After Drinking, Rambling On at Random in Big Words, Shown to Elder Mun醉後亂導大言。示文長老。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 142 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 14 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
If poems were not made, to what should I entrust myself?
Deep in the ocean waves, green are the Three Spirit Mountains upon the heads of six turtles.
If the Buddha's Law had not arisen, where should I live?
Mount Sumeru is high, standing within five-colored auspicious clouds.
Li Bai and Du Fu too are like cicadas crying,
and I look down on them, clap my hands and make sport of them.
Bodhidharma and Huike too are like ants crawling along,
and the Zen master's laughter rings through heaven and earth.
Mocking all things and loving fine words,
Du Fu ended in want and Li Bai died drunk.
Having no mind to transmit, they vainly transmitted the mind,
and for this the two patriarchs went back in vain with a single shoe, or cut off an arm.
Now I have come down with you into the world of men,
and on the road of red dust we snap our fingers at each other.
When the Law comes to no-mind and poetry returns to plainness,
then at last I shall sing with the Zen master of the beginning of the Great Way.
Ah, the sage is no extraordinary thing:
I would have people look again upon Shakyamuni and Confucius.