南屏小仙童 慈悲訓示

自性 is the nature one already has — inherent, not acquired — and the English says so plainly (“the nature you already have”) without importing any doctrinal gloss. The verse’s first move is therefore recovery, not addition: the heart of compassion is uncovered, not installed. — 喜捨 is joyous relinquishing, and the joy is the test rather than the ornament: giving that is grudged is not yet giving. Paired with 慈悲心 it spans the four immeasurable hearts, but the verse does not name that set and neither register asserts it. — 與人 reads 與 as `yǔ`, “to give to / share with”: the line pushes compassion out of the chest and onto a particular person. Compassion kept warm inwardly does not satisfy this line.

The order is deliberate and holds for the whole teaching: 建信心 first, 造功勳 second. 功勳 is merit earned by actual labour — deeds done — not reputation or standing. — ⚠ The second half-clause is genuinely short and is left short. 渡己渡人 runs four characters against the first half’s six, in a 鎮壇詩 that is two lines rather than the more common four; the verse simply lands and stops. Neither register pads it out to match. — 渡 is the ferrying across, and its self-then-others order is practical rather than selfish: one still floundering in the water cannot pull anyone out of it.

⚠⚠ The seven 小 are preserved exactly and must never be normalized to one. The self-identification reads 「南屏小小小小小小小仙童」 — 小 (“little”) seven times before 仙童 (“immortal child”) — where the speaker’s plain name, 南屏小仙童, needs only one. It is retained exactly as transcribed in the source record and rendered with exactly seven “little”s in both registers; the hyphen-chain reads as one stammered name-word. This is treated as authentic channeled content — a child-like speech affectation entirely consistent with a speaker whose self-presentation is that of a little child — and not as a transcription error. Any future editor: a change here would require retracing the original 借竅 recording, not textual inference. Do not reduce it to a single 小 and do not paraphrase it as “very little.” — ⚠ No identity beyond the literal self-description is asserted anywhere. 南屏小仙童 is new to this fleet; 南屏 is a place-name element occurring in various contexts, and no historical figure, lineage, organization, or specific geographic identification is claimed in either register or in this apparatus. — 我是 is the plain spoken form rather than the literary 吾乃, and is rendered plainly as “I am.” The word choice is itself characterizing: this speaker does not reach for the high register.

修心養性 rests on 《孟子．盡心上》 — 「存其心，養其性，所以事天也」, preserve the heart, nourish the nature, and thereby serve Heaven (corpus-grounded; the local corpus’s exact-text hit lands in a later work quoting the Mencius line verbatim — a transmission-quotation confirmation, with the Mencius as the primary source). The two verbs are kept as two parallel actions rather than compressed into “self-cultivation.” — 無煩惱 is not “nothing happens to you”; it is that what happens does not bind. The affairs still get handled; the heart does not snag on them. — 榮枯 is a vegetal image — the plant in leaf and the plant gone bare, one cycle seen twice — and is kept vegetal rather than abstracted to “ups and downs.” 無計較 is to stop reckoning and comparing: not to despise fortune but to stop auditing it. This line is the floor everything strenuous later in the teaching stands on; without it, the more vigorously one presses ahead, the harder one keeps score.

配 is “to be a match for” — the true Dao and the true principle must be worthy of the sacred, which is a demand on the practitioner rather than a compliment to the doctrine. — ⚠ 神 is rendered “the divine” and is never plural. “The sages and the divine” holds 聖 and 神 as the pair the Chinese gives; “gods” is not used here or anywhere in this file, per the standing convention. — 一勤 turns the whole couplet on a single character: 勤, diligence, plainly and daily. The upper half sets the height; the lower half says how one walks toward it — by doing the work, including when no one is watching.

不忮不求 is from the 《詩經．邶風．雄雉》 — 「不忮不求，何用不臧？」 (corpus-CONFIRMED; the local corpus indexes it at book level under 《詩經》, which is that corpus’s normal behaviour for the Songs, not a mismatch) — and Confucius later quoted it in praise of a disciple (《論語．子罕》), so the phrase carries commendation, not mere abstention. 忮 is the envy that would injure what it envies; 求 is reaching after what is not one’s portion. Together they name the two ways attention leaks outward, and 道精專 — refinement and single-mindedness — is the attention gathered back in. — ⚠⚠ 姣 stays 姣. Do not “correct” it. 姣 (`jiāo`) carries comely, fair, alluring, and 啟迷姣 is rendered from the character as written — “wake those lost in beguiling appearances,” 迷 the being-lost and 姣 the surface allure. The character looks unusual and an emendation would be easy to argue; the standing rule for 借竅 characters is that the unusual character is presumed intentional absent the recording. A sibling teaching in this fleet (`20131221NYtd*`) carries an equally unusual 姣 at 姣姣仁, which lends some support to intentionality, though no claim beyond that is made here. Any change requires retracing the original 借竅 recording, not textual inference. Flagged, not fixed. — 姣 also carries the -ao rhyme that closes every 本訓 line from `B01` through `B14`.

⚠ The first half runs eight characters against the second’s six (得失無掛慈心良善 / 積極進取前跑), where the surrounding couplets run 7+7; the line still totals fourteen characters. This is internal redistribution, not metrical damage, and is preserved exactly — neither register pads or rebalances it. — 掛 is concrete: to hang upon, to snag on. The image is a mind with nothing caught on it, so that things pass through instead of hanging there. It goes a step further than `B01`’s 無計較: not comparing is one thing, not even leaving a hook is another. — 慈心良善 is not filler after it. Unkindness usually grows out of gain and loss left hanging — he took mine, I lost out, why should it be me who yields — so when the hooks are cleared the kindness is what is left, rather than something separately manufactured. — 前跑 is colloquial and physical (“run out ahead”), and the register is kept: letting go is not passivity, and the cleaner the release the lighter the running.

赤懷 is the bared, crimson breast — 赤 as in the unpainted sincerity of a 赤子, an infant — the chest with nothing laid over it. — 法喜 is the joy that arises from understanding the Dao and walking in it, structurally unlike sensory pleasure: the one has to be supplied from outside, the other grows from within and so cannot be taken away. Rendered “the joy of the Dharma” in `scholar` and unpacked as “the gladness that comes from the Dharma” in `plain`. — 捨得捨得 is doubled for insistence and is doubled in English; the colloquial idiom behind it is 有捨才有得, only what is released can be received. — 煎熬 is a cooking word — to fry and to boil — a long low heat rather than a blow that is over quickly. Both registers keep it a process one walks through, because the couplet’s whole claim is that the joy and the searing are simultaneous: the teaching does not promise the heat lifts.

良能 is from 《孟子．盡心上》 — what a person can do without having learned how, the twin of 良知 (high confidence; carried from the pipeline’s Step-1 reading rather than a separate corpus verification). The verb is 展, to unfold, not “acquire”: the capacity is already present and the work is to open it out. This is the same claim the opening verse made with 自性, and the two are meant to be heard together. — ⚠ The Chinese addresses 修子, the one who cultivates, with no gender marked; an earlier draft supplied a masculine pronoun in English and it was removed. Both registers use the second person, matching the address the teaching uses throughout — and the hall it addresses was named in four sibling relations at `WN`. — 不昧 is “do not darken”; the assumption is that the light is already there and the only failure available is to cover it. — 邀 is to invite, to meet and receive: the utmost virtue is drawn in, not seized. Deliberately sought, it recedes — the seeking is itself the private motive that pushes it away. The same 邀 returns at `B13`, and the English keeps “drawn in” / “comes to you of itself” in both places so the repeat is audible.

迷津 is the ford at which the way is lost — a real crossing, not a metaphor for confusion in general — and the “great aspiration” of the first half is defined by it: to stand at the place where others cannot find the road, and be able to point. Not office, not renown. — 返璞歸真 rests on 《道德經》第二十八章, 「復歸於樸」 (corpus-CONFIRMED; the local corpus indexes it at book level under 《道德經》, returning the full chapter context). 璞 is jade still in the uncut stone; the point is subtraction, not accumulation — cultivation removes the acquired layers rather than adding accomplishments. — 返 occurs three times in the line (返璞 / 歸真 / 返天朝) and the English keeps three “return”s. 朝 is `cháo`, court — the Heavenly Court — not `zhāo`, morning.

⚠⚠ 清心寡德 is translated from the characters as written. The conjectured 寡慾 reading was considered and explicitly NOT adopted. The pipeline’s Step-1 researcher observed that 「清心寡德」 sits oddly against the surrounding exhortation and speculated it may be a transcription variant of the common idiom 清心寡慾 (“clear mind, few desires”). Per the retrace-before-correcting discipline, that speculation is not adopted anywhere in this file. 寡德 has a coherent classical sense of its own — literally “of scant virtue,” the self-deprecating posture behind the royal self-address 寡人, “the one who lacks” — and it is rendered on that basis in both registers (“hold yourself as one of scant virtue”). The reading also connects: it sits exactly where a claim of attainment would be expected and puts a lowering there instead, which is the same movement as 大智若愚 at `B12`, and it follows naturally from the first half — someone who genuinely loves humaneness does not conclude they have enough of it. Any correction would require retracing the original 借竅 recording, not inference from idiom frequency. Flagged, not fixed. — ⚠ The first half also runs eight characters against the second’s six (好仁慕義學修智圓 / 清心寡德高超), line total still fourteen; preserved exactly, as at `B04`. — 好 in 好仁 is `hào`, “to love,” not `hǎo` (contrast 事事好 at `B02`). 好 and 慕 are chosen with care: the humane and the right are liked and longed for, not complied with. — 學修智圓: study and cultivation walk together, and only then is the wisdom 圓, whole and without a gap. — 高超 is restored to its full weight — lofty and transcendent — rather than thinned to “lofty.”

為 in 為眾 is `wèi`, “for the sake of.” — 無怨勞 carries two things in three characters: neither resenting the toil nor advertising it. Giving that complains is discounted; giving that makes much of its own tiredness is discounted the same way. — 但願 is restrictive — the one wish, not one among several — and both registers keep the restriction. — 生死超 is passing beyond birth and death. The couplet’s real work is one of proportion: personal weariness is set inside a frame so much larger that its weight changes. This is not grim endurance; it is a heart widened until the load sits differently.

己克念 — the self masters its own thoughts, catching a thought as it rises and holding it. It recalls 《尚書．多方》 「惟狂克念作聖」 (hedged deliberately as “recalls” — the source supplies only the two characters 克念, which is not enough to assert the citation). — 滌除玄覽 is lifted from 《道德經》第十章, 「滌除玄覽，能無疵乎？」 (a widely-current quotation; the local corpus returned it below its confidence threshold, so it is cited at the pipeline’s own reading). ⚠ The mirror is kept concrete in both registers — this is the single most important choice in the line. 玄覽 (also written 玄鑑) is the deep mirror in a person that reflects the source of things, and the entire assumption is that it works perfectly and is merely dirty: desires, opinions and fixed views are dust on its surface. “Purify your perception” would lose the whole picture. — 我執 is the Buddhist ātma-grāha, the clinging to a permanent, independent, self-governing “I” within the aggregated body-and-mind — rendered “the clinging to a self,” never modernized to “ego.” — Note the couplet’s architecture: a mirror-washing image in the upper half and a self-clinging analysis in the lower, drawn from different vocabularies and describing one operation — removing what covers. — 省 is `xǐng` (self-examination), not `shěng`; 覺 is `jué`.

重 in 重任 is `zhòng`, heavy. — 力挽狂瀾 is from 韓愈’s 〈進學解〉, 「障百川而東之，迴狂瀾於既倒」 — turning back a wave already toppling (a widely-current allusion; the local corpus returned it below its confidence threshold, so it is cited at the pipeline’s own reading). 力 is preserved as “by main strength” rather than absorbed into the verb, because the line is about someone putting their own weight against the thing. — 抱道 is to hold the Dao in the arms, carried on the person. 信心 answers the 建信心 of `ZT2`: there it was to be built, here it must still hold while the heavy charge is on the shoulders — faith is not a fair-weather feeling but the handhold in rough water. — 狂 enters here and returns at `B18` (狂風); “raging” is used in both places so the storm thread is visible in English as it is in Chinese.

大智若愚 rests on 《道德經》第四十五章, 「大巧若拙，大辯若訥」 (corpus-CONFIRMED; indexed at book level under 《道德經》, full chapter context returned). 若 is “wearing the look of” — the wise person is not pretending to be dull; they simply have no need to display anything to prove it. — 鴻鵠 is from 《史記．陳涉世家》, 「燕雀安知鴻鵠之志哉！」 (corpus-CONFIRMED; the corpus’s exact-text hit lands in the 《漢書》, which records the same episode — dual attestation in the histories, with the 《史記》 cited as the standard source). 鵠 is `hú`, not `gǔ`. The bird is kept a bird in both registers. — The couplet’s craft is in yoking opposites: the ambition as large as a swan’s flight, the bearing as low as apparent foolishness. Most people cannot hold a great aspiration without letting it show. — 功德造: merit and virtue are made — built by doing, not by intending. Wings spread and never used arrive nowhere.

不昧 returns from `B06`, and the English keeps “undimmed” / “from going dim” in both places. The causal claim is worth noticing: the wide stride follows from the clear heart. Hesitation is usually not timidity but not knowing where one is going. — 邀 is the same 邀 as at `B06`, and is rendered the same way. 幸福 is drawn in, not chased: the chasing posture already assumes the thing is elsewhere. — 圓滿 is a life brought round to completeness — a circle closed, not a total accumulated.

立目標 is strikingly modern and concrete after so much talk of aspiration: the will has to come down into an actual target, or it stays a mood. — 聰明睿智 unpacks into four faculties — keen hearing (聰), clear sight (明), penetrating depth (睿) and wisdom (智) — and echoes 《中庸》31, 「唯天下至聖，為能聰明睿知」 (high confidence; the variant 知/智 is noted, and the echo is not asserted as a quotation). The four are placed on 立目標 as a caution: enthusiasm alone is not diligence, and a will without judgement walks very hard in the wrong direction. — An earlier draft rendered 志向 as “the direction of your will,” which clotted against 向前; tightened to “your aspiration.”

同心同德 is the 《尚書．泰誓》 idiom for a body of people so unified that a small band outweighs a multitude. Its second half also happens to name the hall in which this teaching was received — 同德壇 — and the chime is real for anyone sitting there; but the English translates the idiom straight and leaves the resonance available rather than asserting it in the verse. — 回復本來真面顏 evokes the Chan formula 本來面目, the original face; 顏 stands where 目 would, for the rhyme. 回復 is the teaching’s keynote one last time: the destination is not a better person but the person already there. The same claim has now been made four times — 修自性 (`ZT1`), 展良能 (`B06`), 返璞歸真 (`B07`), and here. — The rhyme shifts at this line from -ao to -an, coinciding with the turn from individual cultivation to shared walking. Documented as an observed pattern, not asserted as authorial intent.

無為 is `wú wéi`, and the second half of the line is its own best gloss: 秉公心, holding an impartial heart. 無為 is not “doing nothing” — it is doing without private motive. The same act done from self-interest is 有為; done from an even heart it is 無為. The difference is not in the doing. — 涵養 is from 程頤, 「涵養須用敬，進學則在致知」 (corpus-CONFIRMED; the corpus’s exact-text hit lands in the 《近思錄》, the later anthology that collects Cheng Yi’s sayings — a compilation confirmation, with Cheng Yi as the source). The word is itself an image: water soaking slowly into soil, long and unspectacular and invisible in its results — unlike 進學, where the gains can be counted daily. — 醴泉 is from 《禮記．禮運》, 「地出醴泉」 (corpus-CONFIRMED; indexed at book level under 《禮記》), a sweet spring taken as the omen of a rightly-governed age; the English keeps it a literal spring so the omen survives. The source reads 醴湧泉, with an extra 湧 that turns the static portent into something actively welling up — the sweetness rises from inside rather than being fetched from outside, which is exactly the pairing the couplet wants with 涵養.

曙光 is the light before the sun is up — enough to see that morning is coming, not yet enough to see by. Both registers keep that half-light rather than promoting it to “dawn has broken.” — 為 in 一心為道 is `wèi`. — 命 is deliberately both at once: the life one has and the charge one has been given. An earlier draft rendered only “the life,” halving it; both registers now carry “life and charge.” — 一心 gathers the thread that ran through 建信心 (`ZT2`), 抱道信心 and 志堅牢 (`B11`): by this point the faith has become single, with no second heart beside it.

The closing line reads against `B11` and is meant to. There the charge was outward — 力挽狂瀾, reach out and turn the situation back; here it is inward — 不管狂風與驟浪, let the weather do what it does, I am not moved. The teaching wants both at once: one acts, and one is not thrown. — 與 is `yǔ`. 狂 is the same character as in 狂瀾 at `B11`, and “raging” is used in both places so the repetition is audible. — The final six characters are three actions — heart firm, will settled, strength forward — and the teaching ends on 行, on getting up and moving. Note that the storm is never said to be calmed and no one has promised it would be; what is left at the end is the small boat of the opening verse, still crossing, still carrying more than itself.