A Record of the Sixteen-Foot Clay Image (丈六塑像) of Vairocana Tathāgata, Lord of the Hall, at Bohyeon Temple on Myohyang Mountain妙香山普賢寺堂主毗盧遮那如來丈六塑像記
佛滅度久矣。不有遺像。安所歸心。然則浮屠者之營造佛像。乃其職也。如吾儒家者流。繪畫夫子之像而宗事之也。雖然。其間有予所不悅者。若無賴男子假形浮屠。聲言營寺造佛。而其實自奉者是已。此則規有以取必於人。先務爲奇行。乃殘形垢服。燃頭灼臂。無所不爲。或冬月洗足踏雪。大其聲唱其願。徇路行喝。乃至千門萬戶。無所不踐。有不隨喜者。輒諭之強之。必取銖金寸帛然後乃已。此非特自造墮地獄之業。亦焉知不使人得慳貪誹謗之罪耶。何則。心之誠者。雖不飾其外。人悅而奉之。內之僞者。雖務奇示異。求眩於人。鮮克有心敬者。理之常也。比丘學珠。實誠而不僞者也。嘗棲妙香山普賢寺。草衣宴坐。不迹紅塵者久矣。普賢寺者。北地之名寺也。凡高人釋子遺世鍊眞者之所嘗遊集也。越貞祐某年丙子。契丹闌犯封境。無佛寺神祠。皆焚滅之。是寺亦爲煨燼。像設從而蕩掃。師慨然發憤。思欲營妥佛像。自以爲偏方小土。不可以成大事。遂間開徑到京師。每於稠人中。但言其所以營之之意。而不力於丐請。然見其貌聞其言者。無不悅而奉之。自上方至公侯卿相善男信女。皆願爲檀那。其委珍貨如山積焉。師於是充其經費。乃塑成堂主毗盧遮那如來丈六像及其補處文殊，普賢兩菩薩尊像。悉飾以金銀百寶。使光彩爛發。梵相具足。儼然若口言目動。而淸淨法身。宛如在前。至於鍾磬鑪缸之具。無不極其制而侈焉。噫。此大事也。脫使巨官腆祿者營之。有不堪其勞費者。學珠特一鉢髡耳。雖集衆緣。銖積寸累。然後爲之。顧力省效敏如此。則是豈偶然哉。必萬劫宿願之所漸也。及成。權措于相國崔公別齋。縉紳士大夫高人韻士。無不坌集膜拜。如見眞身。其以偈頌形容梵相者。不可勝計。予嘗謂師曰。夫以心法觀之。猶欲直踏其頂上。吾子方且塑其像。其於見性。不亦遼乎。師笑之曰。世薄民偸甚矣。焉得使人人皆坦然知直悟之旨耶。凡人情。對境起想。由想得因。然後入於道眞者也。予之營此像。蓋欲驅人以歸眞。勖人以敬佛耳。予始頷之。師曰。子旣頷吾言。其爲我記之可乎。予以不能文爲解。師不聽。凡納踵於吾門者累十。予懼其不已。遂筆之。師亦頗能屬文。著讚佛頌。其意有足觀者。貞祐十一年癸未二月日。某記。
It is long since the Buddha passed into extinction. If there were no images left behind, where should men turn their minds? If so, then a monk's making of Buddha images is his very office. It is like our Confucians' painting the image of the Master (夫子) and serving it on high.
That being so, there is yet something in this that I do not like. It is this: a lawless fellow borrows the look of a monk and cries aloud that he is building a temple and making a Buddha image, while in truth he is maintaining his own person. Such a one, who must needs scheme to get something out of others, works first at doing strange deeds, so that there is nothing he will not do — hurting his body and befouling his clothes, burning his head and searing his arm. Sometimes in the winter months he washes his feet and treads the snow and raises his voice loud and calls out his vow, and goes along the roads shouting until there is not one of a thousand gates and ten thousand households that he has not trodden. If there is one who is not glad to go along with him, he at once admonishes him and forces him, and does not stop until he has got some coins of gold and some inches of silk. This not only makes for himself the deeds that bring a man down to hell: how do we know that it does not also make men get the sin of meanness and of greed and of reviling?
Why so? One whose mind is sincere is gladly honored by men though he does not adorn his outside; and one who is false within is seldom revered in the heart, though he work at strange things and show what is uncommon and seek to bewitch men: and this is the constancy of the principle.
The monk Hakju (學珠) is in truth one who is sincere and without falsehood. He lodged long ago at Bohyeon temple on Myohyang mountain, and it is long since he sat in stillness in a robe of grass and set no foot in the red dust. Bohyeon temple is a famous temple of the northern country. It is where the lofty and the clergy who leave the world and refine the true once roamed and gathered.
In a certain year of Jeongu, the year byeongja, the Khitan wantonly broke the frontier and burned away without distinction both Buddhist temples and spirit shrines. This temple too became a heap of ashes, and the Buddha images were swept away with it. The master resolutely roused himself and thought to make an image and enshrine it at ease. Holding that this was a small piece of ground in an out-of-the-way region where a great work could not be achieved, he opened a byway at last and came to the capital. Each time, in the midst of many men, he spoke only of his purpose of making it and did not press his begging. And yet of those who saw his look and heard his words there was not one who was not glad to honor him. From the king above down to the dukes and marquises, the ministers and the good men and good women, all wished to become his donors, and the rare goods they entrusted to him were heaped up like a hill.
With these the master made good his expenses and then molded and completed the sixteen-foot image of Vairocana Tathāgata, lord of the hall, and the venerable images of the two bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra, who stand in the attendant positions (補處). All were adorned with gold and silver and every manner of jewel, so that the radiance breaks out brilliantly and the Buddha's marks are complete, and they seem solemnly to speak with the mouth and to move the eye, and the pure and clean Dharma-body seems plainly to be present before one. And down to the gear of bells and chimes, of braziers and jars, there is nothing whose fashioning he did not carry to the full and make ample.
Ah, this is a great work. Even if one had a man of high office and thick emolument do it, there would be toil and cost in it that he could not bear. Hakju is only a monk with a single bowl. Though he did it after gathering many bonds and heaping up a few coins and piling up a few inches, yet, when one considers it, his saving of effort and the swiftness of his effect are such as this: how should this be by chance? It must be that an old vow of ten thousand kalpas has soaked into him.
When it was finished it was enshrined for a time in the outer house of the Chief Minister, Duke Choe, and officials and gentlemen, the lofty and scholars of taste, crowded in, and there was not one who did not bow as though he beheld the true body. Those who gave form to the Buddha's marks in gathas cannot all be counted.
I once said to the master: 「Now by the law of the mind one would rather tread straight upon the very crown of his head, and you are just now molding his image besides: is this not far off from seeing one's nature?」 The master laughed and said: 「The world is thin and the people hard, exceedingly so. How can every single man be made to know the meaning of awakening straightway and clearly? Now a man's feeling faces a place and raises a thought, and by the thought he gets a bond, and after that he enters the true Way. My making this image is in the main only to drive men to turn back to the true and to make men strive to revere the Buddha.」 And then I nodded.
The master said: 「Since you have nodded at my word, how would it be for you to make a record for me?」 I explained that I was not good at writing, but the master would not listen, and he set his heel within my gate some tens of times. Fearing that he would not stop, I write it down at last with my brush. The master too knows well enough how to compose, and he made a 「Hymn in Praise of the Buddha」 (讚佛頌), in which there is something in the meaning worth looking at. Written by a certain one on a certain day of the second month of the eleventh year of Jeongu, the year gyemi.