遂入方丈 So He Went Into the Abbot's Room
方進山門，眾僧報道：「師父，這樹頭兒今早俱忽然向東。我們記得師父之言，遂出城來接，果然到了。」長老喜之不勝，遂入方丈。方进山门，众僧报道：「师父，这树头儿今早俱忽然向东。我们记得师父之言，遂出城来接，果然到了。」长老喜之不胜，遂入方丈。
逐句解 Line by line
He had only just come in at the mountain gate when the monks reported: “Master — these treetops all turned east this morning, suddenly.”
They tell him before he is through the door. 方進山門 — barely inside the gate. 樹頭兒 — the treetops. That last character is the light ending that gets swallowed into the word in front of it, read er, not the full ér that means a child. It makes the word small and familiar, the way you would say the little tree-tops about something you have been watching for years. 忽然向東 — all at once, facing east. They are still astonished.
“We remembered what the master said, so we went out of the city to meet you — and here you are, sure enough.”
記得 — to remember. Both characters make one word, and the second is the light one, read de. Not dé, to obtain. 果然到了 — and sure enough, here you are. It is the plainest sentence in the passage and the most satisfied. They believed a fourteen-year-old promise on the evidence of some pine trees, walked out of the city on the strength of it, and were right.
The elder was more pleased than he could say, and went in to the abbot's room.
喜之不勝 — could not bear the joy of it, so: overjoyed. The Tang monk has been thanked, feasted, seated and praised all day and this is the first time the novel says he was happy. It takes his own monastery, and men who knew him before, to get it out of him. 方丈 is the abbot's quarters — literally a square of ten feet, the size a monk's cell is traditionally supposed to be.
The monks cannot wait for him to get through the gate. The treetops turned east this morning, they say — suddenly, all of them — and we remembered what you told us, so we went out to meet you.
They believed a promise made fourteen years ago on the evidence of some pine trees, walked out of the city on the strength of it, and were right. And sure enough, here you are.
And this is where the Tang monk is finally, plainly, happy. He was thanked in a throne hall, given the emperor's own horse, seated at a state banquet and told his party outdid the sage-emperors of antiquity, and the novel recorded none of it as pleasure. He gets home to his old monastery, among men who knew him before, and it says he could not bear the joy of it.