Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 3
Looking at the Body (觀身)觀身
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.
我欲外其身。等觀樂與苦。齕指先試之。十指皆痛楚。此實心使然。是心安所付。不借定力觀。焉視身如土。唯有隱几人。㗳然似喪耦。衆窺之刁刁。始也孰號怒。
I wished to set this body outside myself and to look on pleasure and pain alike. I bit a finger to test it first, and all ten fingers hurt. This is truly the mind's own doing, but where is this mind attached? Without borrowing the power of meditation, how should one see the body as earth? Only that man leaning on his armrest sits blankly, as if he had lost his mate. The many hollows sound softly — but who in the first place made them cry out in anger?
Interlinear notes 1
又値微病偶題。
Also written on a whim while suffering a slight illness.