The Gwanheo Studio (觀虛軒) of the Venerable Gyeom (謙上人)謙上人觀虛軒
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 · 90 Chinese characters · reading time 1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 1 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.
If a thing is blocked there is something to see,
but if it is empty, what is there further to behold?
When I first saw the inscription (銘) of this hall
I thought in my mind that it would not do,
and I pressed the master with the reason for the name;
he said this name cannot be struck out.
Mountains and rivers too had no form at first,
and the thread of their first making cannot be known.
If one could truly follow back to their root,
one could return again to emptiness (空).
Emptiness was from the first one lump with heaven and earth,
and as it split and divided, a between came to be.
Seen again by true aspect (實相),
heaven and earth are one and the same.
One sees with the mind and not with the eye,
so what is open, and again what is blocked?
The wondrous One is what he alone knows,
and how should a commonplace gaze break in upon it?