出家之好 The Monk's Answer
三藏道：「女菩薩，你在家人享榮華，受富貴，有可穿，有可吃，兒女團圓，果然是好。但不知我出家的人，也有一段好處。怎見得？有詩為證。詩曰：三藏道：「女菩萨，你在家人享荣华，受富贵，有可穿，有可吃，儿女团圆，果然是好。但不知我出家的人，也有一段好处。怎见得？有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka said, “Lady bodhisattva — you who remain in the household enjoy splendor and receive wealth; you have what to wear and what to eat, with sons and daughters gathered round: that is fine indeed.”
三藏 zàng. 享榮華，受富貴 “to enjoy glory, to receive rank and riches.” 兒女團圓 “sons and daughters reunited round one.” Tripitaka opens by granting the layman's goods before setting his own against them.
“But you cannot know that we who have left the household have our own portion of good besides.”
出家的人 “one who has left home, a monk.” 一段好處 “a stretch, a measure, of advantage.” The turn from lay comfort to monastic worth.
“How is this to be shown?”
怎見得 “how may it be seen (demonstrated)?” — 得 structural de; the storyteller's cue, echoing the widow's own, before a citation of verse.
“There is a poem to prove it.”
有詩為證 the stock verse-formula; 為 reads wéi (“to serve as”), as in the widow's poem above — the recurring corpus reading of this phrase. The verse it introduces is spoken and runs on within Tripitaka's quotation.
The poem says:
詩曰 “the poem says” — the tag closing the prose lead-in; the four couplets follow as verse, and Tripitaka's closing 」 rides the final line.
To leave the household and fix one's resolve is no common thing; / it topples the hall of bygone love and fondness.
立志 “to set the will (on the Way).” 非常 here in its literal sense, “not ordinary, extraordinary.” 恩愛堂 “the hall of (worldly) affection,” the household ties the renunciant overturns.
External things breed no idle wagging tongues; / within the body there is of itself a fine yin and yang.
閑口舌 “idle gossip, quarrels.” 身中自有好陰陽 draws on internal alchemy (內丹): the adept cultivates the vital energies 陰陽 within the body itself, needing no outward things. 身中 reads shēn zhōng (“within the body”).
Merit completed and conduct fulfilled, one attends court at the golden portal; / seeing the nature and clarifying the mind, one returns to the native home.
功完行滿 “merit whole and practice fulfilled,” 行 xíng (“conduct, practice”). 朝金闕 “to have audience at the golden palace-gate” of Heaven, 朝 cháo. 見性明心 “to see one's (Buddha-)nature and illumine the mind,” the Chan formula for awakening; 返故鄉 “return to the original home,” the enlightened ground.
Far better than staying home, greedy for bloody fare, / and in old age sinking into the stinking bag of skin.
勝似 “better than,” 似 sì. 貪血食 “to crave meat and blood-offerings,” the flesh-eating of lay life. 臭皮囊 “the stinking leather sack,” a stock Buddhist figure for the corruptible mortal body into which the unawakened decline.
Tripitaka answers the widow in kind — question for question, poem for poem. Having let her recite the householder's round of seasonal pleasures, he grants their reality (“that is fine indeed”) only to counterpose the monk's own “portion of good,” and caps the rebuttal with eight regulated lines that are the mirror-image of hers.
The poem is a compact statement of the pilgrimage's whole doctrinal frame. Its idiom is deliberately syncretic: the toppling of the “hall of affection” is renunciation; 身中自有好陰陽 speaks the language of internal alchemy, the cultivation of vital energies within; 見性明心 is pure Chan; and the “audience at the golden portal” borrows the imagery of Daoist ascent. The three teachings are braided into a single vision of the awakened life.
The closing antithesis is deliberately harsh. Against the neidan and Chan promise of returning “to the native home,” the layman's end is rendered as bare mortality — old age “sinking into the stinking bag of skin,” greedy to the last for bloody fare. The elegance of the widow's hedonism is answered by a memento mori, and the overt contest of arguments is, for the monk, won.