Report of the Royal Preceptor (王師) asking leave to go down from the mountain王師乞下山狀
具銜云云。豐號大名。豈宜久享。殘年暮景。固合歸休。敢布危悰。仰干聰聽。伏念某襟靈暗劣。戒行迂疏。命與時來。夙躡禪門之峻級。識兼機淺。莫窮祖海之深源。曩遭聖考之中興。誤採僧流之末品。特崇師禮。勅去臣稱。如玆貶損於帝尊。蓋欲延洪於壽算。以老髡之無狀。致仙路之促期。顔厚十重。罪當萬死。其不受顯懲也大幸。又未能自責而退藏。豈意聖上陛下篤勤善繼之孝誠。無棄前朝之舊物。尙容孤跡。久贅榮途。虛承豢養之豐。蔑有潤滋之利。包羞不退。被謗亦多。今則齒已迫於耄衰。病復乘而陵觸。進不克謹趨於禁殿。退或艱例轉於伽藍。擬卜幽棲。以圖終老。伏望聖上陛下廓廻大度。曲諒哀祈。俯宣曰可之辭。許遂言歸之請。則林餐雲臥。儻延一日之生。夕火晨香。敢怠萬年之祝。無任云云。
Official titles written out in full, and so forth. An ample title and a great name — how should it be fitting to enjoy them long? For my remaining years and failing light it is truly fitting to go back and rest. I dare to unfold my anxious heart and look up and trespass upon your bright hearing.
Prostrate I consider that so-and-so is dark and mean in his inward heart, and loose and sparse in the conduct of keeping the precepts. Fortune came along with the times, and early I trod the high grades of the Seon school; but my knowledge is shallow and my capacity shallow too, and I have not exhausted the source, deep as a sea, of the Patriarchs (祖師).
In days past, meeting the restoration of the late king, he wrongly chose out one who stood at the last grade among the throng of monks, raised him especially with the rite due a teacher, and commanded that the calling of oneself "your servant" be done away with. That he thus diminished and lowered the eminence of a sovereign was, in the main, out of a wish greatly to lengthen his years. Yet by the worthlessness of an old monk he was made to hasten his appointment with the road of the immortals; and though my face-skin were ten layers thick, my guilt deserves ten thousand deaths. That I have not received a declared punishment is already great good fortune, and yet neither have I reproached myself and withdrawn into hiding.
How should I have thought that Your Sage Majesty, thick and diligent in the filial duty of carrying on well, would not cast away a stale thing of the former court? Rather you have taken in this solitary trace and long let me cling like a wen to the road of glory. In vain I have borne your ample rearing and feeding, while of the benefit of moistening and increasing there has not been the least. Holding my shame yet not withdrawing, I have also been much reviled.
Now my years have already come to age and decline, and illness again takes its chance and presses in. Going forward, I cannot reverently hasten to the palace; drawing back, it is hard even to move from temple to temple in turn. I reckon to take a secluded dwelling-place and there finish out my old age.
Prostrate I hope that Your Sage Majesty will turn your great measure widely about and bend down to consider this sorrowful request, and will bend down to send the word "Let it be so," permitting me to accomplish my request to return. Then, though eating in the forest and lying among the clouds I should lengthen my life by a day, how should I dare be slack in praying ten thousand years for you with evening lamp and dawn incense? Unable to contain myself, and so forth.