Gyeongheung Meets a Sage憬興遇聖

Gyeongheung meets a sage.

In the reign of King Sinmun, the great virtuous monk Gyeongheung (憬興) was of the Su clan and a man of Ungcheonju.

At eighteen he left home to become a monk, and he handled the Tripitaka as if wielding a blade, so that the esteem he won weighed heavily on his age.

In the first year of Kaiyao, when King Munmu was about to die, he gave his last charge to King Sinmun:

"The master Gyeongheung is fit to be national preceptor. Do not forget my command."

When King Sinmun ascended the throne he duly made him elder of the state and had him live at Samnangsa.

Suddenly he fell ill and lay in bed for more than a month.

A nun came to see him and ask after him, and citing the passage in the Flower Garland Sutra where a good friend speaks of the root of illness, she said:

"Your illness now, master, comes from worry and toil. It can be cured by glad laughter."

Then she made eleven kinds of faces and danced a comic dance for each. Some were craggy as if carved with a chisel, and the changes were beyond words. Every one was enough to make a jaw drop.

The master's illness, before he knew it, was washed clean away.

The nun then went out the gate, entered Namhangsa〔The temple is south of Samnangsa.〕, and vanished.

The staff she had carried was found before the painted image of the Eleven-Faced Avalokitesvara.

One day he was about to enter the royal palace, and his attendants made ready first outside the east gate.

The saddles and horses were very fine, and boots and hats stood in rows, so that passersby made way for them.

A layman〔Some say a monk.〕 of rough appearance, a staff in his hand and a basket on his back, came and rested on the mounting block. In the basket could be seen dried fish.

An attendant scolded him. "You wear the black robe. How can you carry something unclean?"

The layman said, "Compared with holding live flesh between two legs, what is there to shun in dried fish bought at the market?"

When he had spoken he got up and left.

Gyeongheung was just coming out the gate, heard his words, and sent a man after him.

At the gate of Munsusa on Namsan the man threw down the basket and vanished.

The staff was before the image of Manjusri, and the dried fish was pine bark.

The messenger came and reported, and Gyeongheung heard it and sighed. "The great sage came to warn me against riding on a beast."

To the end of his life he never rode again.

The fragrance of Gyeongheung's virtue and the taste he left behind are fully recorded on the Samnangsa stele written by the monk Hyeonbon.

Once I saw in the Bohyeonjang Sutra the words of the Bodhisattva Maitreya: "In the world to come I shall be born in Jambudvipa and first deliver the disciples of Sakyamuni's age of the final law, except only monks who ride horses, who shall not see the Buddha."

How could one not take warning?

In praise it is said:

The pattern the worthy of old left behind holds all the more meaning, so why do those who come after not polish and refine themselves? Even dried fish on the back is a thing worth heeding, so how could they bear to turn their backs on the Dragon Flower seat one day?