Taoist imagery of freedom from conceptualizations. Red Pine poem 253: Children, I implore you get out of the burning house now. Three carts await outside to save you from a homeless life. Relax in the village square before the sky, everything's empty. No direction is better or worse, East just as good as West. Those who know the meaning of this are free to go where they want. This mixed influence is probably due to the high preponderance of Taoists and Buddhists in the same area. The eminent Taoist Ge Hong acclaimed Mount Tiantai as 'the perfect place for practicing the arts of immortality,' which is probably also why so many Buddhist temples were established in the vicinity as well. Red Pine poem 13: "Brothers share five districts; father and sons three states." To learn where the wild ducks fly follow the white-hare banner! Find a magic melon in your dream! Steal a sacred orange from the palace! Far away from your native land swim with fish in a stream! Many poems display a deep concern for humanity, which in his view stubbornly refuses to look ahead, and short-sightedly indulges in all manner of vice, like eating animal flesh, piling up sins 'high as Mount Sumeru'. But he holds out hope that people may yet be saved; 'Just the other day/ a demon became a Bodhisattva.' Red Pine poem 18: I spur my horse past ruins; ruins move a traveler's heart. The old parapets high and low the ancient graves great and small, the shuddering shadow of a tumbleweed, the steady sound of giant trees. But what I lament are the common bones unnamed in the records of immortals. While Hanshan eschewed fancy techniques and obscure erudition, his poems are still highly evocative at times: Red Pine poem 106: The layered bloom of hills and streams Kingfisher shades beneath rose-colored clouds mountain mists soak my cotton bandana, dew penetrates my palm-bark coat. On my feet are traveling shoes, my hand holds an old vine staff. Again I gaze beyond the dusty world- what more could I want in that land of dreams? He is hard to pin down religiously. Chan concepts and terminology sometimes appear in his work. But he criticized the Buddhists at Tiantai, and he directed criticism at Taoists as well, having had no problem bringing Taoist scriptural quotations, and Taoist language when describing his mountains, into his