九環錫杖 The Nine-Ringed Staff
唐王在那寶殿上聞言，十分歡喜。又問：「那和尚，九環杖有甚好處？」菩薩道：「我這錫杖，是那：唐王在那宝殿上闻言，十分欢喜。又问：「那和尚，九环杖有甚好处？」菩萨道：「我这锡杖，是那：
逐句解 Line by line
The Tang king, hearing this in the treasure-hall, was greatly pleased. He asked again: 'And that staff, monk — what virtue has the nine-ringed staff?' The Bodhisattva said: 'This staff of mine, it is thus:'
Three occurrences of 那 — 那寶殿, 那和尚, 是那 — and all three are the pointing nà. 甚 in 有甚好處, what virtue has it, is the question-word shén.
Of bronze inlaid and iron wrought, nine linked rings; nine-jointed immortal cane, its bloom forever fresh.
The staff answers the cassock with metalwork instead of silk: 銅鑲鐵造, bronze-inlaid and iron-wrought. 永駐顏 claims it holds off age, the first of the two virtues the king asked after.
Taken in hand, one wearies of gazing on its lean green bones; descending the mountain, it lightly brings the white clouds back.
還 in 白雲還, the white clouds return, is huán — and the verse's -an rhyme settles it.
With it Maha the Fifth Patriarch roamed the heavenly towers; with it Luobo, seeking his mother, broke through the barriers of earth.
摩呵 is a form of 摩訶, the Sanskrit mahā, great. 羅卜, Luobo — the 卜 read bo as part of the name — is the lay name of Maudgalyayana, Mulian, who went down into hell to rescue his mother, and whose story is the great Chinese tale of filial rescue. 五祖 is the Fifth Chan Patriarch. Both names are here for the same reason: they belong to men who went where the dead are and came back.
Unstained by the least mote of the red dust's filth, gladly it attends the holy monk up the Jade Mountain.
些子, the least bit, carries the toneless suffix 子 (zi). 玉山, the Jade Mountain, stands for the holy realm of the West — so the staff's last line names the pilgrim's destination without naming it.
The staff's verse is briefer than the cassock's rhapsody and no less freighted with meaning. Where the cassock was praised for splendour and protective power, the nine-ringed staff is characterised by the company it has kept: it recalls Mulian, who bore such a staff down to hell to rescue his mother, and the Chan patriarchs who roamed the heavens.
Pure and unstained by the red dust of the world, it is fit to attend the holy monk up the Jade Mountain — a closing image that names the westward pilgrimage without naming it. Between them, cassock and staff are not mere regalia but a compressed statement of the pilgrim's office: to be protected, to be pure, and to deliver the dead — exactly the work the Grand Mass was convened to begin, and which only the Western scriptures can complete.