Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 39

Text for the Prajna rite held at the Prison Office after the jails had been emptied典獄行空獄後般若道場文

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 · 142 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 39 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.

蓮花寶座。如來爲兩足之尊。貝葉雄詮。般若極二空之旨。歸崇允篤。報應遄加。顧循眇眇之資。司牧元元之類。惟刑是恤。竊思伯禹之泣辜。諸罰所加。恐有冶長之非罪。況盛夏敲篜之節。豈生人楚毒之時。尋命有司。盡寬庶獄。冀託空門而乞援。永蠲胏石之受辭。玆敞熏筵。俾揚靈典。庶有加之悃愊。格無礙之照詳。不惟囹圄之空虛淸淨以理。抑亦國家之閑暇優遊爾休。

The Thus-Come One upon the lotus jewel seat is the exalted one in whom blessing and wisdom are both complete; and Prajna, the majestic teaching on pattra leaves, has exhausted the meaning of the twofold emptiness. If the serving and turning to them be truly deep, their repaying is swiftly added.

Looking back, with worthless stuff I have taken charge of governing the many people. Troubled above all by punishments, I quietly think upon how King Yu (禹) wept at the sight of a criminal, and I fear that where many penalties have been handed down there may be some guiltless man like Gongyajang (公冶長). Still more, how should the steaming season of midsummer be a time to torment living men with the rod? So I at once commanded the offices in charge to deal leniently with all the cases in the jails.

Entrusting myself to the gate of emptiness, I pray for help, and I hope that forever there may be no crying out of wrong suffered. So I open a seat for the burning of incense and have the divine scripture sent abroad.

Let the sincerity I add reach your unhindered beholding, so that not only may the prisons stand empty and be governed in purity and cleanness, but the land too may be unhurried, ample and at peace.

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