Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 11
Mongyeo, Great Zen Master and Head of Songgwangsa, Sent Two Attendants to Obtain Two Stalks of Ink Bamboo Painted by Jeong Ian and Then Asked Me for an Encomium — A Shoot Rises from Bamboo in the Snow松廣社主大禪師夢如。遣侍者二人求得丁而安墨竹二幹。仍邀予爲贊云。 雪竹生筍
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 11 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.
竹之耐寒。雖則其性。未聞其筍。冒雪亦逬。唯昔孝子。誠感天地。泣出冬筍。以中母嗜。不爾法身。妙色湛然。不爲時節。劫所能遷。法子森立。一似其體。旣克似之。安有寒暑。
That bamboo endures the cold is its nature, they say but that its shoot should brave the snow and rise besides — of this I have not heard Only a dutiful son of old by his devotion moved heaven and earth and weeping made winter shoots come forth to suit his mother's taste — that is all If it be not so, then the Dharma-body (法身) its wondrous light clear and still is what neither the seasons nor the kalpas (劫) are able to move Those who have inherited the Dharma stand thick as a grove and all alike have become one with that body Having already become the same as it how should there be cold or heat?