While Reciting the First Volume of the Śūraṃgama Sūtra I Chanced upon a Poem and Sent It to the Monastic Superintendent to Show Him誦楞嚴經初卷。偶得詩。寄示其僧統。
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 · 3 passages · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 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.
1First Poem
手披目閱有停時。何似心銘不暫離。誦箒比丘應自愧。伽陀一句善忘遺。
Even opening with the hand and reading with the eye must stop at times —
how can that match graving it on the mind and never leaving it for a moment?
The monk who memorized the broom must have been ashamed of himself,
for he kept forgetting even a single verse of the gāthā.
Interlinear notes 1
楞嚴云。周利盤特迦。卽誦箒比丘也。持如來一句伽陀。得前遺後。得後遺前。
This appears in the Śūraṃgama Sūtra. Suddhipanthaka (周利盤特迦) is the monk who memorized the broom. He held to one verse of the Tathāgata's gāthā: when he grasped the first part he forgot the latter, and when he grasped the latter he forgot the first.
2Second Poem
欲把蓮花晝夜觀。日沈燈滅見還難。若於三性無昏住。明了心端倍眼看。
Holding a lotus, I would look at it day and night,
but when the sun sets and the lamp goes out, looking grows hard again.
If one does not dwell in darkness among those three,
a mind opened bright at its end is twice as good as looking with the eye.
Interlinear notes 1
三性 — this refers to the three kinds of seeing distinguished in the two lines above. Nowhere in the source text is it made clear what the three are. — translator
3Third Poem
儒釋雖同還小異。時憑法主略諮疑。假饒盡誦藏胷底。那及吾師卷上知。
Though Confucian and Buddhist teaching be one, they differ a little after all,
and from time to time I lean on the Master of the Dharma (法主) to ask about my doubts.
Even if I recited it all and hid it away in my breast,
how could that reach what our monk knows upon the page?