The Dharma has its rise from mind, and from that mind alike it comes to nothing.

The chapter opens on poetry, with no scene-setting at all — the first time in the book this happens. Eleven couplets of Chan verse arrive cold — a 偀, a gāthā, the compressed doctrinal poem that rounds off a sermon or a sutra chapter, and only afterwards does the narrator say who wrote them. 法本從心生 states the standard Yogācāra position: things arise from mind. 還是 here is the adverb hái, "likewise, all the same," not the verb huán, "to return."

Arising and ceasing—by whom are they wrought? Sir, discriminate the matter yourself.

One couplet split by a question. 生滅盡由誰？請君自辨別。 盡 is the "all, entirely" word, read jìn — the jǐn sense belongs to a different character, 儘. And 請君 speaks straight at the reader, the way Chan verse likes to.

Since all of it is your own mind, what need have you of another man's telling?

If arising and ceasing are your own mind at work, then nobody outside you can rule on them. That is 既然皆己心. The couplet ends on 說, "telling" — a quiet dig at the whole business of expounding scripture, which is exactly what these pilgrims are walking to India to collect.

You need only bend to the bitter labor, and wring the blood from out of iron.

扭出鐵中血, "wring blood out of iron," is the Chan way of describing a task that looks impossible and has to be done anyway. 下苦功 keeps its plain everyday meaning: put your back into it.

Lay the soft cord upon the nose and thread it through; draw fast the knot of emptiness.

Here the poem switches to the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, the best-known visual sequence in Chan — a herdsman finds, ropes, tames and finally forgets an ox that stands for his own mind. 著 is the full verb "to set upon, to apply," read zhuó: the cord goes onto the ox's nose and through. Compare 著臂照頭傷 in chapter 17 and 著風一棒 in chapter 19.

Tether the beast to the tree of non-doing, and suffer it not to run wild and wayward.

無為 is wúwéi, Daoist non-action borrowed into Buddhist writing, so 為 is wéi, not wèi. 顛劣, "wild and unmanageable," was everyday Yuan and Ming vocabulary for the untamed mind — and, as it happens, a fair description of the monkey.

Take not the thief to be your son; let mind and dharma both fall wholly away.

莫認賊為子 comes from the Śūraṅgama Sūtra: mistake your deluded consciousness for your true nature and you have adopted a burglar as your heir. 為 is again wéi, and 子 is the full noun zǐ, "son," not the toneless suffix.

Let it not cozen you: with a single fist strike clean through.

一拳先打徹 — the Chan punch, aimed at the mind that is trying to fool you. 徹, "clean through," is picked up a few lines later by 悟徹 in the prose note that closes the poem.

Reveal the mind, and there is no mind; reveal the dharma, and the dharma too gives out.

This is the Heart Sutra's own logic: show me the mind and there turns out to be no mind to show. 輟, "to stop, to leave off," seals the rhyme, which runs on clipped abrupt endings all the way down — 滅・別・說・血・結・劣・絕・徹・輟・潔・別.

When neither man nor ox is anywhere seen, the blue heaven is a lucid brightness.

人牛不見 is the eighth ox-herding picture: an empty circle, herdsman and ox both gone. Counting from the roping of the nose, the poem has covered that whole arc in six couplets.

Round as the autumn moon it stands, and this from that can hardly be told apart.

The ninth and tenth pictures, come back as the moon. 彼此難分別 closes on 別, the same character that ended the second couplet, and 難 is nán, "hard to," not nàn.

This gāthā was Master Xuanzang's own, made when he had penetrated the Heart Sutra to the bottom and thrown open its gate; and because the elder recited it always and always kept it by him, a single point of numinous light shone through of itself.

Now the narrator tells us whose poem that was — and the attribution is startling. This is Chan doctrine of the sharpest kind, and the Tang Monk is, throughout the novel, the slowest of the party to grasp it. 悟徹了 takes the completive 了 (le); 打開了門戶, "threw the gate open," is the everyday idiom for understanding arriving all at once. 一點靈光, the "single point of numinous light," is inner-illumination vocabulary from the Quanzhen Daoists, and 自透 insists it shines through by itself, unasked.