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In a Dream I Played with a Beautiful Woman, and on Waking Wrote It Down夢與美人戲。覺而題之。

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 · 1 passages · 148 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min

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.

我年七十四。久斷衾中事。云何夢魂中。偶與美人戲。鬒髮嚲烏雲。明瞳注秋水。豈惟以心挑。摩撫袖中臂。佯若露頩頰。未幾開笑齒。迺反邀我愛。解作百般媚。嘗謂夢覺同。以此例生死。我今已斷慾。夢裏何未爾。因恐比所熏。淸淨一心地。▣▣不如今。妄意自疑耳。飜思是器界。一切皆夢寐。摩登伽亦夢。留汝者誰是。但得境解脫。如寤一場睡。況以夢中夢。而疑眞與僞。毋謂此眞心。生死或有異。

My years are seventy-four And long ago I cut off the business under the quilt How then, in the soul within a dream Did I chance to play with a beautiful woman Her black hair hung down like a dark cloud Her bright pupils seemed to pour out autumn water How should it have been with the heart alone that I stirred her I stroked the arm within her sleeve She seemed to show a cheek gone red on purpose And before long she showed her laughing teeth And turned instead to ask for my love Knowing how to put on every kind of coaxing Long ago I said that dreaming and waking are one And by this I measured life against death Now I have cut off desire Why then is it not so within a dream I fear it is the staining of habits soaked into the body That the one clear and clean ground of the mind ▣▣ is not as it is now It is only with deluded thought that I doubt myself Turning it over, I see that this world of matter Is wholly and altogether a dream Mātaṅgī (摩登伽) too is a dream Who then is it that held you fast If only one gets free of the realm of the senses It will be like waking from a bout of sleep How much less, by a dream within a dream Should one doubt the true and the false Do not say that this true mind Has any difference in life and in death

Interlinear notes 3

三月十五日也

This was the fifteenth day of the third month.

見楞嚴

This appears in the Śūraṃgama Sūtra. Mātaṅgī is the woman who beguiled Ānanda with a spell.

境解脫則皆如夢事

Once one is free of the realm of the senses, it is all a thing like a dream.

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