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."
享榮華, 受富貴 — enjoy glory, receive rank and riches. 兒女團圓 is sons and daughters gathered round you. Note the tactic: he concedes every word of it first. You cannot rebut a case you have refused to hear, and Tripitaka is finally arguing rather than hiding.
"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. 一段好處 is a stretch or measure of advantage. The pivot from her goods to his.
"How is this to be shown?"
怎見得 again, with the structural 得 (de) — he is answering her in her own form as well as on her own ground.
"There is a poem to prove it."
有詩為證 once more, 為 as wéi. The repetition is deliberate: poem for poem, formula for formula. His verse also runs on inside his own speech.
The poem says:
詩曰, and the four couplets follow, with Tripitaka's closing quotation mark on the last 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 is to fix the will on the Way. 非常 here means what it literally says, not ordinary — the modern sense of very had not yet swallowed it. 恩愛堂, the hall of affection, is the household ties the renunciant knocks down.
External things breed no idle wagging tongues; / within the body there is of itself a fine yin and yang.
閑口舌 is idle gossip and quarrelling. 身中自有好陰陽 is inner alchemy talking: the adept works the vital energies of 陰陽 inside his own body and needs nothing from outside it. 身中 is shēn zhōng, within the body. It is the exact counter to her argument — she has been listing things you can acquire, and he answers that the equipment is already installed.
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 complete and practice fulfilled, takes 行 as xíng, conduct. 朝金闕 is to attend court at the golden gate of Heaven, with 朝 as cháo. 見性明心, see the nature and clarify the mind, is the Chan formula for awakening; 返故鄉, return to the old home, means the ground you started from. Daoist court imagery and Chan awakening in a single couplet, which is how this novel always talks.
Far better than staying home, greedy for bloody fare, / and in old age sinking into the stinking bag of skin.
And the closing line goes for the throat. 勝似, better than, with 似 as sì. 貪血食 is to crave meat and blood-offerings. 臭皮囊, the stinking leather sack, is a standard Buddhist name for the body — the thing you are carrying about and will eventually be left inside. Her poem ended on a wedding night; his ends on a corpse.
Tripitaka answers her in her own form: question for question, poem for poem. Having let her recite the householder's year, he grants that every word of it is true — that is fine indeed — and only then sets the monk's own portion of good against it, in eight lines built as the mirror image of hers.
The poem compresses the whole doctrinal frame of the pilgrimage into four couplets, and its vocabulary is deliberately mixed. Knocking down the hall of affection is renunciation; 身中自有好陰陽 is the language of inner alchemy, energies cultivated within the body; 見性明心 is pure Chan; and the audience at the golden gate borrows Daoist imagery of ascent. Three teachings braided into one account of the awakened life, which is this novel's habitual move.
The closing contrast is deliberately harsh. Against the promise of returning to the native ground, the layman's end is set out as bare mortality: old age sinking into the stinking bag of skin, still greedy for meat. She offered a wedding night; he answers with a memento mori. On the open ground of argument, the monk has won.