Part three is about a new way of thinking entering Silla. In parts one and two heaven sent down eggs, gave treasures and made signs. That heaven had been in this land a long time.
Now a way of thinking from outside collides with it over that seat.
The first chapter is that collision passing through one man.
What the King Meant to Do
Beopheung, twenty-third king of Silla, meant to raise Buddhism by building a temple.
The officials all opposed him. Not one or two of them but the whole court. The king had the will and was not in a position to force it through alone.
Building in the Cheongyeong grove was the particular trouble. That grove was held to be the seat of the older gods. Putting a house for a new god there meant moving a seat, and the officials saw that clearly.
The Man Who Stepped Forward
There was a young officer who served close to the king.
Ichadon. He is also written down as Yeomchok. What he asked of the king was unexpected. He asked the king to take his head and settle the argument.
The king refused. This was meant to raise a teaching, he said, and killing an innocent man for it was not right. Ichadon’s answer was short. If the teaching went forward he would have no regret in dying.
The record does not say how many times they went back and forth.
Where the Head Fell
The king called his officials and asked again about building the temple.
The answer came back the same. The matter had not moved an inch. Right there, a charge was raised that Ichadon had falsified a royal order.
The order to behead him went out. Before he died Ichadon left one line. If the Buddha is divine, he said, something strange will surely happen after my death.
Then his head was struck off. What rose was not red blood but blood white as milk. It shot up a full fathom, the record says. The sky darkened, the sun lost its light, the ground shook and flowers fell like rain.
His head flew away and fell on a hilltop to the north.
The Temple Left Behind
People were afraid. Nobody spoke against the Dharma again. Where the opposing talk stopped, a temple went up. That temple in the Cheongyeong grove is Heungnyunsa.
One man died and the whole court went quiet. The strangest thing in this chapter is that quiet. What everyone had opposed the day before became, in one day, a thing nobody opposed.
What changed was not the arguments but the weight.
The Four Lines Iryeon Added
Iryeon left two sets of four lines at the end of this entry. We render the second. In our words:
To follow what is right and hold life light is startling enough and the flowers from heaven, the white milk, move us further once a single blade had taken the body away bells from temple after temple shook the capital
The man who elsewhere copies a record and steps back is speaking for himself here. What he thought large is right there in the four lines.
Today, Proving It by Dying
This story splits its readers in two.
One side reads that he chose. Where nobody would listen, what he had was himself, and by staking it he finished in a day what had not moved.
The other side reads that he was pushed. It was the king, not he, who had him beheaded. The king got what he wanted and lost nothing. The moment the phrase he volunteered is attached, the responsibility of the one who ordered it thins.
The two readings come off the same sentences. The record has all of it: that he asked, that the king refused, that he was beheaded in the end. What happened in between is missing.
The same shape comes around in our work. A thing nobody will move on gets solved by one person taking a large loss. When the phrase they volunteered is attached to it, everyone feels easier.
In such a place it is worth counting whether the one who paid and the ones who gained are the same.
Heungnyunsa lasted a long time and so did Ichadon’s name. What he left, though, is closer to that question than to the temple.