Hyeonyu玄遊
1Hyeonyu — He went to the Western Regions with Seungcheol and stayed in eastern India
釋玄遊。句高麗人。叶性虛融。稟質溫雅。意存二利。志重詢求。乘盃泝流。考室幽壑。入唐禮事僧哲禪師。摳衣稟旨。哲思慕聖蹤。泛舶西域。適化隨緣。巡禮略周。歸東印道。遊常隨附鳳。因住於彼。慧矩夙明。禪枝早茂。窮涯盈量虛往實歸。誠佛家之棟樑。實僧徒之領袖。既而舟壑潛移。悼陵谷之遷質。居諸易脫。惻人世之難常。薪盡火滅。復何可追。義淨三藏嘉爾幼年慕法情堅。既虔誠於東夏。復請益於西天。重指神洲。為物淹留。傳十法而弘法。竟千秋而不秋。雖捐軀異域。未返舊都。彼之功名落落如此。安得不掛名竹帛以示將來。遂著求法高僧傳。予偶覽大藏。閱至於斯。志深嚮慕。遂抽繹而書之。
The monk Hyeonyu (玄遊) was a man of Goguryeo. His nature answered to what is empty and open, and his make was warm and refined. His mind was set on the good of himself and of others, and he held it a weighty thing to ask and to seek. He rode a cup up against the stream, and he looked out a room in a deep ravine.
He went into Tang and served the Chan master Seungcheol (僧哲) with all courtesy, drawing up his robe and taking in his teaching. Seungcheol longed for the traces of the holy ones and put out in a ship for the Western Regions, teaching as the occasions came, and when his round of reverence was nearly done he came back by the road of eastern India. Hyeonyu always followed close behind him, and for that reason he stayed there. His torch of wisdom was bright early, and the branch of his meditation grew thick early. He went to the very edge and filled the full measure. He went out empty and came back full. Truly he was a roof beam of the house of the Buddha, and the head of the company of monks.
Then the boat and the ravine moved away in secret, and he grieved that the hills and the valleys had changed their substance. The sun and the moon slip by easily, and he was sad that the world of men can hardly stay as it is. When the firewood is spent the fire goes out. How can it be followed again?
The Tripitaka master Yijing said, "I hold it beautiful that in your young years your feeling for the Law was firm. You gave your whole heart in China in the east, and then you asked for further learning in the Western Heaven, and you pointed again to Shenzhou (神洲) and stayed long for the sake of others. You passed on the ten teachings and spread the Law, and though a thousand autumns come to an end it will not wither. Though you threw your body away in a strange land and never returned to the old capital, your merit and your name stand out like this. How then could we not hang your name on bamboo and silk to show it to those who come after?" And so he wrote the Record of Eminent Monks Who Sought the Law.
I happened to be looking through the Buddhist canon, and when my reading came to this place my mind was drawn to it deeply, and so I have drawn it out and set it down here.