濟公活佛 慈悲訓示

Read straight down, the first character of each of the altar-settling verse’s four lines gives 恩・宥・先・達 (ēn · yòu · xiān · dá): the first two are the hall’s own name, and 先達 in classical Chinese means an elder of high virtue and deep learning — it names the worthy seniors who carry the work here. This 冠頂 (guàn dǐng) acrostic form is effectively a signature on the poem: these four lines are not a generic opening but a verse written for this one hall. What this line unpacks is the first name-character, 恩 (ēn): the verb is 予 (yǔ), bestowed — grace is given, not earned; and the second half turns at once, because whoever has received grace is to go out and 接引 (jiē yǐn), receive and lead others. And 緣 (yuán) in this lineage of Dao cultivation is not an opportunity to be seized but the condition that lets a thing happen at all; 識機緣 is first of all recognizing how you yourself came to be standing here.

The second name-character, 宥 (yòu), means simply wide at root (《說文解字》 Shuōwén Jiězì: 「宥，寬也」), and doubling it with 寬宏 presses the weight in: not the passive swallowing of another’s fault but an active magnanimity that comes from inside. 家和為貴 rests on the Analects, 學而: 「禮之用，和為貴」 — in the working of ritual, harmony is what is precious. 修己安人 comes from the Analects, 憲問, where Zǐlù asks what makes a noble person and receives three answers in ascending difficulty — 修己以敬 (cultivate yourself in reverence), 修己以安人 (cultivate yourself so as to bring others peace), 修己以安百姓 (so as to bring peace to all people) — closing with the remark that even Yao and Shun found the last beyond them. The order cannot be reversed: only after cultivating yourself is bringing others peace even discussable; and because even the sage-kings could not finish this work, what the vow needs is exactly 堅 (jiān), firmness.

先知先覺 comes from Mencius, 萬章上, spoken through Yī Yǐn: 「使先知覺後知，使先覺覺後覺」 — let those who know first awaken those who know later, let those who wake first awaken those who wake later. The passage is often misread as a claim to superiority, and it is the reverse: 先 is not rank, it is responsibility — whoever understood a step earlier has gained nothing extra, only incurred one more debt, which is why 責任重 (the responsibility is heavy) follows immediately. 己身作則 rests on the Analects, 子路: 「其身正，不令而行；其身不正，雖令不從」 — where the person is upright, things get done without orders; where the person is not, orders are not followed. And 正本源 carries particular weight in a hall whose altar has just been consecrated: whether the root source is right is not judged by the frontage, but by whether those who carry the work here stand straight themselves.

Notice that this line does not say pull people over; it says 知回返 — let them recognize the road home for themselves. 自昭明德 comes from the Book of Changes, the Great Image commentary on the hexagram 晉 (Jìn): 「明出地上，晉。君子以自昭明德」 — brightness rising above the earth is 晉 (晉 means to advance), and the noble person, seeing this, brings forth of himself the bright virtue he already has. The load-bearing word is 自 (zì), of oneself: the light is not borrowed from outside, it is already yours and merely covered over. 大千 is short for 三千大千世界, the boundless thousandfold world. The order of the three steps is worth keeping: first bring back one person who has lost the road, then let your own light show, and only then illuminate the great thousandfold world — illuminating the thousandfold world is the last step, not the first.

The descent is made under the Eternal Mother’s decree, not on impulse — if even the immortals and buddhas act only under mandate, how much more people. 軒 (xuān) originally means a windowed gallery or small chamber and carries an air of elegance and light; used here for the hall settled only today, the register is buoyant, well suited to a moving day. On entering this holy ground the first act is not speech but 參叩　皇Φ, paying homage to the Sovereign Mother: the rite is not performed for the benefit of those in the room. And 主敬存誠守二目 is a very concrete preparation for receiving a teaching — 主敬 has its source in the Book of Rites (「祭祀主敬」), which the Song scholars developed into a daily discipline: not the outward posture of bowing but a mind that does not scatter or grow careless; 存誠 uses 存 (preserve), not 作 (produce) — sincerity is already there, only do not let it go missing; and 守二目 is the most literal of all, because the moment the eyes scatter the mind follows. Gather the heart, keep the true, hold the eyes — this is not ceremony but the condition of being able to receive anything at all.

喬遷 (qiáo qiān) comes from the Book of Songs, 小雅・伐木: 「出自幽谷，遷于喬木」 — out of the dark valley, up into the tall tree — and later became the gracious, congratulatory way of saying someone has moved somewhere better. The two lines that follow in that poem are worth more still: 「嚶其鳴矣，求其友聲」 — why does the bird call? It is looking for its own kind. 伐木 as a whole is not about moving house at all; it is about friends, which could not fit a newly relocated hall better: the hall has changed address, and what comes next is people. 氣象 (qì xiàng) here is not weather but the whole aspect, atmosphere, scale of a place — that sudden sense of openness when you stand somewhere new.

櫛 is a comb and 鱗 is fish scales, while 比 and 次 both mean ranked in order: houses set as close and even as comb teeth or fish scales. The idiom is generally traced to Bān Gù’s 〈西都賦〉 (Rhapsody on the Western Capital, Han dynasty): 「內則九市，鱗次櫛比」. So the picture arrives: roof tile pressed against roof tile, and this hall tucked somewhere among them, entirely unremarkable from outside. Then the turn — the body is hidden, but the resolve shows. 藏 and 顯 answer each other exactly: a hall need not be built taller or brighter than anyone else’s; the frontage can be hidden, the vow cannot. What genuinely shows forth was never the building, but what the people here have resolved.

誠於中，形於外 comes from the Great Learning, from the passage on 慎獨 (shèn dú), watchfulness in solitude: the small person alone will do anything, then scrambles to cover it up when a noble person appears — but 「人之視己，如見其肺肝然」, people see straight through him as though looking at his lungs and liver, so what use is the covering? Hence the noble person is watchful when alone. The second half of the line is that same thought in plain speech: it cannot be disguised. Whatever a person is inside comes out through speech, action, bearing, every movement; the truth or falsity of one’s cultivation does not wait for an examination — it is on display in ordinary daily life. The previous line said the hall can hide its body but not its resolve; this line says a person can arrange the face but not the heart. One principle, said once of the hall and once of the person.

白陽 (bái yáng), the White Era, is this lineage of Dao cultivation’s name for the present stretch of time: the work of deliverance is held to fall into three eras, of which this is the last, understood as the period when the great Dao is transmitted widely and salvation thrown open. This is internal vocabulary rather than a classical idiom — knowing that much is enough, and there is no need to look elsewhere for it. And the 有緣 of 渡有緣 answers back to 予有緣 in the first line of the altar-settling verse: there you were the one being given to; here you are the one who gives.

These two lines recast the Tang Chan master Huángbò Xīyùn’s 〈上堂開示頌〉: 「不是一番寒徹骨，爭得梅花撲鼻香」. The plum must pass through the hard cold before it blooms and before its scent carries — 寒徹骨, the cold that pierces to the bone, is the difficulty, testing and inner turbulence of the path, and 梅香, the plum’s fragrance, is the clean scent virtue gives off of itself once the cold has been come through: not applied from outside, but grown out of the person. What should be recorded is that this text’s wording differs from the transmitted couplet: 不是 appears as 不經, 爭得 as 焉有 — a more absolute register — and the closing 香 as 傳. This is a 沙訓 (shā xùn), with no 借竅 recording to compare against, so the divergence is noted as observation and the text kept exactly as received; no correction is made. And 傳 (chuán), carried abroad, is an interesting choice — the plum’s fragrance is not for oneself to smell, which leads straight into line 12’s 一傳十百百千佈.

吃苦了苦 is a hard-edged four characters: bitterness is not gone around, it is eaten through, and only when that portion has been eaten is it finished — the bitterness you dodge waits for you somewhere else. But having just put it that severely, the line immediately adds 眾人匡助與成全 — the cold that pierces to the bone is not endured alone. 匡助 is to brace and set right; and 成全 in a practice hall is a very concrete word: to accompany and support a person the whole way so that he can finish the road.

喚喚 is a doubled call, the way you call one person out of a crowd — the register is intimate, not a summons. The Altar keeper is the one who houses the hall in her own place and tends it daily: the hall has just moved, and from now on whoever opens the door each morning, offers the incense, greets whoever comes, is her. And the first thing said to her is not an instruction but a comfort: standing right here on your own home ground, do not let the heart turn bitter. Read against the previous line, the weight comes clear — line 6 said eat the bitterness, and here at once, let not the heart be bitter: the same character 苦, two entirely different things. The bitterness in the work is to be eaten; the bitterness in the heart is not to be kept.

The first half answers 心莫苦 head-on: a person in hardship often carries the illusion that only he is left, and that illusion is dismantled first — the strength helping you is beyond counting. The second half sets two things side by side. 廣結善緣 rests on the logic of conditioned arising: everything comes about through conditions converging, and each further good condition you form is one further possibility of something coming to be — which matters most of all in ferrying people across, since you must first be connected to a person before completing him is even in question. 知不足 comes from the Book of Rites, 學記: 「學然後知不足，教然後知困」 — learn, and then you know where you fall short; teach, and then you know where you are stuck. That is not self-deprecation; it is a feeling only someone who has actually done the work can have, since a person who has done nothing does not know his own insufficiency. Outward, go wide; inward, stay low.

亦要 means and further: beyond forming good affinities widely, there must be a direction. The line is pointed, because what scatters most easily is precisely the person who forms affinities widely — a little help here, an answer there, and a year later you cannot see where you have got to. 積沙成塔 comes from the Lotus Sutra, 方便品: 「乃至童子戲，聚沙為佛塔，如是諸人等，皆已成佛道」 — even children at play heaping sand into a stupa are already on the buddha-way. So this line’s point is not the commonplace that small amounts add up, but that not one portion fails to count; and 漸 (jiàn), little by little, is what makes it settle: give slowly, a bit at a time, without needing to see the tower.

振翅高飛 returns to the bird of line 1’s 喬遷 — the bird of the Book of Songs that flies up out of the dark valley into the tall tree. The hall has risen; the people must rise too. And the 樂 (lè) of 樂行途 is the third answer in this passage to 心莫苦: not bitter, not alone, with a road to walk — and to be walked gladly. Not gritting the teeth to endure it, but going happily.

寒霜, cold frost, in the vocabulary of cultivation usually stands for testing, adversity, the stretch when the heart goes grey; 炙陽 is the blazing sun, standing for the favourable run, the time when things start going well. And the second half takes its figure from the ground underfoot: 恩宥佛堂 stands in Indonesia, right on the equator — no four seasons, blazing sun the year round. So the question carries two forces at once. One is a caution against sinking into a favourable spell: people who live on the equator long ago stopped noticing the heat, and being knocked flat by adversity and being softened by ease are the same way of losing. The other is a greeting — you have walked from the frost to this day, the new hall is settled and the sun is good; does the heart still feel it is not enough?

The image of 心燈, the lamp of the heart, has its most famous source in the 無盡燈 (the inexhaustible lamp) of the Vimalakīrti Sutra: 「譬如一燈，燃百千燈，冥者皆明，明終不盡」 — as one lamp lights a hundred thousand lamps, all the dark becomes bright, and the brightness is never exhausted. The last four characters are the point: you light others, and your own lamp is not one part less. The fear most common to a person who keeps giving is not the labour but if I go on giving like this, will I run out? — and the sutra’s answer is that a lamp is not like that. And 早 (zǎo), early, follows tightly: the previous line has just asked whether the heart is satisfied, and this one says do not stop in the fair weather — light the lamp and pass it on.

火宅, the burning house, comes from the Lotus Sutra, 譬喻品: 「三界無安，猶如火宅，眾苦充滿，甚可怖畏」 — what is on fire is not somewhere else, it is the ordinary life we are living in. And 家家, household by household, matters: not summoning people somewhere to be taught, but walking into one home after another. 火中栽蓮 has its source in the Vimalakīrti Sutra — 「火中生蓮華，是可謂希有；在欲而行禪，希有亦如是」 — and the Tang master Yǒngjiā Xuánjué’s 〈證道歌〉 (Song of Enlightenment) carries the widely recited 「火中生蓮終不壞」. Together they say: you do not have to leave the fire in order to cultivate — family, work, the tangle of human affairs is the fire, and the lotus is planted right there. This also answers the hall 藏身其中 of line 2: the hall hidden among the packed roof tiles and the lotus opening inside the fire are two ways of saying one thing. And 風景, scenery, appears here a second time with its sense entirely turned over — the 赤道風景 of two lines back was weather you passively saw; this scenery is one you grow yourself, which is why it is 殊 (shū), rare.

護法 is one who guards the Dharma — a person or a divine being whose charge is to keep the practice hall clear and to sweep away obstacles from those who cultivate. The weight of this line is in the reversal of position: by ordinary reckoning what should be protected is the divine, is the hall — and here it says 亦護法, stands as your Dharma-protector too, the protector stepping around to the disciple’s side. 先鋒後盾 is a plain military figure, vanguard opening the road in front and rear-guard bracing behind, and 發落 is to arrange and dispatch. But note what it does not say: with someone opening the road ahead and someone bracing behind, the stretch in between is still yours to walk — a Dharma-protector guards the road, and does not walk it for you.

This is the first single short line in the text, and the close of this passage. From 心莫苦 in line 7 to 免憂 here, nine lines have run through forming affinities, direction, heaping sand, the lamp of the heart, the burning house, the Dharma-protector — and the outermost layer throughout has been simply: do not be bitter, do not worry. And 起身吧, rise now, is a reminder of something easy to overlook: Ài Fāng heard all nine of those lines on her knees. Her name was called, nine lines were spoken to her alone, and then — all right, get up. The warmth of the whole passage comes to ground in those three characters.

The same intimate doubled call, this time for the three who sought the Dao that day. One formal matter here deserves saying outright: the fifteen preceding lines all run seven beats against seven, and from here the couplets widen to eight against eight — and the change falls exactly where the names appear (the upper half, 喚喚今日求道人, is still seven; the lower half is eight). To hold all three names the line widened itself, and having widened it does not contract again, running at eight all the way to line 23, until line 26 turns back to the assembly and returns to seven. The form itself is speaking: this stretch was cleared specially for these three.

指點 here is not guidance in the ordinary sense. In this lineage it is the rite received on the day one seeks the Dao — the pivotal ceremony of entry, whose content is by rule not detailed outside. What matters is that it was not a doctrine heard but a thing received, which is why the next line says 師徒有緣: from today the relationship has changed. And the 啊 (ah) of 入我門啊 is worth a pause. This is a 沙訓 — characters traced one stroke at a time into a tray of sand, read aloud by others and copied down; in so laborious a medium, spending a character on a colloquial particle is not filler, it is tone, like an elder patting a shoulder and saying: now that you’re here, you’re family. 勸勸 is the same — not 訓 (instruct), not 示 (declare), but 勸 (urge), and doubled at that. For those just through the door, the softest word available.

The order is worth noticing: to three people on their first day, what comes first is not the rules but the relationship — you are my disciples now. 法船, the Dharma-boat, is a common Buddhist figure, the Dharma as a great vessel able to carry beings across the sea of birth-and-death; the 大智度論 (Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom) has 「佛法如大船，能度一切」. And the weight of 得登 sits on 登 (dēng), to board: the boat is there, and you have to get on it — the boat does not sweep anyone aboard by itself.

請爾 — the word chosen is 請, please: no command is given to those just through the door. And 換 (huàn), exchange, is used with real force: Heaven’s compassion is not handed over for nothing, it is exchanged for. Exchanged for what? Utmost sincerity. This matters most of all to newcomers, who have nothing yet — no seniority, no attainment, no knowledge of the forms, no help to offer — and Heaven accepts exactly one thing, which happens to be the one thing every person already has on walking in. Utmost sincerity needs no study, no waiting, no qualification. It is also where the self-introduction’s 存誠 comes to ground: there it was preparation for receiving a teaching; here it is what will be handed over for the rest of a life.

To three people on their first day, the fifth thing said is: you are small. This is not a blow but the setting of coordinates — anyone who believes he can shoulder this on his own strength will sooner or later be crushed under it, and only by knowing your own limit do you learn where strength comes from. 應時 deserves attention: not there for the asking, but arriving in answer to the moment, coming when it should come. Line 29’s 一人之力猶未逮 will say the same thing again to the whole assembly.

體會而後, once it has been realized in your own experience, is the joint of the whole line and the most usable sentence in this passage: the order cannot be reversed — you must taste it yourself before there is any question of telling anyone else. A truth you have not experienced comes out hollow; the listener hears it, and the speaker knows it too. 代天宣化 is a core phrase of this lineage, resting on the premise that Heaven does not speak: Heaven does not open its own mouth, so the truth has to be spoken and lived out by people. And 安然 answers back to the self-introduction’s 問一聲徒兒安然 — the at peace asked after at the door is answered here: peace is not something protection produces for you, it is something that comes of shouldering the work.

走化四方 is a phrase full of motion: 走 is to go in person, on foot, everywhere; 化 is to turn hearts; 四方 is every quarter under heaven — together, get out, and get in among people. And the reason for 無所畏懼, fearing nothing, is written straight into the second half: 心中有佛 — not because there is no danger outside, but because there is something inside. 正心 is one of the eight items of the Great Learning (誠意, 正心 — making the intention sincere, rectifying the heart), and 誠虔 is sincere and reverent. What this line is really answering is the question every newcomer has: I don’t know anything — what am I supposed to say out there? The answer is that it is not first about what you say, but about what is in the heart.

What comes easily is not treasured — that is ordinary human nature, which is why 不易, hard to obtain, is said first on purpose: for these three to have met this today, the conditioned affinity, the occasion, and the throwing-open of the universal ferrying all had to be present, and not one could have been missing. And 內外滿圓 reaches back to line 3’s 誠於中者形於外: there, inner and outer cannot be hidden from each other — what is inside will show outside; here, inner and outer must both be brought to completion. The same pairing of inner and outer, the earlier line about honesty and this one about accomplishment.

To the Altar keeper Ài Fāng the question was 知否, do you understand?; to these three newcomers it is 可否 — are you willing? That is a consultation, not a requirement: of people only hours through the door, no assumption is made that they will agree. And the 起身吧 that follows raises the three from their knees. Set beside line 15, the difference of measure between the two closings is very clear: to someone who has served a long time and may be weary at heart, what is said is 知否免憂 — do you understand, set the worry aside; to those just arrived, who know nothing yet, the question is 可否. One asks her to put something down; the other asks them whether they are willing.

立足於堂中 is both fact and figure — today everyone really is standing in this new hall. 拳拳服膺 comes from the Doctrine of the Mean (a chapter of the Book of Rites), in praise of Yán Huí (顏回): 「得一善，則拳拳服膺而弗失之矣」 — having got hold of one good thing, he clasped it to the breast and did not let it go. 拳拳 is the look of both hands gripping, holding something up with reverence, and 膺 is the breast; the phrase draws a person holding something against the chest and refusing to release it. And what follows is 未明宗: 宗 here is best read as root, as source — the 宗 of all dharmas return to the source — not a doctrinal statement of purpose and not a school or lineage, since statements are easy to memorize and schools easy to identify, and neither would be left 未明; what can be left unclear is the most fundamental thing. So the line becomes a very precise and very gentle diagnosis: you hold it tightly, and you have not yet seen through. The sincerity is there; the clear seeing is not. Receiving the Dao is only the beginning, and the eleven lines that follow all grow from here.

亙 (gèn) is to run through, to extend unbroken, so 亙古不傳 says that this thing has been there all along and has simply never been lightly given. And 得之有緣 is the third appearance of 有緣: 予有緣 in the first line of the altar-settling verse (you are the one given to), 渡有緣 in the fourth (you go and give to others), and here 得之有緣 (you have received, therefore you are to give). After the third the circuit finally closes: the reason you received it is that it is to be handed on.

然而, and yet, is a turn, and the register drops with it. 清白身家 is a weighty expression in a practice hall — a clean background, a provenance that is clear — and within this lineage’s system of introducing and vouching for a seeker it carries specific requirements; 重重 is layer upon layer. Read from the context, these two lines seem to say roughly this: once you actually begin asking after 清白身家 one person at a time, how many people’s roads turn out to be piled layer on layer and hard to walk — ferrying people across is not a matter of saying one kind word, since each person carries his own provenance, entanglements and baggage, and bringing one person to completion often means walking that layered road at his side. This is the least settled place in the whole teaching; the above is only one reading offered from the context, not a ruling, and is left to the seniors to decide. What can be said with confidence is only its position and function: set after 廣渡眾 and before 一人之力猶未逮, it names the difficulty first — the previous line has just said to ferry the many widely, this line says at once that the thing is hard, and the next line gives the answer.

猶未逮 means still does not reach, and it is a candid line rather than a courtesy: ferrying the multitude across, walking someone else’s layered road — none of it is work one person can carry. 眾志成城 rests on the Discourses of the States (國語), 周語下: 「故諺曰：眾心成城，眾口鑠金」 — the hearts of the many joined together stand as solid as a city wall, and the tongues of the many joined together can melt metal. The old text reads 眾心成城; this teaching has 眾志成城, which is the later current idiom form and extremely widespread — this text uses that current form, and it is recorded as observation and kept exactly as received. And the 攻 of 可前攻 is a hard word, carrying the sense of pressing forward, of storming a position: the previous line has just said the road is layered, and this one says it can be stormed.

The register of this line changes abruptly: a moment ago it was 亙古不傳之至道 and 拳拳服膺, and here it suddenly sounds like someone leading a team and handing out assignments — fix the target, bring the firepower, concentrate. That drop from the highest place to the most concrete is this teaching’s consistent voice: the truth never stays up in the clouds. And it follows very tightly on what came before: the previous line said 眾志成城 — but how do the hearts of many actually join? The answer is here, in a shared target. 同心 without an aim is only feeling; with an aim it becomes force. A vow that never comes down onto a concrete target stays a mood.

新的開始, a new beginning, is said plainly — this is exactly the day of the move and the settling of the altar. 君子創業垂統 comes from Mencius, 梁惠王下: King Tai, harried by the Di tribes, left Bin and moved to the foot of Mount Qi, from which Mencius draws 「君子創業垂統，為可繼也。若夫成功，則天也」 — the noble person founds the enterprise and hands down a lineage so that it may be carried on; as for whether it succeeds, that belongs to Heaven. Which is to say: the founder has exactly one responsibility, to make it into something that can be continued — whether it succeeds is not his to manage. The line lifts one burden away (the outcome is not on you) and hands over another (whether it can be carried on is). And the example Mencius chose happens itself to be a relocation.

The order is worth noticing: look back first, then go forward. And 懺悔, repentance, is not the destination — 更前行, go further forward, is. Repentance that stops at self-reproach becomes another kind of indulgence; its work is to set the load down so that the next stretch can be walked. This line also picks up 知不足 from line 8: there one person turned inward, here the whole assembly turns inward together. Before a new beginning, go over the old accounts once.

Putting 宏圖大展 and 心寬容 in a single line is one of the most important pairings in the teaching: let the design be large, and let the heart be wide. Because a grand design unfolding is precisely when things go wrong — once the work is large and the people many, friction arrives: who does more, who does less, whose way is right; and if the heart is not wide, the larger the design the faster it splits. And 心寬容, a heart broad and forbearing, is exactly the 宥 of the altar-settling verse’s second line — the second character of the hall’s own name, returning after more than thirty lines, and returning at the place where it is most needed. The hall’s name is its own prescription.

天事人辦 is a forceful four characters: the work belongs to Heaven, but people have to do it — Heaven will not act with its own hands, which is the same logic as 代天宣化 in line 21. 心作主 is the crux: who does it? The heart. Not ability, not standing, not circumstance, but a heart that can master itself — which also answers line 19’s 至誠以換: the one thing you actually hold in your hand is this heart. 天人一貫 is a core phrase of this lineage: the way of Heaven and the way of the human are one thread to begin with, and cultivation is not leaving the human world to look for Heaven elsewhere but walking that thread through here. And the 返 of 返故途 is the same 返 as 知回返 in the fourth line of the altar-settling verse — the direction of the whole teaching, start to finish, is one word: return.

九六, the ninety-six, is internal vocabulary of this lineage of Dao cultivation, referring to the original spirits sent down from the source who have not yet returned (the tradition speaks of nine billion six hundred million of them, hence the shorthand). It is not a classical idiom and there is no need to hunt for it in the classics — understanding that it means the countless beings still waiting to be brought home is enough. 寸心 is the innermost heart, 寸血 the drop of blood at the breast, and 泣歌出 describes a state in which weeping and singing cannot be separated: feeling so concentrated that what comes out sung is blood and tears. (Research material points this line to a poem by the Tang poet Lǐ Hè (李賀); we could not find supporting evidence for that in the classics corpus we checked against, so it is offered as reference only and not asserted as fact, and the reading taken here works from the plain sense of the words.) What matters is where it sits — immediately after 九六尤等待 — so this weeping is not grief for oneself, but for those who are still waiting.

慈悲喜捨 are the Buddhist four boundless states, explained most clearly in the 大智度論: 慈 is giving others happiness, 悲 is drawing out their suffering, 喜 is genuine gladness at another’s good, and 捨 is a heart that neither hates nor clings but holds all alike. Of the four the hardest and the most to the point here is 捨 — once there are many people in one hall, what arises most easily is exactly aversion and attachment: whom you feel close to, whom you cannot stand; 捨 is setting both ends down, and it is how the Buddhist vocabulary says what 心寬容 and the hall’s own 宥 say. As for 提升自我易行途: the road does not level itself — the walker changes, and then the road walks easier. The weather outside is not yours to manage; yourself is.

Only after thirty-seven lines does it say I will not take up much of the time. That answers back to the 略幾言 of the self-introduction — a few brief words: from beginning to end the teaching makes itself small, says a great deal, and keeps its posture low. 就言一段 is just this one passage, and 多祝福 is to give blessing in full measure. What the teaching leaves behind at the end is not an admonition but a blessing.

A bow of departure before the Sovereign Mother’s carriage — at the door, 參叩　皇Φ; on leaving, a bow of farewell to the Sovereign Mother’s presence: one bow coming in, one bow going out, and the hall’s first day held whole between the two. And 止了乩筆 is the one place, and the decisive one, where the text states outright how it was made: the 乩筆 is the wooden stylus of planchette writing, the characters drawn one stroke at a time in the sand tray and then read aloud and copied down into a teaching — so the forty-odd lines above were written, not spoken. Knowing that, several earlier places light up: the self-introduction’s 守二目, besides being a discipline of cultivation, carries a most practical layer — keep your eyes on the sand tray and do not drift; and the colloquial 啊 of line 17, deliberately written out in so laborious a medium, makes that intimacy more remarkable still. And precisely because this is a 沙訓 with no 借竅 recording to compare against, every place in this text that does not look like the usual wording — 焉有撲鼻梅香傳 in line 5, 眾志成城 in line 29 — is recorded as observation and kept exactly as received, uncorrected. That is the rule, not a courtesy. And the laugh of the closing 哈哈退 is the same laugh as at the end of the self-introduction: one laugh coming in, one laugh going out.