Matching the Rhymes of the Poem the Song Chan Master Bo Sent to the Venerable Gonggong次韻宋朝播禪老寄空空上人
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 · 93 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 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.
Zubo (祖播), a Chan monk of the Song, sent one poem by the hand of Ouyang Bohu (歐陽伯虎), who was coming eastward, to the Venerable Gonggong (空空上人) of our country, and along with it five sets of lacquered begging bowls and one staff of mottled bamboo. He also named the hermitage 「Togak (兔角)」 and wrote out its signboard with his own hand and sent it.
I thought it beautiful that the two monks had met in mind from a thousand li apart, and hearing also of Master Ouyang's name as a poet I looked up to him thirstily. So I have replied with two poems: one I send to Chan Master Bo, informing the Venerable Gonggong as well, and one I send to Ouyang the Twenty-ninth.