The Monastic Superintendent Replied Again, and I Answered Him Once More僧統又和復答之
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
六用通融互攝時。卽於器界儻能離。不然便似凡夫類。性汝眞心自失遺。
When the six functions open into one another and are gathered in,
then one can depart from this world of matter.
Otherwise one is just like the common crowd,
and loses of oneself the nature of your true mind.
2Second Poem
海眼光中什麽觀。問師無對問還難。俄然笑指東山語。按上楞嚴已不看。
What do you see within that gaze like a deep spring?
I ask the monk, and there is no answer, so asking grows hard again.
All at once he smiles, points to the Eastern Hill (東山) and speaks,
and lays the Śūraṃgama Sūtra aside, looking at it no more.
Interlinear notes 1
海眼 — a set phrase for the spring-mouth where water wells up from the floor of the sea; the monk's gaze is likened to it here. — translator
3Third Poem
遣拂心塵尙未夷。刹那分別卽成疑。師今縱示無還地。見見元非見所知。
Though I shake off the dust of the mind, it is not yet level,
and a moment's discriminating becomes doubt at once.
Even if the monk now shows the place from which there is no returning,
the place that sees seeing is not, from the first, a thing that seeing can know.