原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
惟如來知 Only The Tathagata Knows
大眾聽他兩張口一樣聲，俱說一遍，眾亦莫辨。惟如來則通知之，正欲道破，忽見南下彩雲之間，來了觀音，參拜我佛。大众听他两张口一样声，俱说一遍，众亦莫辨。惟如来则通知之，正欲道破，忽见南下彩云之间，来了观音，参拜我佛。
逐句解 Line by line
大眾聽他兩張口一樣聲，俱說一遍，眾亦莫辨。
大众听他两张口一样声，俱说一遍，众亦莫辨。
The assembly heard the two mouths speak with one voice, both saying it through together, and they too could not tell.
兩張口一樣聲, two mouths and one same voice. The assembly of the enlightened fails on exactly the evidence that has defeated everybody else.
惟如來則通知之，正欲道破，忽見南下彩雲之間，來了觀音，參拜我佛。
惟如来则通知之，正欲道破，忽见南下彩云之间，来了观音，参拜我佛。
Only the Tathāgata knew it through and through. He was on the point of declaring it when he saw, in the coloured clouds descending from the south, Guanyin come to pay homage to Our Buddha.
惟如來則通知之, only the Tathāgata knew it through and through — the sentence the whole chapter has been waiting for, dropped almost in passing. 參拜 takes cān, to attend and bow; 彩雲之間 takes jiān.
惟如來則通知之 is the sentence the whole chapter has been waiting for, and the narration drops it almost casually in the middle of a paragraph. Everyone else in the cosmos has failed; the Buddha knows. He knew before he was petitioned — he had already announced that two minds were on their way — and the assembly's failure one sentence earlier only sharpens the contrast.
Then the novel does something deliberately frustrating. 正欲道破, he was on the point of declaring it, and Guanyin arrives. The revelation is interrupted at the last instant by the very Bodhisattva who could not make it herself, and the explanation is put off for another whole passage.
The interruption is not idle. Guanyin's arrival turns a verdict into a lesson. Instead of simply naming the impostor, the Buddha will first explain to her why she could not, and the taxonomy that follows is addressed to the one being present who had most reason to expect she would succeed.