks of Chinese philosophy: I Ching, Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, and Mencius. Hinton has received many national awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, both major awards for poetry translation, and most recently, a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Editorial Reviews

In extraordinarily deft and patient hands, David Hinton delivers us into the unknowable. Using as his guide the Chinese landscape painter Shih T’ao and other sage poet-painter-wanderers, he takes us to the very brink of existence and consciousness, beyond linguistic dualities of past and future, propelled by the life force that drives through us, from one step to the next . . . you can almost hear the footfalls of his thinking and Ch’an practice . . . until we find ourselves in the strange surroundings of empty mind and full heart, and finally, equanimity. It is an uncanny journey, essential for all.”—Gretel Ehrlich, author of Facing the Wave and This Cold Heaven

“A pellucid gem of a book—I couldn’t put it down. Through the vision of a single, inexhaustible painting—whose depth opens onto the mysteries of meditation, calligraphy, poetry, and existence itself—Hinton gradually discloses for us the whole vast and fathomless landscape of Taoist and Ch’an (Zen) spirituality. At first we gaze wonder-struck into the many-mountained distance; soon we find ourselves immersed; and then we dissolve into the ch’i-mist drifting up the forested slopes.”—David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous

“[Hinton is a] rare example of a literary Sinologist—that is, a classical scholar thoroughly conversant with, and connected to, contemporary literature in English.”—New York Review of Books

From the Publisher