三清醮壇 The Rite at the Three-Pure Altar
但見那：但见那：
逐句解 Line by line
There one saw:
但見那, and this time it really is the verse cue — what follows is a 賦, fù, a rhapsody, on the abbey by night. 那 is nà.
A numinous precinct, a lofty hall; a blessed ground, a hall of truth.
The rhapsody sets out its two phrases bare before opening each one, exactly as the spring rhapsody did at the start of the chapter. 靈區, a precinct charged with spirit; 福地, a blessed ground — in Daoist geography a specific class of holy site, the earth's lucky places, numbered and listed.
A numinous precinct, a lofty hall — towering, grand as the vista of Penglai;
蓬壺 is Penglai, the island of the immortals that drifts in the eastern sea and cannot be reached on purpose. 似 is sì, the comparing "like."
a blessed ground, a hall of truth — dim and pure as the Palace of Transformed Joy.
化樂宮 is the palace of the Nirmāṇarati heaven, 化樂天 — whose inhabitants make their own pleasures by magic and then enjoy what they have made. A Buddhist heaven, borrowed to praise a Daoist hall. 樂 is lè, joy.
On either side the Daoists played reed-pipes; before the altar the high priest raised his jade tablet.
The 玉簡, jade tablet, is the slip a court official held before his face when addressing the emperor — so the priest addressing Heaven holds one too. Daoist liturgy is modelled on the imperial bureaucracy throughout, right down to the stationery. 笙簧, the reeds of a mouth-organ.
He proclaimed the calamity-dispelling penitential, and opened his lecture on the Daodejing.
A 消災懺 is a penitential service for dispelling calamity, and the 道德經 is the Daodejing itself. Rite and text together: this is a serious establishment doing serious work.
Casting dust again and again, they passed the talismans entire; declaring the rite once through, all bowed to the ground.
揚塵, casting up dust, and the passing of talismans — the physical business of the ritual. 盡 is jìn, all of them; 俯伏, to go flat on the ground; 一 is yì before 番.
Blessing the water and issuing the writs, the candle-flames flickered and rose to the upper realm;
Water is blessed, and 檄 are dispatched — which is a military and administrative word, the written summons an office sends out. The rite files paperwork with Heaven.
tracing the pole-stars and arraying the Dipper, the incense-smoke, rich and fragrant, pierced the clear sky.
查罡佈斗: to trace the 天罡, the pole-stars, and lay out the Dipper. The priest walks a set pattern on the floor of the hall, stepping the shape of the constellation, so that his feet copy the sky and the ritual moves through the heavens as he moves through the room. 斗 is dǒu; 馥郁, richly fragrant.
On the altar-table were fresh oblations; on the tables, a rich vegetarian feast.
And the rhapsody ends, pointedly, not on the sacred but on the catering. 供 in 供獻 is gòng, an offering laid before a god, not the gōng of supplying goods; 齋筵, a meatless banquet. Everything from here follows from that table.
The rhapsody builds the rite up as high as it will go: a hall grand as Penglai and pure as a Buddhist heaven, reed-pipes on both sides, the high priest raising his jade tablet, the calamity-dispelling penitential and a lecture on the Daodejing, dust cast, talismans passed, water blessed, dispatches sent up, and the Dipper walked out step by step on the floor until the incense-smoke pierces the sky.
Two things are worth noticing. The first is how much of Daoist ritual is modelled on government office — the tablet a courtier holds, the written summons an office issues — so that the rite reads as Heaven's paperwork being filed. The second is where the poem stops: not on the sacred but on the spread, 供獻 and 齋筵, fresh offerings and a rich meatless feast. The higher the liturgy is piled, the further it has to fall, and the poem ends on the bait.