by Ilyon
O merciful monk, be kind and do not chide me.”
She sang this song in a beautiful voice which almost melted the lonely heart of the monk after his long celibacy. He replied,
“A Buddhist temple, large or small,
Should be kept clean, and you are not
Qualified to enter my cell;
Go away quickly lest your rosy flesh
Tempt my rising passion.”
The woman blushed with shame, and bent her steps to the cell of the other monk where she sang her song again,
“My beautiful lady,” said Puduk, “where have you come from on this night so deep?”
“Under the clear sapphire sky I come and go as I please,” she said. “I heard of your wish and admired your high moral conduct, so I am here to help you become a Bodhisattva. Listen to my song:
The sun is down and a thousand mountains are dark,
As I travel on my lone heart knows no bounds;
Where the pine and bamboo deepen the green shadows in the valley,
The blue water sings a fresh tune;
The weary traveler asks for a night's hospitality,
Not because she has gone astray
But because she wants to lead you to a noblepath—
Listen to my request, but do not ask who I am.”
Surprised, Puduk answered, “This is a holy place which must not be defiled by women. But to come to the aid of all creatures is one of Buddha's commands, much more to hear the appeal of a woman who seeks asylum in this lonely valley. Come in. You can rest in my cell, though it is too bare and humble for a noble lady like you.”
The woman entered the cell and the monk lowered the wick of the burning candle in the niche and chanted Buddhist prayers without stopping a moment in order to keep the temptation of a pretty woman out of his pure mind.
At midnight the woman called the monk and said, “I am sorry but I am going to have a baby unexpectedly and unfortunately in your presence tonight. Kindly bring a straw mat for me.”
“Women are most pitiful when giving birth,” said Puduk. “Let me raise the wick of the flickering candle before I do as you ask. Ah, the baby is already born. I hear its loud cry.”
“Yes, the baby has been born sooner than I expected,” she replied, “Now please bring me a tub of hot water so I can bathe myself and the baby.”
Puduk was ashamed at seeing the naked body of a woman and trembled from head to foot, but he took pity on her, and having prepared a tub of hot water, placed her in the middle of it and washed her milk-white body with trembling hands. He was astonished to perceive that the tub was filled with a sweet scent and that the water had changed into a golden liquid. “Ah, wonder of wonders,” he murmured.
“You, too, bathe in this water,” the woman told him. The monk was even more ashamed to bare his body before a woman, but he obeyed. As he bathed, he felt his mind becoming ennobled with a fresh spirit, his skin turned the color of gold, and the tub became a lotus pedestal.
“Ah, wonderful sight!” said Puduk.
“Dear monk,” said the woman, “be seated on this lotus pedestal. I am Kwanum Boddhisattva, the goddess of mercy, and I have come to help you become a great Bodhisattva yourself.” With these words the woman disappeared in the twinkling of an eye.
On the following morning Pak-pak, thinking that Puduk had surely broken the commandment of Buddha and enjoyed the woman during the night, called on his fellow monk to remonstrate with him. To his astonishment his friend was seated on a lotus pedestal as a Maitreya Buddha, radiating brilliant light from his golden body.
Pak-pak bowed respectfully and asked, “Who has made you a Bodhisattva?”
“A beautiful woman,” Puduk replied. “She wanted to rest in my cell, so I suffered her to come in; she wanted to bathe after childbirth, so I gave her a hot bath; she told me to bathe in the same tub and in the same golden water, so I did, and I became a golden Buddha. As she left she said that she was the goddess of mercy. Because I showed her mercy, she returned my kindness by making me an image of mercy.”
“You are not only a kind-hearted man but a strong-hearted one as well,” sighed Pak-pak. “As for me, I was too weak to resist her charming beauty, and turned her away for fear of falling in love with her and going to hell instead of heaven. My inhumane treatment of a fellow creature has lost me the golden opportunity of becoming a god of mercy.”
“Don't be so sad,” replied Puduk. “There is still some golden water left in the tub in which you can bathe.”
Pak-pak bathed in the golden, aromatic liquid, and the moment he emerged from the tub he was transformed into another Maitreya and took a position facing his friend. The villagers flocked around the twin divinities with wondering eyes. The two gods of mercy spoke to them, preaching sermons full of golden sayings. Then they flew up to heaven, riding chariots above the clouds.
In the first year of King Kyongdok of Silla (755), the King heard this wonderful story and in the year of the cock (757) he ordered the construction of a large temple on the scene of these events, to be called the South Temple of the White Moon Mountains.
On the fifteenth of July in the second year of T'ang Kuang-te in the year of the dragon (764), when the temple had been completed, an image of Maitreya was placed in its Golden Hall with a golden panel above it inscribed, “Palace of the Incarnate Maitreya.” In the Lecture Hall was an image of Amitabha with a similar panel above it which read, “Palace of the Incarnate Amitabha of Everlasting Life.”
The heroine of this story was an incarnation of Buddha in a woman's body. In the Buddhist book Hwaom-gyong it is written, “Lady Mahamaya of goodness and mercy shining over the 'eleven lands' gave birth to Sakyamuni Buddha with a vision of the gate of Buddhist salvation, casting off worldly passions.” (In the Indian legends Buddha's mother is named Maya. “Maha” is a Sanskrit prefix meaning “great.”) Thus the birth of Buddha was re-enacted by the goddess in the White Moon Mountains.
She sang her song to the hermits in a plaintive tone like that of a lovesick fairy from heaven. Had she not taken the form of a young and beautiful woman and talked to them in “Dharani” (Buddhist spells in Sanskrit), she could not have communicated with them in working this wonder. In her song of temptation she might have said, “The winds of heaven mingle forever in sweet emotion; why can I not mingle with thee into a single being?” But because she was a goddess she could not allow herself to sound like a vulgar woman in a ballad.
Song of Praise to the Northern Hermitage
In the twilight who knocks at this silent stone door in the deep, deep mountains?
Ah, it is a woman, a phantom of delight, a moment's ornament!
You may go to the Southern Cloister, which is not far away—
Do not tread on the green moss of my doorstep,
Do not stain my clean cot with your woman's presence.
Song of Praise to the Southern Hermitage
In the deep dusky valley from whence comes this fair lady
Who like the radiant moon shines on my solitary cot?
Welcome, lady, rest thy weary feet under my southern window.
As the night deepens my perplexed heart with thy beauty brightens,
Only the baby's cries keep my pretty guest awake the whole night.
Song of Praise to the Holy Woman
She wandered over hill and dale and under the lonely ten-li pine grove
To tempt the lonely monks in the night cells;
When she had borne two babies, she rose from her bath at dawn
And flew far, far away into the western sky.
84. The Goddess of Mercy and the Blind Child at Punhwang Temple
During the reign of King Kyongdok (742-765) there lived at Hanki-ri a woman whose name was Hui-myong. She had a son, but he became blind at the age of five. One day this unhappy mother carried her child in her arms to the Left Hall of Punhwang Temple. There she had him sing a song before the portrait of the Thousand-Handed Goddess of Mercy on the northern wall while
she offered a prayer. Immediately, the child recovered his sight.
Song of the Blind Child
I fall on my knees and clasp both my hands
To pray thee to have mercy on me, O Kwanum Bodhisattva!
Thou hast touched so many dark eyes with thy thousand hands
And made them bright as daylight;
Pray give me one eye for love and another for charity.
If thou givest me mine eyes, I will sing thy great mercy.
Song of Praise to the Goddess of Mercy
Riding a bamboo horse, playing an onion pipe.
I played on hills and streams.
But alas, in a twinkling I lost the sight of both eyes! Had the goddess not given me back my bright eyes, How many springs would have come and gone without my seeing the pussy-willows!
85. The two Buddhas of Naksan and Chosin, the Lovesick Monk
In the olden days, when Uisang Popsa had returned from his first visit to China, he heard that the goddess of mercy (Kwanum) had taken up her abode in a cave on the seacoast. He therefore called the place Naksan, after the Indian mountain Pota-Nakka-san, which is better known as So-Paekhwa (Small White Flower) because the graceful white-clad image of Kwanum Bodhisattva there resembled a white flower on a slender stem.
(Uisang evidently went to this place for a religious retreat of some sort). On the seventh day of his purification, Uisang stood up and pushed his cushion into the sea so that it would float away on the morning tide. Eight gods from the Four Deva Kings then conducted him into the cave. There he looked up to heaven and worshipped Buddha, and a crystal rosary was given to him. He took it, and as he stepped backward the Dragon of the Eastern Sea offered him a beadlike gem (Cintamani), which he also accepted. Uisang purified himself for a further seven days, after which he beheld the splendid face and graceful figure of the living Buddha.
The Buddha said, “If you climb this mountain you will see a pair of bamboos growing at the top. There build a palace for me.” When Uisang had left the presence of the Buddha he climbed the mountain, and above the cave two bamboo plants shot suddenly out of the ground and then disappeared. Uisang therefore knew that this was the holy abode of Buddha, and on this spot he built a temple called Naksan-sa with a lifelike image of the graceful Buddha in its Golden Hall, where he also deposited the crystal rosary before his departure.
Soon afterward Wonhyo, another famous Silla monk, made a pilgrimage to worship this Buddha. When he arrived at the southern foot of the mountain, he saw a woman harvesting rice in a field. Wonhyo liked women and pleasantry, so he said to her jestingly, “Will you give me some rice?”
“No, I am sorry, I cannot,” she replied. “It is a lean year and beggars are not welcome.”
Proceeding further, he met a woman washing her menstrual band in running water under a bridge. She too he addressed in jest: “Let me have a drink of the cool water.”
“All right, come and drink,” rang out her clarion voice, and she scooped up some of the unclean water in a half-moon-shaped gourd and pressed it to his lips. Wonhyo drained the gourd and dipped more water from the mountain stream to quench his thirst.
As he did so, a blue bird in a pine tree nearby called to him “Come on, my good monk Huiche-Hwasang!” and disappeared, leaving a woman's shoe under the tree. When Wonhyo reached the temple he found another shoe, of the same size and shape, by the pedestal of the Kwanum Bodhisattva. He then realized that these shoes belonged to the two women whom he had met, and that they were both incarnate Buddhas. From that time on people called the pine from which the bird had called the Kwanum pine.
Wonhyo wished to enter the cave and see the graceful figure of the living Buddha there, but a storm was raging at sea and his little boat almost capsized, so he was forced to desist.
Many years later Pomil, the founder of Kulsan Temple, traveled to China in the years of T'ai-huo (827-835) and visited Kaikuo Temple in Mingchow. There, occupying the lowest place in the temple, he met a strange monk whose left ear was missing. This monk said to Pomil, “I am one of your fellow countrymen. My home is in Tokki-pang, Iknyong-hyon, on the boundary of Myongju (Yangyang in Kangwon Province). When you return home, visit my native place and build a house for me.”
Pomil visited all the famous Chinese temples and learned much esoteric Buddhist doctrine. When he returned home in the seventh year of T'ang Hui-ch'ang, the year of the hare (847) he founded Kulsan-sa. On the night of the fifteenth of February in the twelfth year of T'ang Ta-chung, in the year of the tiger (858), Pomil had a dream about the one-eared monk whom he had met years before in China. The monk stood under his bedroom window and said, “You made me a promise at the temple in Mingchow. Why are you so late in keeping it?” In great surprise Pomil arose and gathered a party of fellow monks to seek the native place of the one-eared monk near Iknyong (Wing Pass).
In a village at the foot of Naksan he met a woman named Tokki whose eight-year-old son was accustomed to play near a stone bridge south of the village. One day the child said to her, “Mother, one of my playmates has a face that shines with golden rays.” The woman told this to Pomil, who in great joy took the child with him to the stone bridge. Under the bridge in midstream he found a stone Buddha image. When it was taken from the stream he saw that it exactly resembled the monk he had met in China—its left ear was missing. This was the noble image of Chongch'wi Bodhisattva. Pomil selected an auspicious site on Naksan and built a temple, enshrining the holy image in its Golden Hall.
(Ilyon notes here: In an old book the stories of Pomil are placed before those of Uisang and Wonhyo. But since Uisang and Wonhyo lived during the reign of T'ang Kao-tsung in China(649-683) and Pomil in the days of Hui-ch'ang 170 years later, this is a mistake in chronology. Some scholars say that Pomil was a disciple of Uisang, but this also is a mistake.)
In a forest fire which broke out a hundred years after these events, all the temples and shrines on Naksan went up in flames except the temples of the Kwanum and Chongch'wi Bodhisattvas.
After the Invasion of the West Mountain (the Mongol invasion, 1253-1254) the images of the two Bodhisattvas together with the two jewels were moved to Yangju-song (Yangyang, Kangwondo). When the city was about to fall to the Mongols, Ahaeng the abbot (formerly called Hoi-ko) tried to save the rosaries by hiding them in a brass vessel. Kolsung, a temple slave, buried this vessel in the ground and swore an oath: “If I do not escape death in this war these treasures will vanish from the human world forever, but if I survive I will present them to the King.”
Finally, on the twenty-second of October in the year of the tiger (1254) Ahaeng was killed when the city fell, but Kolsung escaped. When the enemy had evacuated the ruined city he dug up the brass vessel and presented it to Yi Nok-yu, the keeper of the royal treasury, to be preserved under strong guard. In October of the year of the horse (1258) Kakyu, the abbot of Chirim-sa, said to the King, “The two rosaries are sacred treasures of the nation. Before the fall of Yangju Kolsung the temple slave buried them in the city, and after the enemy left he dug them up and presented them to the royal treasury in Myongju. Now Myongju is in imminent danger of falling into enemy hands, so they should be transferred to Your Majesty's inner palace.”
The King approved this plan and sent ten soldiers to Myongju by night to fetch the rosaries and bring them to his inner palace. He rewarded the ten soldiers with one pound of silver and five large bags of rice each.
During the Silla period when the Kings ruled in Kyongju there was in Nalli county in Myongju prefecture a manor belonging to Sekyu Temple (now called Honggyo-sa). The abbot of this temple appointed a young monk named Chosin caretaker of the manor. No sooner had he arrived to take up his duties than Chosin fell in love with the daughter of Kim Hun-kong, the county magistrate. She was a girl of sixteen, fairer than the moon and more charming than all the flowers put together. But though she smiled on him she was unyielding, like a bell-flower growing between rocks too high for his hands to reach.
At length he knelt before t
he goddess of mercy, who now appeared to him in the semblance of his love, and prayed, “Oh great Buddha! Only make this girl my wife for even a moment's joy if not for life, for she is my jewel, which I wish to cherish in my bosom in love's palace on earth before I enter the lotus paradise in heaven. So be it, Namu-amitabul!”
Thus he prayed all through the flowering spring and the rainy autumn, but all in vain, for the girl was betrothed to another man. When he thought of the blooming bride in her glittering jewels and compared the richly-dressed bridegroom with himself—a poor monk in a grey hemp robe—he shed tears of bitter despair.
At last the wedding day arrived, and as Chosin knelt for his evening prayers he saw in his mind's eye the magnificent wedding feast and the lovemaking of the young couple. A flame of jealousy rose in his heart, and he said to himself, “Go and kill the bridegroom! Set fire to the rich man's house! Destroy everything and jump into the flames! If you die you will forget the girl and everything else in this tragic world.”
Chosin writhed in an agony like that of death, complaining to Buddha for not answering his prayer. At last, worn out with weeping, he fell asleep in the Buddha Hall.
Suddenly an autumn breeze blew out the candles. Chosin looked toward the door, which was ajar, and as he did so it was flung open and there in the moonlight stood the bride, fresh as a rosebud in her wedding dress. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his bosom, sobbing softly.
Chosin was dumbfounded with joy and surprise. “This is your wedding night,” he said. “Why have you forsaken your bridegroom?”
“He is my parents' choice,” she said softly through her tears. “I do not want him. You have my love.” And her slender body moved in his arms like a butterfly dancing on a flower.
“You love me?” Chosin asked.
“A woman is kept within her garden walls,” the girl replied. “She is forbidden to meet young men. Though I am a girl of gentle birth, since we met in the rosebed under the tunnel of wildflowers, eye to eye and lip to lip, I have not forgotten you for a moment. I am yours, and I have come to live with you and be your love until we go together to the same grave.”