Nishitani Keiji

The Cold Mountain Poems

Reflections of a Zen Philosopher

Trans. by Norman Waddell

Nishitani Keiji’s The Cold Mountain Poems presents the celebrated Kyoto School philosopher in a somewhat unexpected role: as a devoted reader of the poems of the legendary Zen recluse Hanshan, perhaps better known as Cold Mountain. In a series of close readings, Nishitani takes up Hanshan poems one by one, exploring their spiritual, philosophical, and poetic dimensions while bringing them into conversation with themes central to his own thought—emptiness, selfhood, nature, and awakening.
Hanshan has been described as a poet standing at the intersection of Zen and Daoist perspectives. Nishitani, however, argues that the poems are most deeply grounded in the Zen Buddhist tradition Through careful commentary on individual verses, he shows how their deceptively simple language opens onto questions central to Zen practice and to philosophy more broadly. The poems move between mountain solitude and everyday life, humor and insight, offering a perspective that dissolves conventional distinctions between sacred and ordinary experience. Situating Hanshan’s voice within the interpretive horizon of the Kyoto School while preserving the freshness and immediacy of the poems themselves, Nishitani’s reflections invite us to read Cold Mountain anew—through the eyes of one of Japan’s most profound thinkers.

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