Bill Porter (born October 3, 1943) is an American author who translates under the pen-name Red Pine (Chinese: 赤松; pinyin: Chì Sōng).
[1] In an interview with Andy Ferguson for Tricycle Magazine in 2000, Red Pine revealed some of the details of his early life.
Nevertheless, after six years he was pardoned by the governor of Michigan and released; an inheritance from the sale of the family farm allowed him to enter the hotel business and to become a multimillionaire.
Pine served in Germany for three years as a medical clerk, which paid for his college education at UC Santa Barbara where he obtained a degree in anthropology.
Unhappy with academic life, he left to go to Hai Ming Temple, a monastery 20 km south of Taipei where he stayed for 2 1/2 years.
He adopted a Chinese art name, "Red Pine" (赤松 "Chi Song"), after the legendary Taoist immortal.
[6] His book Road to Heaven prompted Edward A. Burger to seek out and study with Buddhist hermits in the Zhongnan mountains of China and direct the 2005 film Amongst White Clouds.
Stonehouse (石屋禅师) was a fourteenth century Zen master who wrote his poems late in life while living alone in a Chinese mountain hut.