Text for the Hwaeom Society at Suam Monastery水嵓寺華嚴結社文

Daego (大孤) says.

This humble monk long ago threw himself into the Hwaeom (華嚴) and presumptuously climbed to the Seon arena (選佛場). Yet when I considered being bound to a name, I could not do as I wished. In the end I cast off name and profit altogether, sent my staff flying and traveled the four quarters, and long have I sought a place to cultivate the true and to expound learning.

Now, that monks are called fields of merit (福田) is in the main because sowing the merit of living beings (衆生) is like sowing grain in a good field. Without reckoning my own meanness and folly, I had the mind to sow merit but no place to sow it. I only loitered and floundered, rolling like mugwort and drifting like duckweed. I always sighed over this to myself.

So, together with friends of one mind who refine the good, I lodged at a hermitage in the mountains, and constantly expounded the Hwaeom and cultivated the practice of Samantabhadra. Before long, those who came after us out of regard for the report of it were no fewer than fifty-odd. But as we had no settled place to stay, nearly all lived scattered in the mountain valleys, and only now and then, at a donor's invitation, would we gather and hold the winter and summer retreats.

I said to those of one mind with me: "As for a place for two or three of us to stay, a room of eight feet would be ample. But to stay together with fifty-odd men and expound learning, nothing will do but a broad and open monastery hall. What is to be done?"

Just then I heard that His Excellency Pak (朴公) of the Privy Council had built a monastery called Suam Monastery (水嵓寺) when he went out as magistrate of Goseong (固城); that it stood in the northeast corner of the district, looking down in front on a clear stream and backed behind by a fine ridge, with woods deep and secluded and firewood and water abundant — a land where a monk might cultivate the true and dwell. His Excellency thereupon made over to the monastery a stretch of empty, broad marshland that could be turned to fields, and further made over ten slaves of his own household and a quantity of grain, to be worked by the method of capital and interest, pledging that it should go on without break forever.

There was no better place than this land for us to gather in, and so we ought to ask His Excellency for this. But as he was not one I had met and been known to, it seemed hard to go forward on my own. So I wrapped up my shame, bore the disgrace, went straight to his gate, and set out my whole intent.

His Excellency said: "My intent and vow in building this monastery were not shallow. But I had not yet met a true man and a refined friend who could take charge of the incense and lead there. Now that I hear you have come and knocked, it is as though the halves of a tally were matched. How should this not be the work of a like vow in a former age?"

That day he reported it to the sovereign and received his assent. After that we made the one among our companions named Hyeja (惠資) master of the society. This teacher too had once climbed to the Seon arena by the gate of the Hwaeom discipline. And now he has cast off his name and roams the four quarters, just as I have.

Accordingly we promised together that each year we would hold the winter and summer retreats, and that at other times we would expound the sutras in the early evening, gather our thoughts at midnight and sit in meditation, and by day expound the commentaries, weighing and savoring them — this to be the rule we should always keep. Accordingly we prayed for the sovereign's long life. And so forth.

We wish that even after our company has left this world, the company of those who cultivate the Way may go on unbroken, and may turn the wheel of the dharma always, to the end of the ages to come; and the many Buddhas and the host of heavens alone will look upon this.