Master Yongseong Stupa and Stupa Stele of Haeinsa Temple, Hapcheon

Dimensions. Stupa (reliquary pagoda): total height 311.0 cm; lower platform (width/depth/height) 186.0/186.0/55.0 cm; upper platform 124.0/124.0/45.0 cm; first-storey body 51.6/51.6/55.5 cm; first-storey roof stone (width/depth) 114.5/114.5 cm; second-storey body 45.0/45.0/18.0 cm; second-storey roof stone 89.0/89.5 cm; third-storey body 32.0/32.0/14.0 cm; third-storey roof stone 74.5/74.5 cm; finial base disk 31.5/31.5/15.0 cm; jewel finial 12.5 cm. Stupa stele: total height 341.0 cm; tortoise base (width/depth) 146.0/211.0 cm; tortoise head 39.0/70.0 cm; stele seat (width/breadth/height) 146.0/48.0/5.5 cm; stele body 73.5/26.5/176.0 cm; capstone 85.0/50.0/91.0 cm. The reliquary stupa and stupa stele of Master Yongseong stand side by side near the entrance to Yongtap Seonwon, a meditation hall. Overall the surfaces are only slightly discoloured by dust, and their condition is otherwise good. Although called a budo — the usual term for the funerary stupa of an eminent monk — this stupa departs from the ordinary budo form and instead borrows that of a pagoda: a square-plan stone pagoda with three storeys of pagoda-body set upon a two-tiered platform. Corner pilasters and a single intervening pilaster are carved on each face of both platforms; above the lower platform is a shallow moulded plinth supporting the upper platform, and above the upper platform a plinth supports the pagoda body. Each body and roof stone is carved from a single block; the roof stones have thick eave slopes, level eave corners, and five-tiered eave-support mouldings, and the finial consists of a base disk and an inverted-bowl ornament. This form is extremely rare, found otherwise only in the two Goryeo-period reliquary stupas (1388) of State Preceptor Bojejonja at the Yeongjeonsa Temple Site in Wonju, Gangwon-do. The overall form is dignified, and features such as the two platforms of similar height and the three-storey body clearly imitate the Gilsangtap Pagoda at Haeinsa Temple. The stupa stele, complete with tortoise base, stele body and capstone, stands on a two-tiered foundation stone. The tortoise base crouches with its four legs braced, its head not yet fully taken on a dragon-like form; its upper surface is carved overall with a tortoise-shell pattern, with a band of scrolling foliage around the lower edge, and the square stele seat at its centre is decorated at the edges with lotus petals. The capstone above is decorated with a pair of facing coiled dragons. The stele body records Master Yongseong's birth, training, activities and death; on its right side is inscribed “respectfully composed by Yongun [Han Yong-un]; seal-script title by O Se-chang,” recording that Han Yong-un wrote the epitaph and O Se-chang wrote the title in seal script at its head. The stele bears the inscription “Epitaph, with Preface, for the Reliquary Stupa of Great Meditation Master Yongseong,” which records: the Master was a thirty-fifth-generation dharma-descendant of Hwanseong Jian of the Jogye line; his dharma name was Jinjong and his sobriquet Yongseong; he belonged to the Baek clan of Suwon lineage, long settled at Wonjuk-rim village in Jeollanam-do. His father was Nam-hyeon and his mother of the Son clan; his mother dreamed a strange monk in dharma robes entered her room, and thereafter conceived him. He was born in 1864, during the reign of King Gojong of the Joseon dynasty. From birth he was intelligent and disliked meat, and was always moved to compassionate acts: at six or seven, seeing his father fishing, he would release back into the water any fish not yet dead, telling his father, “How could I bear to watch them die?” At nine he could already compose poetry, and at the sight of children picking flowers recited a verse on the hand stirring the heart of spring, earning praise for his talent. He told his parents he wished to become a monk; they at first resisted but, since it was a matter of great karmic destiny, eventually consented. At nineteen he entered Haeinsa Temple on Gayasan Mountain and, under Master Hwawol, had his head shaved. He later asked Elder Suwol of Goun-sa Temple in Uiseong how one might attain to seeing one's true nature amid the swiftness of birth and death; the elder told him that, the Dharma being remote and human faculties dull in this degenerate age, he should first recite the Dharani of Great Compassion so that karmic hindrances would fall away of themselves. The Master did so without doubt, chanting the dharani aloud and in silent recitation, and later, applying himself with redoubled diligence at Doseol-am Hermitage of Bogwangsa Temple in Yangju, came to wonder from where his own seeing, hearing, awareness and cognition arose amid the myriad forms of the universe; pursuing this doubt, at the twelfth stroke of the night bell he suddenly awakened, as if the bottom had dropped from a bucket. He then consulted Seon Master Muyung at Geumgangsan Mountain, who directed him to work further on a meditation topic; taking up the topic “a dog has no Buddha-nature,” he continued his practice at Doseol-am until one day he burst out laughing at his own final realisation, in words he described as having been exactly prepared for him. At twenty-seven he received full monastic precepts at the Diamond Precept Platform of Tongdosa Temple under the Vinaya Master Seon-gok. Later, during a summer retreat at Samil-am Hermitage of Songgwangsa Temple, reading of Huangbo's teaching that “the moon is like a bent bow, in a place of little rain and much wind,” he attained great awakening, and hundreds of koans became clear to him as ice melting away; he composed a verse on the moon over Geumo and the waves at Nakdong. He then devoted himself to the salvation of sentient beings, preaching in Seoul and elsewhere, and before long founded a religious association to clarify the meaning of great enlightenment, later establishing a branch in Jiandao to spread the teaching abroad. He also translated the Avatamsaka, Perfect Enlightenment, Surangama, Diamond and Awakening of Faith sutras for wide distribution, wrote extensively besides, and constantly practised the release of captive animals in uncounted numbers. At sixty-one a single purple, lustrous relic bead, shaped like the crown of a skull, emerged from between his teeth. In the spring of 1940 he fell ill, and charged his disciples not to mourn him but only to chant of the great, ever-quiescent nirvana; at dawn on the twenty-fourth day of the second month he died smiling, a wondrous fragrance moving all present, at the age of seventy-seven and in his fifty-ninth year as a monk. The following year his disciples raised a stupa on the western slope of Haeinsa Temple to enshrine his relics and erected this stele with its inscription, closing with a verse in his praise: that the Dharma, prizing the salvation of beings, wants for nothing in its expedient means; that though the Master left behind neither relic nor verse, the mountains and rivers bow their heads to him; and that, though a kindred spirit may be rare across a thousand years, his stupa now rests amid the hills of Gaya regardless. Although this stone stele is a modern-period structure, the form and technique of its carving are excellent, and it carries on well the traditions of the Joseon period. Above all, its importance lies in the fact that Master Yongseong's outstanding achievements were commemorated by figures who rank among the leading representatives of modern Korean literature and art. Master Yongseong's stupa was built as a three-storey stone pagoda, quite unlike the stupas of ordinary eminent monks, suggesting the particular reverence in which he was held — a fact borne out by the stele erected beside it. That Han Yong-un, who together with Master Yongseong was among the thirty-three national representatives of the March First Independence Movement, composed the epitaph, and that O Se-chang wrote its seal-script title, allows some sense of how great a mark Master Yongseong left on modern history. Though the work may be judged to have some weakness in purely artistic value, its importance as a historical product created by three independence figures is fully recognised.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Hapcheon, Gyeongnam

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산