Roaming a While at Gambulsa (感佛寺), Given to the Old Prior暫遊感佛寺。贈堂頭老比丘。
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 · 2 passages · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 17 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.
Thanks to an idle rumor I was cast into the southern countryside,
and so came to meet a great king of the Law, loving and mild.
Crushing the moss-patterns fine, I go along the stone path,
and winding through gaps in the woods, I seek the lotus temple.
The far islands in the sea are like lamps with their wicks drawn up;
the tall bamboo at the corner of the hall is like spears with blades set upright.
Asking after the Way, I have already forgotten the rancor of exile —
why then did the minister of Chu throw himself for nothing into the Xiang?
Interlinear notes 1
樓外有竹園。植植麻立。
Outside the pavilion there is a bamboo garden, standing as thick as hemp stalks.
The rising and falling in the kingdom of ants is one round of empty dream,
and instead I laugh and talk in a monk's house.
Floating fame has all fallen outside my emptied mind,
while the subtle Way is there in the very midst of what the eye sees.
Brewing tea in a stone pot, the fragrant milk is white;
stirring the fire in a brick brazier, the evening glow is red.
I have tasted, roughly, the glory and the shame of men;
from now on I shall be, among rivers and hills, an old man like a wave.