The attendant did as he was bid, and went up to the lecture hall to make report. The Bodhisattva put on his cassock at once, added incense, and came to meet him.

添香迎接 — to add incense and go out to meet a guest. Lingji is told that Sun Wukong is at the gate and does not hesitate for the space of a single character.

The Great Sage had but stepped through the gate and looked within, when he saw this:

只見那：, the announcement, stays in the prose segment.

Brocade filled the hall; awe filled the chamber.

The poem opens on the same four-and-four cadence as the armour-piece and the farmstead-piece earlier in this chapter — and its subject is the exact opposite of both. This is a place where nothing is pretended and nothing is in disguise.

The assembled disciples chanted the Lotus Sutra together, / and the old precentor struck lightly on the cast-gold chime.

《法華經》 is the Lotus Sutra. 班首 is the senior monk who leads the chanting and sets the pace, and 金鑄磬 is a chime-bowl cast in gold.

Before the Buddha the offerings were all immortal fruit and immortal flowers;

供養 takes 供 as gòng, the offering — the same character that meant courtroom testimony a few passages ago, in its other reading. 盡 is jìn, "entirely," and since it is not preceded by 一 or 不 no tone adjustment arises in front of it.

on the tables were set out none but meatless dishes and meatless viands.

殽 reads yáo, the same word as 餚, a prepared dish, as ruled at chapter 20. The ； above joins these two units as a matched pair, and this edition keeps such pairs split.

Splendid candles: strand by strand their golden flames shot into rainbows;

條條, strand by strand, of the candle-flames; 虹霓 is the pair of rainbows, the bright primary and the fainter secondary bow above it.

fragrant true incense: coil by coil its jade smoke flew into coloured mists.

The parallel is exact: 道道 answers 條條, and 玉煙 answers 金燄, jade smoke against golden flame. These two units are the second matched pair, again kept split.

This was the very thing: the lecture done, the mind at leisure, and entering upon meditation, / while the white clouds passed in flakes around the pine-tops.

正是那 here opens a line inside the poem and is not announcing anything — the block is already verse — so 那 is the pointing nà. And 入定 is to enter samādhi: the identical word that gave the demon's wind its name three passages into this chapter, restored here to its proper owners.

In stillness they gathered in the sword of wisdom, and the head of the demon was cut off; / by prajñā and pāramitā, the good assembly was raised on high.

慧劍 is the sword of wisdom that cuts through delusion, and the 魔頭 it takes off is the demon-head of the passions, not anything living on Yellow Wind Ridge. 般若波羅 reads bō rě bō luó, the Chinese transcription of prajñāpāramitā — so the poem closes on the two words the Heart Sutra of the previous chapter turns upon.