Preface Written to Send Off the Reverend Jong (宗) on His Roaming South送宗上人南遊序
釋子有源宗者將南遊。來告行。乞詩與序甚勤。予謂之曰。道境至空。無有東西。凡浮屠者。必虛舟其心。浮雲其跡。不以東西去住爲想者也。子之告行於予。實空門之罪人也。予唯以目擊送之。猶爲道境之一點痕纇。況此區區者乎。雖然。子欲之。吾不可無辭以贈。請言之曰。夫我以忘懷待之。雖有情之物。泯然無情。我以有想傾之。雖無情之物。反爲有情。子以山水爲可賞。抑以江南爲山水之最者。而今有是遊也。若懸懸傾佇。持地往觀。則山益佳水益美。莫不含情作態。媚嫵於前後。煙岫焉呈翠眉之脩嫮。淸湖焉作淡粧之嬋妍。水樂交奏。松絃雜彈。上人於是應接不暇。忘寢廢食。雖欲豁斷而來。奈彼牽引不放何。然則其與世之嗜色耽聲者。何以別乎。情之所著。一也。子去觀之。若果有山水之牽於目著於心。將挽引而不放者。當以吾言酌損之。視山水如糞溷。悠悠然亟復人間。還與吾輩雜遊。視紅塵如靑山綠水。然後可謂得道者也。贈詩曰。一片白雲閑。隨風落底山。東西本無繫。好去好來還。
Among the sons of Shakya (釋子) there was one named Wonjong (源宗) who was about to go roaming south, and he came to announce his going and begged very earnestly for a poem and a preface. I said to him,
「The realm of the Way is utterly empty; it has no east and no west. Whoever is a monk must make his mind an empty boat and his traces a drifting cloud, and must not make of going east or going west or staying a thing to be thought about. That you announce your going to me makes you truly a criminal of the Gate of Emptiness (空門). That I should so much as see you off with my eyes is already one speck of flaw upon the realm of the Way — how much more these petty doings?
「Even so, since you wish it, I cannot send you away with nothing said. Let me speak, then. When I meet a thing with my heart forgotten, then, though it be a thing that has feeling, it dims away into no feeling; and when I lean toward a thing with thought in me, then, though it be a thing without feeling, it comes rather to have feeling. You hold that hills and waters are worth enjoying, and hold besides that Gangnam is the first of hills and waters, and so you have this journey now. If you lean toward them in aching eagerness and go and look at them, tracing the ground as you go, then the hills will be the lovelier and the waters the fairer, and there will be none of them that does not hold feeling and put on a figure and play the coquette before you and behind you. The misted peaks will show the long loveliness of green brows and the clear lake put on the beauty of a light adornment; the music of the waters will sound in answer and the strings of the pines be struck among them. Then, Reverend, you will have no leisure to meet it all and return it; you will forget your sleep and give over eating, and even if you wish to cut clean away and come home, what will you do when they draw at you and will not let you go? And if so, by what are you to be distinguished from those in the world who relish women's beauty and are sunk in sound? The attaching of feeling is one and the same.
「Go and look at them; but if there proves indeed to be something in the hills and waters that draws your eye and attaches to your heart and is about to draw you away and not let you go, then you should weigh my words and pare it away. Look on hills and waters as on dung and the privy, and come back at your ease and quickly to the world of men, and mingle again in our company, and look on the red dust as on blue hills and green waters. Only after that can you be called one who has got the Way.」
I give him a poem:
One patch of white cloud at its leisure — following the wind, on what hill does it come down? East and west, from the first it has nothing to bind it; go well, and come well back.