法本從心生 The Dharma Rises from Mind
這一篇偈子，乃是玄奘法師悟徹了《多心經》，打開了門戶，那長老常念常存，一點靈光自透。这一篇偈子，乃是玄奘法师悟彻了《多心经》，打开了门户，那长老常念常存，一点灵光自透。
逐句解 Line by line
The Dharma has its rise from mind, and from that mind alike it comes to nothing.
The chapter opens, uniquely in the book so far, upon verse: an eleven-couplet 偈 (gāthā) with no narrative lead-in whatever. 法本從心生 states the Yogācāra commonplace that dharmas arise from mind; 還是 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.
The line is one couplet bisected by an interrogative: 生滅盡由誰？請君自辨別。 盡 is the adverb of totality, read jìn (the jǐn sense is written 儘). 請君 addresses the reader directly, in the manner of Chan verse.
Since all of it is your own mind, what need have you of another man's telling?
既然皆己心 — if arising and ceasing are the operations of one own mind, no outside authority can adjudicate them. The couplet ends on 說, "telling," and quietly rebukes the whole apparatus of scriptural exposition the pilgrims are travelling to acquire.
You need only bend to the bitter labor, and wring the blood from out of iron.
扭出鐵中血, "to wring blood out of iron," is a Chan trope for an effort that appears impossible and is nevertheless required. 下苦功 keeps the ordinary vernacular sense: to set oneself to hard labor.
Lay the soft cord upon the nose and thread it through; draw fast the knot of emptiness.
Here the poem passes into the imagery of the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures. 著 is the lexical verb "to set upon, to apply," read zhuó: the cord is laid upon the ox's nose and drawn through it. Compare 著臂照頭傷 (ch. 17) and 著風一棒 (ch. 19).
Tether the beast to the tree of non-doing, and suffer it not to run wild and wayward.
無為 is wúwéi, the Daoist non-action taken over into Buddhist usage; 為 is therefore wéi, not wèi. 顛劣, "wild and refractory," is a Yuan-Ming colloquialism regularly applied to the untamed mind.
Take not the thief to be your son; let mind and dharma both fall wholly away.
莫認賊為子 is a set phrase from the Śūraṅgama Sūtra: to mistake the deluded consciousness for one's true nature is to take a thief into the house as an heir. 為 is again wéi, and 子 the lexical noun zǐ, "son," not the neutral suffix.
Let it not cozen you: with a single fist strike clean through.
一拳先打徹 — the Chan blow, delivered to the mind that would deceive. 徹, "clean through," picks up 悟徹 in the prose gloss that follows.
Reveal the mind, and there is no mind; reveal the dharma, and the dharma too gives out.
The doctrine of the couplet is the Heart Sutra's own: to manifest mind is precisely to find no mind to manifest. 輟, "to cease, to leave off," rhymes the whole poem into its entering-tone scheme (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 of the Ox-Herding Pictures, the empty circle in which herdsman and ox are both forgotten. The poem has moved in eight couplets from the roping of the ox to its disappearance.
Round as the autumn moon it stands, and this from that can hardly be told apart.
The ninth and tenth pictures, returned to as the moon. 彼此難分別 closes on the same graph 別 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.
The narrator retroactively assigns the poem to Xuanzang, which is a considerable claim: the 偈 is Chan doctrine of the sharpest kind, and the Tang Monk of this novel is elsewhere the slowest of the five pilgrims to understand it. 悟徹了 takes the perfective 了 (le); 打開了門戶, "threw open the gate," is the vernacular idiom for a sudden opening of the understanding. 一點靈光, the "single point of numinous light," is the inner illumination of the Quanzhen writers, and 自透 insists that it comes of itself, unsought.
No other chapter of the novel begins as this one does. The narrator does not clear his throat, does not set the scene, does not so much as name the travellers: he simply hands the reader eleven couplets of Chan verse and lets them stand. Only afterwards, in a single sentence of prose, is the poem given an author and an occasion. The effect is to make chapter nineteen and chapter twenty one continuous act of instruction — the Heart Sutra was transmitted at the close of the one, and here is what it opened.
The poem is an ox-herding poem. Its middle couplets trace the sequence of the celebrated 十牛圖: the rope through the nose, the tethering, the taming of what is 顛劣, and at length the eighth picture in which 人牛不見 and only an empty circle remains. Wrapped inside that Chan frame is the novel's own allegory, for the ox that must be roped is the 心猿, the mind-monkey, and the herdsman is the monk who cannot yet manage him. That the chapter should open on so serene a statement of accomplished insight, and close with the Tang Monk in a demon's cave, is not an inconsistency but the joke on which the whole book turns.