壽星獻丹 The Gifts of Longevity
壽星又到，見玉帝禮畢，又見如來申謝曰：「始聞那妖猴被老君引至兜率宮鍛煉，以為必致平安，不期他又反出。幸如來善伏此怪，設宴奉謝，故此聞風而來。更無他物可獻，特具紫芝瑤草、碧藕金丹奉上。」詩曰：寿星又到，见玉帝礼毕，又见如来申谢曰：「始闻那妖猴被老君引至兜率宫锻炼，以为必致平安，不期他又反出。幸如来善伏此怪，设宴奉谢，故此闻风而来。更无他物可献，特具紫芝瑶草、碧藕金丹奉上。」诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
The Star of Longevity arrived, paid his respects to the Jade Emperor, and then, seeing the Tathāgata, expressed his thanks, saying:
壽星 is Shòu xīng, the Star of Longevity, now formally entering. 申謝 is to state one's thanks. From here the chapter settles into a pattern you could set a watch by: a great immortal arrives, bows to the Jade Emperor, thanks the Buddha, presents a gift, and a poem follows. It happens three times.
"I first heard that the fiendish monkey had been taken by Laozi to the Tushita Palace to be refined, and thought peace was surely assured — but unexpectedly he broke out again. Happily the Tathāgata has well subdued this fiend, and a banquet is set in thanks; so, catching word of it, I have come. Having no other gift, I bring only purple mushroom and jasper herb, blue lotus-root and golden elixir, to present." The poem says:
以為 keeps 為 as wéi, to think or assume. 善伏 is well subdued, with 伏 as fú. 聞風而來 — came on hearing the wind of it — is still exactly what Chinese says of somebody who turns up because word got round. The lead-in 詩曰 closes the prose.
Blue lotus-root and golden elixir, offered to Śākyamuni; may the Tathāgata's myriad years be as the sands of the Ganges.
恆沙 (héng shā) is the sands of the Ganges, the standard Buddhist way of saying a number past counting. So the opening wish is for a lifespan beyond reckoning — and note who is making it. A Daoist god of long life, reaching for a Buddhist measure. The courtesy runs both ways all evening.
In pure peace and eternal joy, the brocade of the Three Vehicles; in health and long life, the flowers of the Nine Grades.
永樂 keeps 樂 as lè, joy. 三乘 is sān shèng, with 乘 as shèng: the Three Vehicles — the hearer (śrāvaka), the solitary buddha (pratyekabuddha) and the bodhisattva, the three routes out that Buddhism recognises. 九品 (jiǔ pǐn) are the Nine Grades of rebirth in the Pure Land, a nine-rung ladder of how well one arrives. 長生 keeps 長 as cháng. Daoist long life and Buddhist attainment, braided into one couplet.
In the gate of the Signless, the true Lord of the Law; on the heaven of Form-and-Emptiness, he is the immortals' own house.
無相 (wú xiàng), signless, without marks, is Sanskrit animitta; 色空 (sè kōng) is form and emptiness, rūpa-śūnyatā — the Heart Sūtra's most quoted line, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. 相 is xiàng, a mark or sign; 中 is zhōng. The Daoist longevity god has now climbed all the way to the vocabulary of the Prajñāpāramitā, the Perfection of Wisdom scriptures — the deepest language Mahāyāna has — and he is using it as a compliment.
Heaven, earth and the great ground all call him Patriarch; his sixteen-chi golden body, vast in fortune and long life.
丈六金身 is the sixteen-chǐ golden body, the fixed canonical height of the Buddha's radiant form — a 丈 being ten 尺, so one zhàng and six. We keep such measures as zhàng and chǐ rather than converting them. 賒 (shē) means far-reaching, abundant. The poem ends by crowning the Buddha as everyone's Patriarch — the Daoist cosmos acclaiming Buddhist supremacy in its own verse form.
The Star of Longevity presents his gifts: purple mushroom, jasper herb, blue lotus-root, golden elixir — the whole Daoist pharmacy of immortality. What is striking is that the poem accompanying them praises the Buddha in thoroughly Buddhist terms. A Daoist longevity god wishes the Tathāgata years like the sands of the Ganges (恆沙), invokes the Three Vehicles (三乘) and the Nine Grades (九品), and climbs to the high Prajñāpāramitā vocabulary of the Signless (無相) and Form-and-Emptiness (色空).
This is the banquet's blending of traditions at its most explicit, and its most graceful. The poem does not merely seat Daoist and Buddhist figures at one table; it has a Daoist deity set out Buddhist doctrine as praise, ending by hailing the Buddha as the Patriarch whom heaven, earth and the great ground all call ancestor. The hierarchy the monkey's defeat established is here ratified in verse, voluntarily, by the very pantheon that could not subdue him.
The closing image, the 丈六金身 — the Buddha's sixteen-chǐ radiant body — returns us to the chapter's running question of scale. The monkey measured himself against a palm and lost; the Buddha's true body is measured in the canonical dimensions of cosmic Buddhahood, vast in fortune and long in life (福壽賒). Following our standing practice the measure 丈 is given as zhàng rather than converted, so the texture of the original survives even as the image insists on the immeasurable.