祖師講道 The Patriarch Expounds the Great Way
一日，祖師登壇高坐，喚集諸仙，開講大道。真個是：天花亂墜，地湧金蓮。妙演三乘教，精微萬法全。慢搖麈尾噴珠玉，響振雷霆動九天。說一會道，講一會禪，三家配合本如然。開明一字皈誠理，指引無生了性玄。一日，祖师登坛高坐，唤集诸仙，开讲大道。真个是：天花乱坠，地涌金莲。妙演三乘教，精微万法全。慢摇麈尾喷珠玉，响振雷霆动九天。说一会道，讲一会禅，三家配合本如然。开明一字皈诚理，指引无生了性玄。
逐句解 Line by line
One day the Patriarch mounted the dais and took the high seat, called the whole company of immortals together, and opened his discourse on the Great Way. It was truly a scene like this —
登壇高坐: the master mounts the raised platform (壇 tán, an altar/dais) and takes the high seat — the formal posture for delivering a discourse. 真個是 is the storyteller's formula "truly it was thus:", cueing the set-piece verse that follows; the 世德堂本 writes 個 (some Ming printings use 箇). Sandhi: 一日 = yí rì (一 before the 4th-tone 日).
Heaven's blossoms tumbled down in showers;
天花亂墜: "heavenly flowers tumble in confusion" — from the legend that blossoms rained from the sky when the Dharma was perfectly preached; it hardened into an idiom for dazzling, irresistible eloquence.
from the earth there welled up golden lotuses.
地湧金蓮: golden lotuses welling up from the ground, the paired auspicious marvel. 湧 yǒng is the 世德堂本 form; some texts print the variant 涌.
Wondrously he expounded the teaching of the Three Vehicles;
三乘 (sān shèng): the Three Vehicles of Buddhism — 聲聞 (śrāvaka), 緣覺 (pratyekabuddha), and 菩薩 (bodhisattva), the graded paths to awakening. 多音字: 乘 = shèng "(Buddhist) vehicle" here, not chéng "to ride"; and 教 = jiào, the noun "teaching," as against jiāo "to teach" seen in 其一 (教他灑掃).
subtle and exact, the myriad dharmas stood complete.
精微: "subtle and exact." 萬法 = the myriad dharmas, all phenomena and teachings.
Slowly waving his deer-tail whisk, he spat forth pearls and jade;
麈尾 (zhǔwěi): a whisk made from the tail of the 麈 (zhǔ, a large deer), the emblematic implement of 清談 debaters and of Buddhist and Daoist expounders, waved while holding forth. Textual point: the 世德堂本 reads 麈 (the whisk); some printings corrupt it to 塵 (chén, "dust"), which the image rules out — one waves a whisk, not dust. 噴珠玉 "sprays pearls and jade" = pours out precious words.
their sound, rolling like thunder, shook the ninefold heavens.
響振雷霆: "the sound rolls like thunder." 九天 (jiǔ tiān): the ninefold heavens, the highest reaches of the sky.
A while he spoke of the Dao,
Sandhi: 一會 = yí huì (一 before the 4th-tone 會).
a while he preached of Chan;
多音字: 禪 = chán "Chan / dhyāna (meditation)" here, not shàn "to abdicate" (禪讓). Sandhi: 一會 = yí huì again.
the Three Schools, joined as one, were fundamentally so.
三家 = the Three Teachings (三教): Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism — woven together in a single breath (Dao, Chan, and the Confucian frame), the novel's signature syncretism. 本如然 = "are fundamentally so" (= 本來如此).
He laid bare in a single word the principle of devout refuge,
皈 (guī) is a variant of 歸 reserved for 皈依, the Buddhist "taking refuge"; 皈誠 = devout refuge. Sandhi: 一字 = yí zì (一 before the 4th-tone 字).
and pointed the way to the Unborn, to fathom the mystery of one's nature.
無生 (wúshēng): "the Unborn" — the Buddhist 無生法忍, the insight that dharmas neither arise nor perish, a name for the unconditioned. 了性 = "to fathom one's nature"; 多音字 了 = liǎo "to understand, complete," not the particle le.
The lecture is described entirely through the conventions of Buddhist hagiography. 天花亂墜 and 地湧金蓮 — flowers raining from the sky, golden lotuses breaking from the ground — are the standard marvels said to attend a perfect expounding of the Dharma, and the 麈尾, the deer-tail whisk, carries the image back further still, to the 清談 ("pure conversation") of the medieval gentry, who waved such a whisk while debating the mysteries of Being. The picture is of an ideal teacher in full eloquence. Yet what the verse reports is pointedly plural: 說一會道，講一會禪 — a while on the Dao, a while on Chan — with a Confucian frame implied throughout.
The fourth line states the novel's governing premise outright: 三家配合本如然, "the Three Schools, joined together, are fundamentally so." This is the doctrine of 三教合一, the "unity of the Three Teachings," which the Quanzhen (全真) Daoist tradition behind much of the novel's alchemical vocabulary held as axiom. The diction is deliberately shared across traditions: 三乘 and 無生 are Buddhist, yet 了性, "to fathom one's nature," answers equally to Buddhist 見性 and to the Neo-Confucian program of 盡性 — exhausting one's nature — that the elementary curriculum in 其一 already gestured toward. Andrew Plaks reads precisely this kind of layered, cross-confessional language as the signature of the novel's literati author.
Two ironies frame the passage. First, the verse insists that the whole sublime edifice resolves into 開明一字, the laying-bare of a single word — a foreshadowing of the famous scene soon to come, when the Patriarch will rap Wukong on the head three times and walk off with his hands behind his back, transmitting the one secret in private rather than in this grand public discourse. Second, the banquet of doctrine here is exactly what Wukong is about to push away: in the exchange that follows he will hear the named gateways of the Way enumerated one by one and reject each — 術, 流, 靜, 動 — because none of them, for all their dignity, secures the one thing he came for, 長生, deathless life. The poem's serene "three teachings as one" and the monkey's single-minded hunger for immortality are set deliberately side by side.