On the Nineteenth of the Tenth Month, Visiting Ssangam Temple, I Left an Inscription to Show the Old Host, the Monk Won十月十九日。遊雙嵓寺留題。示主老源上人。
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 · 118 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 5 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.
Blue rocks stand askew, too many to reckon
the great ones like mountains, the small ones the size of a house
How is it that it alone got the name Ssangam, Twin Rocks?
I ask the host, and still he does not say
Leaning on my staff I look closely all morning, thread by thread
and cold sweet water comes running out between two stones
Was it perhaps for this that the temple got its name of old?
I should take the matter to the end with some old man
Or I wonder: did a monk who lived here long ago cultivate precepts (戒) and concentration (定) as a pair, and adorn himself with them
so as to be fit to pair with the Buddha, and name the temple's tablet from that?
Now you too are such a man
so do not give the lie to the temple's name
Ah, ah
the rocks are many, and I leave it to whatever you point out
which then are the ones called the pair?
My words too are empty
and only after digging up the root again shall I let it be