忘本參禪 Forgetting The Root To Seek Chan
似這話不叩沖虛，你執持梵語。道也者，本安中國，反來求證西方，空費了草鞋，不知尋個甚麼？石獅子剜了心肝，野狐涎灌徹骨髓。忘本參禪，妄求佛果，都似我荊棘嶺葛藤謎語，蘿蓏渾言。似这话不叩冲虚，你执持梵语。道也者，本安中国，反来求证西方，空费了草鞋，不知寻个甚么？石狮子剜了心肝，野狐涎灌彻骨髓。忘本参禅，妄求佛果，都似我荆棘岭葛藤谜语，萝蓏浑言。
逐句解 Line by line
"Talk like this does not knock at the empty void; you hold fast to Sanskrit words.
沖虛 is the emptiness of the Daoist classics, and the charge is that the guest's language never gets there. 不 shifts to bú against the falling tone of 叩.
"As for the Way — it was settled in the Middle Kingdom from the first. You turn about and go seeking proof of it in the West, wearing out your straw sandals for nothing. What is it you imagine you are looking for?"
This is the flat statement of the native case against Buddhism, and it is aimed at the pilgrimage itself rather than at anything Tripitaka has said: the Way was settled here already, and you have walked out a pair of sandals going the wrong direction to look for it. 中 is zhōng in 中國, and 甚 is the questioning shén.
"A stone lion with its heart and liver gouged out; the drool of a wild fox soaked clean through to the marrow.
Two images of abuse. The first is of something that never had an inside and has now had it removed anyway; the second is a spirit-fox's drool, the stock emblem of a doctrine that bewitches. 獅子 takes the everyday zi.
"To forget the root and sit in Chan, to seek the fruit of buddhahood in vain — it is all like the tangled riddles of my own Bramble Ridge, the muddled talk of vine and gourd.
參 is cān in 參禪, to sit in meditation. Notice what the speaker reaches for as his figure of confusion: his own ridge, the tangled riddles of vine and gourd — which is either modesty or a slip.
Here is the argument the whole chapter has been circling, and it is put with real force. The Way, says the Cloud-Brusher, was settled in the Middle Kingdom from the beginning; you have turned round and gone west to look for proof of it, and you have worn out a pair of straw sandals to no purpose. What exactly do you think you are looking for?
It is the standing native objection to Buddhism stated in four clauses, and the novel gives it to a bamboo, by night, in a stone house, addressed to a captive. That placement is doing a great deal of work: the argument is allowed its full strength and is also, unmistakably, being made by a thing that has abducted the person it is talking to.
The abuse that follows is the best writing in the speech. A stone lion with its heart cut out is an image of devotion performed on something that had no inside to begin with; fox-drool soaked to the marrow is the standard figure for a teaching that has got into the bones and rotted them. Then the speaker compares the whole business to the tangled riddles of his own ridge — which is where the pilgrims have in fact spent two days and a night hacking a way through.