Stonehouse

Stonehouse became a monk when he was only 20. By the time he was 40, he had abandoned communal life in the temple and lived alone deep in the mountains, surviving on collected water and wild plants instead of begging in town with the other monks. In later life, he was invited to teach at a temple, but it was only a few years before he was back on his own in a mountain hut. There is little to tell about his life, but we have his poems. The last line of Red Pine’s introduction tells you to say hello to your new best friend.

No one else sees what I see clearly
no one else knows what I know well
I recall one misty day last fall
a gibbon came here and stole two pears

*

Lunch in my mountain kitchen
there’s a shimmering springwater sauce
a well-cooked stew of preserved bamboo
a fragrant pot of hard-grain rice
blue-cap mushrooms fried in oil
purple-bud ginger vinaigrette
none of them heavenly dishes
but why should I cater to gods

*

The flux of attachments is easy to stop
but it’s hard all at once to end love and hate
I laugh at the mountain for towering so high
and the mountain mocks me for being so skinny

*

I eat a peach spit out the pit the pit becomes a tree
the tree grows and flowers and makes another peach
spring departs and fall arrives year after year
how can I keep my hair from turning white

*

Eight or nine pines behind his hut
two or three mounds of taro in front
a mountain recluse doesn’t have many interests
all he talks about are his provisions

*

Don’t think a mountain home means you’re free
a day doesn’t pass without its cares
old ladies steal my bamboo shoots
boys lead oxen into the wheat
grubs and beetles destroy my greens
boars and squirrels devour the rice
things don’t always go my way
what can I do but turn to myself