智通無累 Wisdom That Carries No Burden
逐句解 Line by line
Wind in the pines, moonlight on water — not enough to match his pure brilliance;
The praise turns to images and they are the two most exhausted in Chinese poetry: wind through pine trees, the moon reflected in water. Both mean purity and detachment. And the line says they are not enough. The emperor reaches for the standard comparisons and then declares them inadequate, which is a very old rhetorical move and still an effective one. 清華, pure brilliance. Its second character is read huá here, splendour.
immortal dew, a bright pearl — how could they be set beside his clear lustre?
The matching half, and the same manoeuvre: two more images of perfection, both dismissed. 詎能 — how could they possibly. A rhetorical question with no answer expected, exactly like the one that closed the opening movement. 朗潤 — bright and moist, the quality of a good pearl or a good piece of jade. Applied to a person it means someone luminous and unhardened.
So it was that his wisdom went through unencumbered, and his spirit sounded what has no shape yet.
無累 — without entanglement, carrying no burden. Its second character is read lěi here, to encumber or implicate, as in the ordinary word for being dragged into somebody else's trouble. Read lèi it means tired, which is a different word. 神測未形 — his spirit fathomed what has no shape. That is the claim the whole opening movement was built to make impossible: the invisible cannot be sounded, even by the wise. The preface has spent thirty lines proving it, and now says this one man did it.
He passed beyond the six dusts and came far out, and made a thousand ages carry his fragrance.
六塵 — the six dusts: what the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind take in. They are called dusts because they settle on the mind and dirty it. 傳芳 — to hand down a fragrance, the standard phrase for a reputation that lasts. Written in 648 about a man who was still alive and reading it.
The praise reaches for the four most worn images in Chinese poetry — wind in the pines, moon on water, immortal dew, a bright pearl — and then says each of them falls short. It is an old move and it still works, because the reader supplies the comparison and the writer takes the credit for rejecting it.
Then the line that quietly contradicts everything the preface has argued. Thirty lines went on proving that what has no shape cannot be sounded, not by the dull and not by the wise. Here the emperor says Xuanzang's spirit sounded it.
And the last line was written in 648 about a man who was alive to read it. He made a thousand ages carry his fragrance — the standard phrase for a reputation that outlives you, addressed to somebody sitting in the room.