Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 3

Matching the Rhymes of Bai Letian's (白樂天) Poem "Taking Orders While Staying at Home"次韻白樂天在家出家詩

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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 3 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.

端坐觀空萬慮澄。老禪肌骨髮唯仍。在家未礙先成佛。披毳何須要作僧。自始腰拋丞相印。迴看心有祖師燈。箇中一段堪嘲事。妻置盃呼忽錯噟。

Sitting upright I look upon emptiness, and the thousand thoughts grow clear; an old Seon adept in flesh and bone, with only the hair still left as it was. Even staying at home, nothing hinders one from becoming a Buddha first; must one drape a robe of hair to be a monk? Since the day I flung the chief minister's seal from my waist, I look back and find in my heart the lamp of the Patriarchs. In the midst of it there is one laughable thing: when my wife sets down the cup and calls me, I answer by mistake.