Matching the Rhymes of Senior Kang's Poem Lamenting the Great Zen Master — With the Preface次韻康先輩哭丈大禪帥幷序

My fellow in the Way, the Great Zen Master Hyemun (惠文), abbot of Hwaaksa (華岳寺), had long since passed away, and I heard the news of it only late. Just as I was about to compose a poem to lament him, I happened to see a piece in which Senior Kang, so-and-so, had offered condolences to the master's disciple, the Great Master Dami (湛伊); so I match its rhymes and give this to that master.

Parted and gone astray, south and north, each of us desolate, even the soul in dreams is cut off at one edge of the sky. Master Choe early on asked the road to the netherworld, and Master Yu too went seeking the immortals of the Blue Void (碧落). The master followed after, shedding his body as one sheds trousers, while I only think of them, as one splits open a lotus. On which green mountain's slope was he given to the fire? His name flies off with the wind, his bones have turned to smoke.

Having passed through all of life, he alone was clear and still, a single round bright moon shining in the autumn sky. Far off he took as master the Buddha whose mind the Western patriarchs transmitted, and at times he followed our crowd and became an immortal of wine. I picture him up in the hall, lifting his abbot's staff; who now will chant a spell in the begging bowl and make a lotus bloom? Pitying the lone grave that has no stone, on a single sheet of paper I leave in vain a few specks of smoke.

The new poem congratulating me is still vivid, yet before ten days or a month were full he suddenly returned to heaven. The master, laying on the whip, has already become a Buddha first; I, still brewing my medicine, have not yet become an immortal. His dry bones have turned in vain to earth beneath the pines, but that one piece of mind will long be like a lotus in the water. Happily there is Lord Dami to ascend the hall, so on the evening of the memorial rite the heart's incense will do — no smoke is needed.