Biography

Shih-Tse ('Pick-Up') was a minor T'ang dynasty Chinese Buddhist poet, who lived sometime during the 9th century C. E. in Kuoching Temple, in the Tientai mountain range on the East Chinese Sea coast; roughly contemporary with Cold Mountain and Big Stick , but younger than either. He was close friends with both and together they formed the "Tientai Trio". Shih-Tse lived as a lay monk, and worked most of his life in the kitchen of Kuoching Temple.

Name

An apocryphal story relates how Shih-Tse ('Pick-Up') received his name: Once, Big Stick was travelling between Kuoching Temple and the village of Tientai, when at the redstone rock ridge called 'Red Wall' he heard some crying. He investigated, and found a ten-year old boy who had been abandoned by his parents; and picked him up and took him back to the temple, where the monks would raise him.

Poetry

Shih-Tse wrote an unknown number of poems, but 49 have survived. They are short; and rarely exceed 10 lines. They typically on a Buddhist subject, and executed in a style reminiscent of Cold Mountain's. Indeed, Shih-Tse's Poems 44 and 45 have often been considered to really have been written by Cold Mountain; not impossible as the two were especially good friends- see Poem 33:

           We slip into Tientai caves,
           We visit people unseen-
           Eat magic mushrooms under the pines.
           We talk about the past and present
           And sigh at the world gone mad.
           Everyone going to Hell
           And going for a long time.

The case for Poems 44 and 45 being misattributed is further strengthened by the fact that Poem 45 is otherwise the only poem in Shih-Tse's canon which contains Taoist motifs- a thing common in Cold Mountain's poetry however. See Poem 45:

           Up high the trail turns steep,
           The towering pass stands sheer;
           Stone Bridge is slick with moss.
           Clouds keep flying past,
           A cascade hangs like silk,
           The Moon shines in the pool below.
           I'm climbing Lotus Peak again,
           To wait for that lone crane once more.

Common subjects include back-sliding monks and the foolishness of worldly people in both short-sightedness and their sins; like in Poems 43, 38 and 30, respectively:

           By and large the monks I meet
           Love their wine and meat.
           Instead of climbing straight to Heaven
           They slip back down to Hell.
           They chant a sutra or two
           To fool the laymen in town,
           Unaware the laymen in town
           Are more perceptive than them.

           People crowd in the dust,
           Enjoying the pleasures of the dust.
           I see them in the dust
           And pity fills my heart.
           Why do I pity their lot?
           I think of their pain in the dust.

           Take these mortal incarnations
           These comical-looking forms
           With faces like the silver moon
           And hearts as black as pitch.
           Cooking pigs and butchering sheep,
           Bragging about the flavor,
           Dying and going to Frozen-Tongue Hell
           Before they stop telling lies.

Other subjects included him and his friends. See Poems 27 and 39, respectively:

           Partial to pine cliffs and lonely trails,
           An old man laughs at himself when he falters.
           Even now after all these years,
           Trusting the current 'like an unmoored boat'.

           A young man studied letters and arms
           And rode off to the Capital,
           Where he learned the Hsiung-nu had been vanquished;
           And all he could do was wait.
           So to kingfisher cliffs he retired,
           And sits in the grass by a stream
           While valiant men chase red cords
           And monkeys ride clay oxen.

(The 'Hsiung-nu' was probably the 'Huns'.)

And sometimes he simply wrote about the Tientai mountain range where he lived. See his final poem, Poem 49:

           Woods and and springs make me smile;
           No kitchen smoke for miles.
           Clouds rise up from rocky ridges,
           Cascades tumble down.
           A gibbon's cry marks the way,
           A tiger's roar marks the way.
           Pine wind sighs so softly,
           Birds discuss sing-song.
           I walk the winding streams,
           And climb the peaks alone.
           Sometimes I sit on a boulder,
           Or lie and gaze at trailing vines.
           But when I see a distant village,
           All I hear is noise.

References

The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Red Pine, ISBN 1-55659-140-3. Copper Canyon Press 2000