Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 9
Grieving Again over My Eye Ailment又傷目病
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 9 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.
我尙不畏死。此病堪任置。其痛竟難堪。爲有此身耳。四大本非眞。頗亦悟斯理。如今覺痛覺。未入三摩地。
I am not even afraid of death, so an ailment such as this is worth bearing with. That its pain is hard to bear in the end is only because this body of mine exists. That the four great elements (四大) which make up this body are not true in themselves— I too have come to understand this principle well enough, yet now there is in me a feeling that feels the pain, and so I have not yet entered samadhi (三摩地).
Interlinear notes 2
楞嚴畢陵伽婆蹉所云
These are the words of Pilindavatsa in the Surangama Sutra (능엄경).
四大 — This is a Buddhist term for the four elements—earth, water, fire and wind—that make up the body. — Translator