Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 12

A Letter Sent to Seon Master Mongyeo, Head of Songgwangsa寄松廣社主禪師夢如手書

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 · 150 Chinese characters · reading time 1.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 12 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.

右啓。僕曩以塵雜細故。達于頤知識者。頤老特一鉢浮屠耳。予安有所冀而乃爾耶。以顔厚不得逕達於大和尙丈下。庶或藉其舌。略聞于左右耳。書生之大寡廉恥如此。果蒙頤老手簡。其所送物件。大過始望。雖於其簡以自送爲辭。知必出於大和尙方丈。祗領已還。不勝感荷。不然。儒家之經費。比來頗甚繁浩。殆不得堪支也。噫。非救世大法王。疇及是哉。書意未悉。惶恐惶恐。惟冀爲法珍重。

I report as above. Some while ago, over a dusty and trifling matter, I went to the Wise Friend (善知識) I (頤). This old man is only a monk with a single bowl, so what could I have hoped for in doing it? It was a brazen thing, and I could not come straight before Your Reverence; I wished only, if I might, to borrow his tongue and have the gist of it reach your left and right. Such is the brazenness and the shamelessness of a scholar of letters.

And indeed I received a short letter from the old man, and the goods he sent went far beyond what I had hoped for at first. Though in his letter he said that he was sending them himself, I know for certain that they came from the abbot's quarters of the Great Reverend. Receiving them with respect, I withdraw, unable to overcome my thankfulness. Had it not been so, the expenses of a Confucian household, which of late are rather very many, would nearly have been past bearing.

Ah, who but a great Dharma king who saves the world would reach to this? I cannot set out all that my words mean. In fear, in fear. Only I pray that you will spare your body for the sake of the Dharma.

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