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 · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 19 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.
The strung beads hang thick — how is it there are so many?
Do you mean to count all the Buddhas to the last?
The Buddhas of the worlds gone by and the worlds to come, of the ten directions,
are past all reckoning in number, like the sands of a river.
If you mean to count them with these,
what will you do when your mind runs mad and falls into confusion?
I ask you rather to still your mind and turn these beads,
and count up the faults you have heaped together until now.
Though you may not know the sins of long kalpas,
how should you fail to understand what you have done in this life?
If you can understand it and wash it all away into emptiness,
then even the Buddhas beyond reckoning may be counted.