Record of the Reverend Gonggong's Hare's Horn Hermitage空空上人兔角庵記
瑜伽大士景照。字空空。其遊刃空門。已可謂法王。而又餘事工於詩。故世或以詩僧稱之。宋朝禪老祖播聞其名。遙贐以斑竹杖一事，烏漆鉢五器，黃赤文木槵子一串。兼以詩寄之。又名所居曰兔角庵。自書其額以寄之。予嘉二師千里相契之意。旣和播師詩。略言大槩。師又以記其庵爲請。再三來扣。然予未知所以名之之意。久有難色。今方以予妄意度之。豈以子之字空空。而以空無兔角對之而名之耶。然則空空兔角。其義雖一。兔角又深於空空。而以空空歸於兔角。是則頑空執空之類。非子之所宗唯心唯識入圓成實者也。予復思之。是意不然。名之景照。而字曰空空。則如楞嚴所謂淨極光通達。寂照含虛空者是已。由是觀之。以兔角空空。麗之於照。是豈頑空哉。必以此而名之也。外此予亦無所言已。
Gyeongjo (景照), the Great Being (大士) of the Yoga school (瑜伽), has the courtesy name Gonggong (空空). His roaming without hindrance within the Buddha's gate may already be called that of a Dharma king; and since, as a thing left over, he is outstandingly skilled at poetry, the world sometimes calls him a poet-monk (詩僧).
Zubo (祖播), a Zen monk of the Song court, heard his name and sent him from afar, as gifts, one staff of speckled bamboo, five black-lacquered begging bowls, and one string of prayer beads made of wood figured yellow and red, and with them sent a poem. He also named the place where Gyeongjo lives the Hare's Horn Hermitage (兔角庵), wrote out its signboard himself, and sent it.
Finding it beautiful that the two monks should be of one mind across a thousand li, I had already answered the monk Zubo's poem and spoken of the gist of it in outline. The monk then asked for a record of that hermitage and came knocking two or three times; but I did not know the sense in which it had been so named, and for a long while I showed my reluctance.
Now, reckoning it out as I please, how should it not be that, because your courtesy name is Gonggong, he named it by setting against it the emptiness (空) of the hare that has no horn? If that is so, then although Gonggong and Hare's Horn are one in sense, Hare's Horn is deeper than Gonggong; and to turn Gonggong into Hare's Horn would be stubborn emptiness, the party of those who cling to emptiness, and not that entering into the Perfectly Accomplished Real (圓成實) by way of mind only and consciousness only which you hold foremost.
Thinking again, I find that the sense is not so. His name is Gyeongjo and his courtesy name Gonggong; and what the Suramgama Sutra (楞嚴經) says — 「When purity is utter, the light runs through everywhere, and shining in stillness it holds the void within」 — is just this. Seen thus, the Hare's Horn and Gonggong have been fastened to that shining; how should this be stubborn emptiness? Surely it was named by this. Beyond this I too have nothing to say.
Interlinear notes 1
遊刃 — this comes from the words in the Zhuangzi about the cook Ding (庖丁), who plied his blade between the bones without hindrance. — Translator