The Pilgrim, changed into that pill, was after all a trifle the larger.

終是略大些兒 — after all a trifle the larger. The whole plan rests on it, and the narrator says it twice.

The Bodhisattva marked which it was, took up the glass tray, and went straight to the mouth of the fiend's cave to look. It was indeed thus:

認定 is to fix in your mind which is which. What follows is the fifth rhapsody of the chapter, and the last.

Deep cliff and perilous peak, cloud rising above the ridge;

The source divides this unit at the semicolon; the two halves are a matched pair, and are kept apart here as elsewhere in this chapter.

grey cypress and green pine, wind sighing among the trees.

颯 is the sound of wind moving through leaves — the same character that was dressing the Bodhisattva two passages ago.

Deep cliff and perilous peak — truly a haunt of fiends, where the smoke of men is scarce;

人煙少: 少 reads shǎo, scarce. The rhapsody now goes back over its own first two units and finishes each of them off, and the two completions are opposite verdicts on the same place.

grey cypress and green pine — a place, too, where a true immortal may hide and cultivate, and feeling for the Way abounds.

仙真修隱 is a true immortal cultivating in seclusion; 道情多 is feeling for the Way in abundance. The same cliff that hides fiends shelters adepts, and the poem declines to choose between them.

The hill has its gorge, the gorge its spring; the murmuring water sobs like a sounding zither, and one might wash the ears in it;

咽 reads yè here, to sob — not the yàn of swallowing that the character more usually attracts, though it will turn up in exactly that sense and that reading three segments from now. 洗耳, washing the ears, alludes to Xu You, who scrubbed his out after hearing himself offered the empire.

the cliff has its deer, the wood its cranes; the faint immortal piping stirs among the peaks, and the heart may take its delight.

仙籟, immortal piping, answers the 萬籟 of the night rhapsody. 間岑 is among the lesser peaks.

This is a fiend-immortal with a portion allotted him, brought down to bodhi; the great vow, boundless, letting fall its pity.

有分: 分 reads fèn, an allotted portion — not the fēn of dividing. 降菩提 keeps jiàng, to be brought down, parallel to the 垂, letting fall, of the answering clause. 弘誓 is the Bodhisattva's great vow; 惻隱, the heart that cannot bear another creature's suffering, is Mencius. The verdict is passed before she has even reached the gate.

The Bodhisattva looked, and rejoiced secretly in her heart. "This creature of evil karma has taken possession of this mountain cave — and yet he has something of a portion in the Way."

占, zhàn, is to seize and hold. 道分: 分 is again fèn, an allotted portion. Five thousand characters of garden, letter, doorway couplet and good manners have been leading up to these three words, and it is the Bodhisattva who says them.

And so within her heart there was already a compassion.

因此心中已是有個慈悲 — and so there was already a compassion in her heart. The decision to spare the bear is taken here, at the gate, before he has swallowed anything at all.