南屏濟公 慈悲訓示

法雨 (fǎ yǔ) — “the rain of the Dharma,” the figure from the parable of the great cloud in the Lotus Sutra (妙法蓮華經．譬喻品). The load-bearing note of that parable is impartiality, not abundance: the rain falls alike on mountains and valleys, on herbs, great trees and small grasses, measuring itself out to none of them, and each grows according to its own nature. The English lets 普 (“universally, alike”) carry that force rather than adding an adjective the Chinese does not have. 普渡三曹 — rendered at the level the source states: the scope of the deliverance, that nothing is left outside it. 三曹 is glossed simply as ”the three realms”; the four characters are translated as they stand, and no enumeration or system beyond them is imported into the line. 渡 is to ferry across water — the same graph-sense as 濟 in the speaker’s own name.

參 reads `cān` — the 參 of 參禪 / 參悟, to penetrate by sustained investigation, not “to consult” and not `shēn`. The active sense is preserved: the principle is not merely received but investigated until the subtle opens. 妙 — Daodejing ch. 1, 「常無，欲以觀其妙」 and 「玄之又玄，眾妙之門」 (corpus-confirmed): the fine subtlety visible from the side of 無. 至道 (zhì dào) — Zhuangzi 知北遊, 「至道之精，窈窈冥冥；至道之極，昏昏默默」: dim and deep, beyond the reach of looking and listening. “The ultimate Way” holds the superlative; it is not softened to “the good way.” The couplet’s tension is deliberate and is kept in the English — what is by nature 窈窈冥冥 is nevertheless to be 宣揚, proclaimed aloud and spread abroad. ⚠ Corpus note: the 知北遊 passage grounds in the local corpus to 《神仙傳》 at near-verbatim similarity (a single pronoun differs). This is read as the later Daoist text preserving the same well-known Zhuangzi passage, not a misattribution; 莊子．知北遊 is retained as the citation.

南屏濟公 — the self-naming is preserved (“Nanping Ji Gong”) rather than flattened to a generic title. ⚠ 南屏 (Nán Píng) flagged: romanized and carried as part of the name; it is a place-name modifier, and its specific significance is not asserted here — left for confirmation against temple sources rather than glossed from general knowledge. 奉　旨 — bearing the decree; 奉 is to receive and carry with both hands, so the descent is commissioned, not undertaken at will. 降臨德恩 — descending to De En Hall (德恩壇, the hall’s own name). 隱身 — the form kept concealed; a persona note, not a stage direction, and rendered reflexively without introducing a pronoun for the speaker’s body. 早將　皇叩參 — 將 here is the disposal particle (= 把), read `jiāng`, so the syntax is “have already paid the homage,” not “will take”; 早 is first of all, before anything else; 叩參 is to bow in formal audience. 皇 is the elided 皇母, rendered ”the Sovereign Mother” — a distinct and higher tier, never conflated with the Eternal Mother (Φ), given no creation-narrative elaboration, and given no English gendered pronoun. (Φ does not appear anywhere in this teaching.) 再問 = ”and now I ask,” sequential, not “again”: reverence upward comes first, then the turn toward the assembly, and that order is the etiquette the verse teaches by example. 徒兒們 = ”disciples,” never “children” — the affection rides in the tone, not in a diminutive. 身安康 asks specifically after bodily wellbeing, not after anyone’s progress or results.

仁義道德 — a four-term Confucian compound, and the four stay four; collapsing them into “morality” would lose the architecture the line asserts, that proclamation rests on ordinary human ethics. 仁 — Analects 顏淵 (corpus-confirmed), 「克己復禮為仁」: mastering oneself and returning to propriety. 義 — Mencius 告子上 (corpus-confirmed), 「舍生而取義者也」: the courage to choose rightly when something real is at stake. 道 — Analects 里仁 (corpus-confirmed), 「朝聞道，夕死可矣」. 德 — the Great Learning (禮記．大學, corpus-confirmed), 「是故君子先慎乎德」: the character accumulated by actually walking the road. 宣 keeps its imperative force — proclaim them, openly. 口傳 — rendered at the level the source states: what passes by word of mouth. The classical anchor available to the English reader is the transmission at the third watch in the 六祖壇經, the robe drawn around so no one could see, where what passed from teacher to student was a living thing rather than information. The line’s claim is that such transmission corresponds to the profound — it is not a description of any procedure, and none is read into it. 應 reads `yìng` — “answers to, corresponds with,” a resonance verb (one string setting its twin vibrating), not `yīng` “ought.” 妙玄 — Daodejing ch. 1 (corpus-confirmed), 「玄之又玄，眾妙之門」: 玄 the dark-deep that thought cannot bottom out, 妙 the fine subtlety.

苦海 (kǔ hǎi) — keep the sea and keep the bitterness. The commentaries gloss the “sea” by its boundlessness (《大智度論》: 「無量無邊，故名為海」) and the water by its taste — salt, undrinkable, everywhere. One does not stand in such a sea; one is carried up and down by it, which is why the English reads “adrift in” rather than “stands within.” 生命無長年 — no extended span; the years are not many and are not issued in extra measure. The two halves are built to strike each other: an unbounded difficulty set against a bounded life. That collision is the reason the next line can ask what it asks. (These two glosses are carried from the Step-1 research and were not confirmable against the local corpus — see the distill’s grounding table.)

真諦 (zhēn dì) — a precise term: the second of the two truths, the ultimate-order truth as against 俗諦, the conventional-order truth of the world as we transact in it. So the question is not the vague “do you know what life means?” but the sharper one: have you gone past the conventional reading of your own life to the one beneath it? 明透詮 sets two stages, not one: 明透 is to have understood through — no remaining opacity — and 詮 is to expound, to set it forth in words for someone else. Understanding that cannot be handed on has not finished. 是否 is genuinely interrogative — a question put to the assembly and left with them, not a verdict delivered. (The 二諦 gloss is carried from the Step-1 research and was not confirmable against the local corpus.)

理 (lǐ) — the Neo-Confucian 天理, the pivot of the couplet. Zhu Xi: 「理是自然底道理，道是人當行底道理」 — 理 is the pattern that simply is, distinguished from 道 as the road one is to walk; and 「天下之物，皆有個理」 — every thing under heaven has its principle, which in a person is nature itself. So the line asks for a return to what is already there, not submission to an external code. 循歸依 stacks three verbs onto 理 before 進 is allowed: follow it, return to it, rely upon it — then advance. All four survive in the English because the line describes a sequence. 品德立當先 fixes the order of operations: 當先 is “must come first,” not “should also be attended to.” (The 朱子語類 citation is carried from the Step-1 research and was not confirmable against the local corpus.)

刪 (shān) is an editor’s verb — to strike out, to delete a passage from a text — and is sharper than “control your temper.” Not manage, not tolerate, not explain: excise, the way one removes a line interpolated later that does not belong in the original. The implication is generous — these things were added. 脾氣 is the habitual reaction that fires before thought; 毛病 is the small persistent defect, the word one would use for a flaw in a tool. 發心 (fā xīn) is 發菩提心, the rousing of the great aspiration — not “make up your mind.” The 華嚴經 is blunt about why it must be present: 「忘失菩提心，修諸善法，是為魔業」 — good works performed without it become something else entirely. It is the teaching’s engine, and it is placed last. 步邁前 lands the whole text on a physical action: step, and stride forward. (The 華嚴經 citation is carried from the Step-1 research and was not confirmable against the local corpus.)