Gakdeok覺德
1Gakdeok — the first from Silla to go abroad to study, who brought the relics home
釋覺德新羅人。聰明廣博。凡聖莫測也。新羅既奉行佛教。人爭歸信。師以達智知世之可化。謂曰遷喬必出谷。學道務求師。若安安而居。遲遲而行。非釋子棄恩之本意。即附舶入梁。為求法之先鋒。但不知第何年耳。此新羅入學之始。遂歷事明師。備承口訄如除翳膜。如去盯矃。有始有終。無荒無怠。德高行峻。道望彌隆。以採寶者非但自用。當還故國普振群貧。乃於真興王十年。與梁使齎佛舍利。還至舊都。王遽命有司。即遣百官備禮儀出迎于興輪寺前路。此亦舍利之始也。昔僧會適吳求伸七日方值神驗。師當人主已信之際。隨上國重使。來儀本國。了無艱□。又以法水普潤海表。使惰夫立□皆懷欲往之志。其功利復何勝道哉。後二十六年。陳遣使劉思及入學僧明觀。送釋氏經論無慮二千七百餘卷。初則新羅法化初張。經像多闕。至是班將大備焉。二師所終。皆未詳聞矣。
The monk Gakdeok (覺德) was a man of Silla. He was clear-minded and widely learned, and no one could measure whether he was an ordinary man or a sage. Silla had already taken up the teaching of the Buddha and practised it, and people were vying with one another to turn to it and believe. The master knew with his penetrating wisdom that the age was ripe to be transformed, and he said, "To move to a tall tree one must first come out of the valley, and to learn the way one must work at seeking a teacher. To stay at ease where one is at ease and to walk slowly where one walks slowly is not the first purpose of a son of Shakyamuni, who has put aside the bonds of kindness."
So he took ship and went into Liang, and he was the vanguard of those who went to seek the Law. Only the year is not known. This was the beginning of Silla's going abroad to study. He went on to serve one enlightened teacher after another, and received in full what they taught him by word of mouth, and it was like the lifting of a film that covers the eye, like the clearing away of a speck in the sight. He had a beginning and he had an end, and he was neither rough nor slack. His virtue was high and his conduct stood out, and his renown in the way rose higher still.
He said that one who digs up treasure does not mean it for his own use alone, but ought to return to his old country and rouse up the many poor everywhere. So in the tenth year of King Jinheung he came back to the old capital with the envoy of Liang, carrying relics of the Buddha. The king at once ordered the office in charge to send out the hundred officials, to make the rites ready, and to go and meet them on the road before Heungnyunsa. This too was the beginning of the coming of the relics.
Long ago Kang Senghui went to Wu and had to pray for seven days before he met with a divine sign. The master came at a time when the lord of the people already believed, and he came to his own country in the train of a weighty envoy of a great state, so that he met with no hardship at all. And he wetted the lands beyond the sea widely with the water of the Law, so that even the idle man stood up and all of them carried in their hearts the wish to go. How could his merit and his benefit ever be told in full?
Twenty-six years later, Chen sent the envoy Liu Si and the monk Myeonggwan (明觀), who had gone abroad to study, with more than two thousand seven hundred volumes of Buddhist sutras and treatises in all. At first, when the transforming teaching of the Law was only beginning to spread in Silla, sutras and images were much wanting, and by this time they were fully provided. How the two masters came to their end is not known to us in any detail.