Gyeongheo's Awakening at Cheonjang-sa

Text

On the road to Donghak-sa, Gyeongheo arrived at a village that cholera had emptied of the living. He had been teaching sutras with the confidence of a scholar; now he stood in a village of the dead, and every teaching he knew fell away. He returned to Cheonjang-sa and sat before the phrase: 'A man without nostrils is led about by a bull.' Three days passed. On the third day the mass of doubt broke, and he composed a verse: 'I had heard that yellow-faced Gautama could save all living beings from suffering. But today I see that the true saving is the very suffering itself — nothing is left out.' From that night he abandoned the lectern and travelled from monastery to monastery restoring the meditation halls that three centuries of suppression had closed.

tr. Zen Lineage editorial reconstruction of traditional account

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Attributed To
  Gyeongheo Seongu

Lineage: Seon

By Gyeongheo Seongu

• No Need to Leave the Worldproverb
• Reviving What Never Diedproverb
• Cholera and the Mountainproverb
• No Difference Between High and Lowproverb
• Sermon of the Meadowproverb

Sources

• contentThe Zen Monastic Experience — Robert E. Buswell

  Robert E. Buswell Jr.

  After Robert E. Buswell Jr., 'The Zen Monastic Experience' (1992), pp. 21–41, on Gyeongheo's awakening

  Traditional Accounts of Gyeongheo: Gyeongheo's Awakening at Cheonjang-sa