Matching the Rhymes of the Poem He Sent in Reply次韻其公見和
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 · 2 passages · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 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.
I think back: when I met you we still smelled of mother's milk,
and we studied close together in one house, never parted.
Truly you liken me to Ānanda (阿難) —
and there is kinship between us too, so do not forget it.
My eyes first put aside what they looked at while still carrying a burden,
and it is not hard to send off the false seeing of what lies before them.
Do not argue whether this is the moon or not the moon;
only do not take it for the false moon that comes of pressing the eye again.
Interlinear notes 3
予於外舅家初逢。在一家。
I first met him at my father-in-law's house, where we lived under one roof.
來詩。以我比阿難。
In the poem he sent he likened me to Ānanda.
於予婦爲堂弟。
He is a first cousin, younger, to my wife.
2Second Poem
方識三摩路甚夷。一門超出更何疑。蒙公早指令深挹。免作祈公悔晚知。
Only now do I know that the road of samādhi (三昧) is very level,
and what is there still to doubt about leaping through in one gate?
You told me early and let me drink deep of it,
so that I need not regret knowing late, as Lord Gi did.
Du Qigong (杜祈公) read this sūtra in his old age and said to Zhang Andao (張安道), "You have known it long — why did you not press me about it?" Andao answered, "…", saying that early or late in one's gaining of it is nothing to regret. Qigong read this sūtra only after he had retired from office. I came to believe in it early, having been led to it by the Lord.