The Buddha is nothing but mind, and mind is nothing but Buddha; yet mind and Buddha, from of old, have each been taken for a thing.

The poem opens the chapter on the plane of Chan (Zen) doctrine, and its keynote is the identity of mind and Buddha — 即心即佛, a formula associated with Mazu Daoyi. The sting of the second line is that even this identity, once posited as a truth to be held (要物, "to require a thing"), becomes one more object of attachment.

If you know there is no thing, and no mind either, that is the true mind — the Buddha of the Dharma-body.

法身 (fǎshēn) renders the Sanskrit dharmakāya, the "truth-body" of a Buddha — formless, unconditioned, identical with reality itself, as against the physical 色身. The couplet turns the negations of the opening into something positive: to see through "thing" and "mind" is not blankness but the discovery of the true mind.

The Dharma-body Buddha has no shape or likeness: a single orb of perfect light that holds the myriad images within.

沒模樣 — "without shape or semblance" — insists that the Dharma-body cannot be pictured. The single orb of 圓光 (perfect, all-encompassing light) that yet contains 萬象 (the ten thousand phenomena) is a stock figure for how ultimate emptiness and phenomenal fullness interpenetrate.

The substance of what has no substance is the true substance; the form of what has no form is the very Real Form.

A tight chiasmus on 體 (substance) and 相 (form). 實相 (shíxiàng), the "Real Form" (Sanskrit dharmatā), is the true character of things, which is precisely their formlessness. Here 相 carries its Buddhist sense and is read xiàng.

Neither matter nor emptiness, nor yet not-empty; neither coming nor going forth, nor turning-back-in-merit.

A cascade of negations in the manner of the 《心經》 (Heart Sutra): reality is 非色非空, not to be caught by either "form" or "emptiness." 回向 (huíxiàng) is the technical term for the "dedication" or transfer of merit; to be beyond even 回向 is to be beyond the whole economy of merit-making.

No difference, no sameness, neither being nor non-being; hard to let go, hard to take hold of, hard to hear or to behold.

The negations climb toward the tetralemma — being and non-being both denied. The last line concedes the difficulty of the teaching itself: what cannot be grasped as an object can be neither relinquished, seized, nor perceived in the ordinary way.

The numinous light, within and without, is everywhere the same; one whole Buddha-land lies within a single grain of sand.

靈光, the "numinous light" of the awakened mind, is one and undivided whether turned inward or outward. The Buddha-land in a grain of sand draws on the 《華嚴經》 (Avataṃsaka) vision of mutual containment — the infinitely large held within the infinitely small.

A single grain of sand holds the Great Thousandfold World; one body-and-mind is one with all ten thousand dharmas.

大千界 abbreviates 三千大千世界, the vast cosmos of a single Buddha's teaching. The whole cosmos in one grain restates the Huayan doctrine of 事事無礙, the unobstructed interpenetration of all things.

To know this you must master the secret of no-mind: unstained, unhindered — this is the pure work of enlightenment.

無心訣, the "secret of no-mind," is the practical upshot: the mind that clings to nothing. 淨業 (jìngyè), "pure karma" or "pure work," is action performed without attachment, which therefore leaves no karmic residue.

With good and evil in their thousand forms, cling to nothing done — and this is to say: Homage to Śākyamuni.

The closing line resolves the abstractions into an act of devotion. 南無 (ná mó) transliterates the Sanskrit namo, "homage / I take refuge in," and is read ná mó in this liturgical use. In 釋迦葉 the final graph is read shè; the name gestures at Śākyamuni while echoing 迦葉 (Kāśyapa), the disciple who received the Buddha's wordless mind-to-mind transmission — the very "no-mind" the poem describes.