問母辨真 Ask the Mother, Discern the True
逐句解 Line by line
When you meet the sovereign, speak only of the seed of your begetting; thereupon you are numbered among the host at the Tathāgata's assembly.
受生因 is the karmic cause of one's (re)birth; 如來會上人 names one received into the Buddha's preaching assembly. The couplet sets the chapter's turn from worldly kingship toward the recognition of a truer 'lord.'
In one thought, gaze in stillness upon the Buddha within this world of dust; across the ten directions all alike behold the awe-clad spirit come down.
十方 is the ten directions of Buddhist cosmology (the eight points plus zenith and nadir). 降 reads jiàng (to descend / send down), not xiáng (to subdue); 威神 is the awe-inspiring numen made manifest.
Would you learn who is the true, clear-eyed sovereign of this day? You must put the question to her who was the lawful queen-mother of old.
真明主 = the true, enlightened lord — at once the rightful king of Wuji and, allegorically, the awakened mind. 嫡母 is the principal consort (the lawful queen), foreshadowing the prince's interrogation of his mother.
There is, besides, a thing this world has never once beheld: with each single act, each single step, a fresh flower blooms.
The closing line's threefold 一 (here yì · yí · yì by tone sandhi) lends an incantatory cadence; the image is of ceaseless renewal, each act and step disclosing a new flower.
This regulated verse opens the chapter and, like the head-poems throughout, sets the doctrinal key before the narrative resumes. Its subject is discernment — how to know the 真明主, the true and enlightened lord — and its answer, to 'ask the rightful mother,' directly anticipates the chapter title, 嬰兒問母知邪正 (the infant questions his mother and learns the crooked from the upright).
The Buddhist-alchemical vocabulary (受生因, 如來會, 十方, 降威神) recasts the palace intrigue of Wuji as a parable of recognition. The impostor on the throne is the 'false'; the true king, drowned and awaiting revival, is the 'upright.' The poem insists that the test of truth lies not in appearances but in a bond of intimacy and lawful relation — hence the appeal to the 嫡母.
The final couplet turns outward to a vision of unceasing renewal — 一行一步一花新 — which both consoles and instructs: the way forward, step by patient step, continually brings forth the new. It is a quietly hopeful frame for a chapter otherwise given over to a corpse in a well and Bajie's grumbling labor.