Hyetong Subdues a Dragon惠通降龍

Hyetong subdues a dragon.

The monk Hyetong (惠通): his clan is not known in detail. When he was still a layman, his home was at the mouth of Euncheon-dong on the western foot of Namsan.〔It is the village east of Namgansa today.〕

One day he was playing by the stream east of the house. He caught an otter, killed it, and threw the bones into the garden.

The next morning the bones were gone. He followed the trail of blood, and the bones had gone back to their old den and were crouched there, holding five cubs.

Hyetong looked on, and for a long time he was startled and thought it strange.

He sighed and hesitated, then left the world, went forth as a monk, and changed his name to Hyetong.

He went to Tang, met the Tripitaka master Wuwei, and asked to study under him. The master said, "How could a man from the eastern borderland be a vessel for the Dharma?"

In the end he would not open the teaching to him.

Hyetong could not bear to be dismissed so lightly and withdraw. He served diligently for three years, but still the master did not allow it.

Then, in anger and frustration, he stood in the courtyard and set a brazier of fire on his head.

In a moment the crown of his head split open with a sound like thunder.

The master heard it and came to look. He removed the brazier, pressed the split place with his finger, and chanted a divine spell. The wound closed and was as it had been on any ordinary day.

A scar remained in the shape of the character for king, wang (王), and because of this he was called the Monk Wang (王和尙).

The master thought him a deep vessel and passed on to him the seal and the secret formula (印訣).

At that time a princess of the Tang royal house was ill, and Gaozong asked the Tripitaka master to save her. The master put forward Hyetong to go in his place.

Hyetong received his instruction and took a separate seat. He put one mal of white beans into a silver vessel and chanted over them, and they turned into spirit soldiers in white armor. They chased the thing that caused the illness, but could not overcome it.

Then he put one mal of black beans into a golden vessel and chanted over them, and they turned into spirit soldiers in black armor.

He had the two colors join together and give chase. Suddenly a scaled dragon fled out, and the illness was at last cured.

The dragon resented having been driven out by Hyetong. It came to Muningnim (文仍林) in his home country and took lives with great venom.

At this time Jeong Gong (鄭恭) had gone to Tang as an envoy. He saw Hyetong and told him, "The venomous dragon you drove out has gone back to your home country and is doing great harm. Go quickly and get rid of it."

So in the second year of Linde, the eulchuk year, he returned to the country together with Jeong Gong and drove the dragon out.

The dragon then resented Jeong Gong too, and it lodged itself in a willow that grew outside the gate of the Jeong house.

Jeong Gong did not notice this. He only admired how thick and lush it was, and cherished it dearly.

When King Sinmun died and King Hyoso ascended the throne, they built the royal tomb and opened a road for the funeral. The Jeong family's willow stood in the way of the road, and the officials wanted to cut it down.

Jeong Gong said in anger, "Cut off my head sooner than cut down this tree."

The officials reported this. The king was greatly angered and commanded the sagu:

"Jeong Gong relies on the divine arts of the Monk Wang and is plotting something insolent. He scorns and defies the king's command and says to cut off his head. Let him have what he likes."

So they executed him and buried his household in a pit.

The court deliberated: "The Monk Wang was very close to Jeong Gong. He is bound to hold a grudge. We must deal with him first."

So they called up soldiers to seize him.

Hyetong was at Wangmangsa. When he saw the soldiers arrive, he climbed onto the roof holding an earthenware jar and a brush ground with red ink, and shouted:

"Watch what I do."

Then he drew one stroke on the neck of the jar and said:

"Each of you, look at your own neck."

They looked, and every one had a red stroke drawn on it. They looked at each other in alarm.

He shouted again, "If I cut the neck of the jar, your necks will be cut too. What then?"

The band ran off, and with their red necks they went before the king. The king said:

"How could the divine powers of the monk be dealt with by human strength?"

So he let him be.

The king's daughter suddenly fell ill. By royal order Hyetong was made to treat her, and the illness was cured. The king was greatly pleased.

Hyetong then said, "Jeong Gong was defiled by the venomous dragon and wrongly suffered the punishment of the state."

When the king heard this, he repented in his heart. He released Jeong Gong's wife and children and made Hyetong state preceptor.

The dragon, having already taken its revenge on Jeong Gong, went to Gijangsan and became a bear spirit. Its cruelty and venom grew even worse, and many of the people suffered from it.

Hyetong went into the mountains, admonished the dragon, and gave it the precept against killing. The spirit's harm then ceased.

Earlier, King Sinmun had developed an abscess on his back and asked Hyetong to look at it. Hyetong came and chanted a spell, and at once it healed.

Then he said, "In a past life, Your Majesty, when you held the body of a chief minister, you wrongly judged a good man, Sinchung (信忠), and made him a slave. Sinchung bears a grudge, and life after life he takes his revenge.

This foul abscess too was caused by Sinchung. You should build a temple for Sinchung and pray for his happiness in the next life, to dissolve it."

The king thought this deeply right. He built a temple and named it Sinchung Bongseongsa (信忠奉聖寺).

When the temple was finished, a voice in the air said, as if singing, "Because the king built a temple, I have escaped my suffering and been born in heaven. The grudge is already dissolved."〔Some books put this matter in the Biography of Jinpyo, but that is wrong.〕

At the place where the voice sounded, they set up Jeorwondang (折怨堂), the Hall of Broken Grudges. The hall and the temple still exist today.

Before this, after Milbon there was the eminent monk Myeongnang (明朗).

He entered the dragon palace and obtained the divine seal (神印),〔in Sanskrit it is called mudra, which means the divine seal.〕 and he first built a temple at Sinyurim〔it is Sacheonwangsa today〕 and several times repelled the invasions of neighboring countries.

Now the monk received the marrow of Wuwei's teaching, traveled all through the dusty world, saved people, and transformed all things.

Moreover, by his power of clearly knowing past lives he built a temple and washed away a grudge, and the wind of esoteric teaching rose high from this.

Chongjiam on Cheonmasan and Juseogwon on Moaksan and the others are all the descendants of his line.

Some say, "Hyetong's secular name was Jonseung gakgan," but gakgan is a high grade among the chief ministers of Silla, and nothing is heard of Hyetong having held office.

Some say, "He shot and caught a wolf," but none of this is known in detail.

In praise it is said:

Mountain peach and stream apricot cast slanting light on the hedge, On one narrow path spring is deep and both banks are in flower. Thanks to the young man who idly caught an otter, Demons and heretics were all driven far from the capital.