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Prayer for the fast at the last prime, the third下元齋詞

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 1 passages · 209 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 15 — Prayer Texts A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.

1His hand holds the golden axe, his heart is sent to the Jasper Terrace

啓請如科儀。伏以混成至道。本在勤行。衆妙玄門。唯資善閉。故曰修之身則其德乃貴。修之國則其德有餘。旣能事少功多。可謂暫勞永逸。臣雖手提金鉞。而心寄瑤臺。飄飄然自有良期。擾擾者誰知積學。是以。三元致敬。一氣存思。佇天上之鷄聲。潛懸素望。待海中之鶴信。每瀝丹誠。終冀用之則行。豈言深不可識。今者謹齎薄禮。仰黷玄慈。所願轉茂靈根。漸抛俗界。餌崦嵫之奇草。飮沆瀣之仙漿。漢代淮王。終遂仙遊之樂。周時柱史。何妨吏隱之名。苟保天成。奚言日損。景仰於其中有象。願知於此外無求。臣無任投辭懇迫虔禱兢越之至。謹辭。

The opening petition is as the ritual code prescribes. I bow and consider that the utmost Way, which was formed whole, lies at root in diligent practice, and that the dark gate of the host of mysteries rests only upon closing well. So it is said, "Cultivate it in the body, and its virtue is true. Cultivate it in the state, and its virtue has more than enough." Since one can have little work and much merit, it may be called toiling a while and resting long. Though your servant lifts the golden axe in his hand, his heart is sent to the Jasper Terrace. Fluttering free, he has a good term of his own. Among those in turmoil, who knows of learning heaped up? So at the three primes he brings his reverence, and upon the one breath he holds his thought. He waits for the cock's cry in heaven and hangs his plain hope in secret. He waits for word from the crane in the sea and pours out his red sincerity each time. In the end he hopes to act if he is used. How should he say that it is too deep to be known? Now he reverently brings a slight offering, and looks up to trouble the dark mercy. What he wishes is that the numinous root grow lusher and the common world be cast off little by little, that he eat the rare herbs of Mount Yanzi and drink the immortals' liquor of the night dew. The King of Huainan in the time of Han won at last the joy of roaming as an immortal. The court archivist in the time of Zhou, what harm was there in his name as one hidden among clerks? If what heaven completes is kept, why speak of losing day by day? He looks up in admiration to the image that is within it, and he wishes to know that outside it there is nothing to seek. Your servant cannot bear the fullness of the words he casts, his earnest urgency, his reverent petition and his trembling. This he submits with respect.

Interlinear notes 1

The base text has 貴, "honored," but it is taken as an error for 眞, "true," the reading of the received text of Laozi 54. — translator

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