Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape

by David Hinton

Come along with David Hinton on a series of walks through the wild beauty of Hunger Mountain, near his home in Vermont—excursions informed by the worldview he’s imbibed from his many years translating the classics of Chinese poetry and philosophy. His broad-ranging discussion offers insight on everything from the mountain landscape to the origins of consciousness and the Cosmos, from geology to Chinese landscape painting, from parenting to pictographic oracle-bone script, to a family chutney recipe. It’s a spiritual ecology that is profoundly ancient and at the same time resoundingly contemporary. Your view of the landscape—and of your place in it—may never be the same.

Genres: Philosophy, Nature, Nonfiction, Poetry, Spirituality, China, Buddhism

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2012

About the author

David Hinton has published numerous books of poetry and essays, and many translations of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy—all informed by an abiding interest in deep ecological thinking. This widely-acclaimed work has earned Hinton a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from NEA and NEH, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States: the Landon Translation Award (Academy of American Poets) and the PEN American Translation Award. Most recently, Hinton received a lifetime achievement award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you haven't read of any of David Hinton's work on and around classical Chinese poetry, this would be a decent place to start, though it's light on the poetry and denser on the intersection of taoism, ch'an (zen) and the experience of the natural world. Structured around a series of Hinton's walks up Hunger Mountain, near his home in Vermont, it wanders, appropriately, through topics and seasons. As always, he's very good reading into the histories and thoughts of the Chinese characters. My favorite chapters are Dragon, Dragon-Bones, and Heaven-Deaf/Earth-Mute, with wonderful descriptions of poets, mostly women, who "wrote" on leaves and snow and welcomed the dispersal of the words into the landscape.

[Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

In mornings dark, days Unborn
Bathed in pools of artificial light
I find myself, trappings all
At the base of Hunger Mountain

David Hinton smiles, ancient sages at his back
All smiling, all mysterious
As if knowing some unknowable
And not sharing

We begin up the Mountain
Sometimes wandering, leaves in watery eddies
Sometimes bounding, deer desperate for high ground
Always moving, never still

We find trees of Sincerity, pulling life from every place
Giving it back
Inside is outside
We pass rocks of Friendship, each lonely and self-contained
Yet nestled with others, snug
We are on the Mountain, in the Mountain, of the Mountain
It makes us Empty, and fills us

I’m caught in this Ritual
Every morning rising from my quiet kitchen
Into misty pathways, quiet corridors with boundaries all my own
The Ego Tunnel

Hinton is above, driving, hungry
He is Dragon
Insatiable generation, enfolding and refolding, burning
Blinded by word, as I am
I lose him around the bends, wends in the woods
He empties himself into me, generous
When my head is right, I am Absence
He is Presence

My resistance is my burden
The Gate through which I cannot pass
To meet Hinton at his tranquil summit
I once waited at a near-peak while friends gained ground
Afraid, but safe, I thought
I was not safe

These words are soft, a Dark-Enigma glowing faintly
At the borders
Rich and full of promise, like the soil
My spade slices
Like the mulch
My rake gathers
Like the dew
My boots trample
Like the Sun
My eyes rejoice, and retreat

There is a place, beneath an apple tree
A chair, inherited from a confused grandmother
A table, redwood round sawed flat
A stillness, an opening
Heaven and Earth
Sometimes I get there, forget myself
And play

Hinton is still ahead of me, grinning
He is a trickster demon, but kind
I cannot follow him up every slope
Fearful of forgetting my path
Wrestling with all the contradictions
Of the day, and still knowing
Nature cannot contradict itself
As I can

So empty out these rain barrels
Dash this experience
Send it tumbling into the earth
And Bow to the sticky center
Of the spider’s web

This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.

[Tony Gualtieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Hinton is an excellent translator of classical Chinese poetry. I had hoped that this book would say more about the connection between landscape and that tradition. There are glimpses of that here, especially in how he links Chinese pictograms to the meanings they visualize, but for the most part there's too much of the irritating clichés of the Shambhala house style: short nouns lacking articles to create a poetic effect, strings of nature images that give no sense of place, a retreat into generalizations, repetition, and dichotomies. There's a better book in here that seems close to bursting out. A discussion of Tu Fu's "Moonrise" gives an excellent demonstration of how the poem's description of the rising moon on a cold night is all about the concepts of friendship and linked minds. I only wish there had been more of that.

[Luke Horvath · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book moves mountains of mind

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Drawing on his own daily experience, particularly his walks up a local mountain, as well as his deep knowledge of Chinese philosophy, language, and landscape poetry, the author gradually builds up in the reader a sense of an open awareness that doesn't center on the self or ego as the source of thinking and that can be experienced or described as an emptiness or absence or as an unmediated awareness of or identification with existence. It is a fine attempt to suggest Taoist/Chan Buddhist mysticism, not something effectively communicated by rational analysis. A few chapters were not effective for me, but overall the book was excellent. I suspect I'll reread it periodically.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous, deeply thoughtful book. Hunger Mountain combines landscape writing with reflections on Chinese language and philosophy. Every short chapter offers a glimpse of Hinton's experience of the outdoors, connected to the explication of a single Chinese character through historical etymology, poetry, and religion.

The sequence of chapters isn't random. Hinton returns to most of his themes and references, building up to a synthetic vision. His remix poem is pretty good, too.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult book to get through despite its few pages. But the effort is well worth it.

Great to combine with reading his Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry.

[Peiyi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is absolutely beautiful book written in essayists language with remarkable insights into traditional Chinese language, poetry and the philosophy of Taoism. As a native Chinese I was surprised by David Hinton’s mastery of our language and culture, how accurate and sensitive his interpretation is, and also refreshed by some of his own unique understandings. It is not an easy read, there are lots of repetition of similar ideas (sometimes too much for me) but I guess that is necessary for those who are completely new to Taoism.

[Jmmaher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting premise. The relationship between people and their language (in this case written language) and how it maintains a relationship with the earth, cosmos, life and being present, all. Based on his translation of Chinese poetry.
I had a hard time getting into it but by the end found it quite fascinating, and in line with much of the Tao and Buddhist traditions.
If you are interested in these areas could be a great read for you.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent read. The focus is the author's perceptions and ruminations during some walks up the local Hunger Mountain. He uses an exploration of the history/philosophy of Chinese characters as a basis for centering his exposition, making it quite similar to his other book, "The Wilds of Poetry", but is expressed in much more personal terms.

[Aaron Puerzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first book on the syllabus for my course on Nature Writing. I reallt enjoyed when Hinton would illustrate ideas with his walks on Hunger Mountain, but to be honest, I had a hard time following some of the ancient Chinese wisdom. The explanations of the evolution of certain Chinese characters was fascinating though!

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughtful, moving, and timeless, this book cekebrates the subtle but critical connections experienced along the spiritual journey. Onr of the best reads I’ve enjoyed in some time; it is indeed a “perfect” book.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very dense, don’t be fooled by the page count, this isn’t a quick read. It is however often quite profound and very interesting as he attempts to put us in the mindset of ancient Chinese language and charts the severance of oneness over time.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect blend of deep historical translation, East vs West metaphysics and cosmology, mindfulness, poetry, and walks in the woods. Seeing mind as landscape, emptying our mind like "gazing into a flawless mirror of sky", in sincerity our inner thoughts are the same as our outer thoughts.

[Steve Finegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written!

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting a little inspiration to climb Hunger Mountain. What I got was a lot of stories about Chinese language/philosophy. Interesting read.

[Keila Cruz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hinton's writing feels like getting closer to the ineffable. The ancient chinese poems he chooses are also a sweet treat!

[Virginia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Occasional good prose and interesting etymological discourse fail to compensate for the ridiculous pretension and laughable Orientalism in this text. Some anti-highlights are Hinton's repeated imaginings of fictitious Chinese poets with hilariously absurd methods of creating poems without language (using practices that most of the world, but not Hinton, would call "performance art" or "environmental art"), and passages like this (pages 111-112): "I fall asleep with Chuang Tzu's tale still in mind, and soon I'm walking up Hunger Mountain in dream. My walk seems routine enough until the first stream, but soon after that I become one of the ancients wandering Thatch-Hut Mountain's ninety peaks [...] Monasteries appear around every bend in the trail, on every knoll I pass [...] It makes sense, as those ancients have for so many years spoken in my voice, and I in theirs, blurring our identities together in poems that are themselves expressions of unborn identity." (The parts I skipped are lists of various peaks and monasteries of Thatch-Hut Mountain.) The text is riddled with silly passages like this, many of which are far worse (this just happened to be the only one I marked).

I recommend this to anyone who wants to have a good laugh at a contemporary American perspective on ancient China.

[JB · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The ancient Chinese mind underwent the same process of metaphoric self-creation as our own, but its empirical origins remain apparent, for the ten thousand things are still visible in the pictographic nature of characters. Mind, for instance, is simply a picture of the heart in classical Chinese (later simplified to 心), because the thinking mind is not distinguished from the feeling heart. And the two activities of 心, thinking and feeling, are also made of the empirical. To think is constructed of two imagistic elements: a heart beneath a skull ... The skull appears alternately as fieldland in [] the image that evolved into the character’s standard form: 思. Hence the idea of thinking is portrayed as “heart-mind” + “field,” which might be rendered as something like “heart-mind in the presence of fieldland” or “the fieldland of heart-mind.” To feel is 情, which is constructed of (simplified stylization of 心, “heart-mind”) beside 青, meaning “the blue-green color of landscape,” a remarkable concept of color that includes both the green of plants and trees and nearby mountains, and the blue of distant mountains and sky. Hence, “heart-mind in the presence of landscape-color” or “the landscape-color of heart-mind.”"

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This disappointed me. A noted translator of the Chinese classics offering reflections from his hikes near his home in the Vermont mountains: what could be more attractive? I imagined a modern take on such clear, beautiful and simple Chinese works as the Cold Mountain poems. Sadly, not so.
While the author's walks around Hunger Mountain are the setting for these reflections, I never got a real picture of the setting. Instead, I mostly got a discourse on the history of various Chinese ideograms, in terms that I found a bit suspiciously modern in their outlook. A primordial goddess religion at the root of Chinese culture? Maybe, maybe not. The author states it rather than shows it.
When the language gets "poetic," as it often does, it seems to me to become less clear without becoming more beautiful.
In short it felt not very satisfying, either as an academic discourse on the history of Chinese thought as reflected in its ideographs (which I wasn't looking for anyway), or as a reflection on the natural world informed by readings of the Chinese masters, which would have been great.
Sorry!

[Maria Longley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The slim book contains various meditations based on walks up Hunger Mountain by David Hinton and his meditations on ancient Chinese sages and a few graphs. He opens up a conceptual framework of these ancients that "is secular, and yet deeply spiritual".

We get musings on language, place, and worldviews. David Hinton is a scholar and translator of ancient Chinese poetry so he brings a lot to the book and I really enjoyed the unpacking of some of the graphs and concepts that he shares with us.

It makes me want to have a mountain that I can go on for walks from the back garden... Hunger Mountain in autumn is a real place in Vermont, as well as being muse, and this is a modern pondering of the ten thousand things and in doing so links us back to the ancients.

[08 Jan 2016 I saw some oracle bones in the British Library similar to the ones David Hinton talks about in his book and it made me appreciate them even more having read this book. They were very interesting ones and included some prescriptions for humans and horses.]

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's a wonderful book I will keep returning to. Recommended by a friend whose judgement I completely trust, I was not surprised not to be able to put it down, yet also reading and the rereading whole pages and sections. The best sort of Daoist teacher, the author's deceptive simplicity of expression drops ideas deep into the mind. I loved the stories, the reality and resonance of the walks up the mountain, the tiny snippets of everyday life with wife and child. He has helped me greatly to a deeper understanding of China and its ancient poetic tradition, and how the great poets of China approached their world and their craft. I recommend it highly

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Hinton's writing is poetic and yet concise. Classical Chinese poetry, its ideograms and how this all relates to ideas about life and nature is fascinating. The ideas about the ten thousand things that are in constant flux in the universe, presence and absence, inside and outside... presents a different way to see things that is non-linear.

[Michael Tobert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a wonderful book. It opens up the world of Chinese calligraphy (which is more interesting than you might think) and links it classical Chinese thought, meditation and the fundamental nature of consciousness: things which interest me greatly. I've done a full review of it on my website: http://michaeltobertbooks.com/

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dense read - which wasn't what I expected nor was in the mood for. Will return to it again.

Love the writing on landscape and experience. Didn't really get into the information on Chinese etymology etc.

[Cfgk]

I don't get it!

[Arthur Rosenfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary book when you are in the right frame of mind to engage it, meaning solitary, thoughtful, quiet, and open. A masterpiece.

[Mdury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few other [if any] books have disabused me of my Western thinking about language, metaphors, and literature. Hinton uses his hikes up Hunger Mountain to explore the nature of Chinese poetry, philosophy, and thought. There's a lot in this book that I've had the personal experience of [on hikes], but lacked the words to express: little revelations. Hinton basically gives us a way to talk about those things, but not through a Western metaphorical structure. In fact, Hinton explores Chinese poetry as viewing landscape and your identity as one thing, not two that must be merged through the unity of disparate parts. Some favorite lines...

-“Once we begin to telling stories, the center replaces the silent mystery with our constructions of it, and the center replaces the silent mystery with our constructions of it, and the result is a breach between consciousness and the empirical landscape”
-“Consciousness is made of the same tissue as the Cosmos. Things vanish into us just as they vanish into the Cosmos, and we call it forgetfulness”
-“After the most exhaustive scientific description, the most accurate philosophical account, of the most concise and imagistic poem, ten thousand things remain, in and of themselves, a mystery beyond me”
-“the birthplace of stars is now always everywhere, a quantum particle-burst blossoming out and flaring starlight where the mysterious fabric of gravity tightens”
-“The Cosmos is a tissue of generative ch’i-energy, and when the eye opens sky inside us, it conjures consciousness as an opening in that ontological absence"
-“Translation itself always opens for me that space between identities ... the ancients speak in my voice, and I in theirs”
-“Our words about the Cosmos are the Cosmos talking about itself. Our thoughts are the Cosmos contemplating itself”
-“The structures of self are all built from the primal ground through a network of metaphoric transference—words and concepts, images and knowledge and story. But it’s all silence here [on Hunger Mountain]”