Now, the old monk could not find the cassock, and he had burned down the buildings of his own monastery besides;

原來, "it turns out," shifts the camera behind the door. He has had the cassock in his own room all night, and he cannot find it.

and being sunk in ten-thousandfold vexation and scorching anguish, how should he dare to answer when he heard those words?

焦燥 is scorched and parched — a word for anguish, and, this particular morning, also a description. 答應 takes yìng. The monks outside are shouting for a thing he no longer has, and there is no sentence he can say.

Turning it over and finding no plan, no way forward and no way back, he stretched out his stride, bent his back, and dashed his head against the wall with all his strength.

拽開步 ("drew out his stride"): 拽 is zhuài. In 躬著腰 the 著 is zhe, marking a state he keeps up; but in 著實, two characters later, the same character is read zhuó and means "in good earnest, with full force." One character, two readings, a word apart. He bends his back and runs at the wall, and the last two hundred and seventy years travel four paces.

Pitiable! He dashed it until the skull was broken, the blood ran, the souls were scattered, the breath was cut off in his throat, and the red sand was stained. There is a poem to prove it. The poem says:

撞得 takes a neutral de. 腦破血流魂魄散，咽喉氣斷染紅沙 falls into a rhymed parallel of its own, though it stands in prose — the storyteller's voice rising into verse a beat before the verse arrives. 有詩為證 ("there is a poem to prove it"): 為 is wéi. It is a storyteller's tag, and it is also an epitaph.

Pity the old monk, of a nature foolish and benighted, who lived to be an old man of this world for nothing at all.

老衲 (lǎo nà) is "old patched-robe," the humble word a monk uses of himself — and the poem uses it of him at his death, when the patched robe is the one garment he never managed to wear. 愚蒙 is foolish and unenlightened; 枉作 is "in vain did he become."

He wished to get a cassock and hand it down through distant ages, not knowing that a Buddha's treasure is not as common things are.

欲得 takes dé. 傳遠世, "hand it down through distant ages," answers 傳家之寶 exactly. And 佛寶不凡同 — a Buddha-treasure is not of the common sort. That is the whole of what he failed to know, stated in five characters.

He took a thing easily come by and made of it his long endurance; and so it was certain that desolation would be all his winning.

但將容易為長久: he took what came easily and made it his permanence (將 is jiāng, putting the object first; 為 is wéi; 長久 takes cháng). 長久 is the word the old man used of himself, weeping — 看的不長久, "the looking does not last" — and it is the word Guangzhi used to sell him the plan, 子孫長久之計. The poem answers both at once.

Broad Wisdom, Broad Scheming — what were they good for? Injure another to profit yourself, and it comes at last to nothing.

成甚用 is "what use did it serve" (甚 is shén). The poem names the two disciples, and their dharma-names — Broad Wisdom, Broad Scheming — become the indictment. 損人利己, "harm others to profit yourself," is still one of the commonest condemnations in Chinese. 一場空 — 場 reads cháng here, the counting-word for an event — is the plainest phrase in the poem and the coldest: the whole night, the whole two hundred and seventy years, one empty scene.