玉真觀大仙 The Great Immortal of Jade-Truth Abbey
那菩薩到山腳下，有玉真觀金頂大仙在觀門首接住，請菩薩獻茶。菩薩不敢久停，曰：「今領如來法旨，上東土尋取經人去。」大仙道：「取經人幾時方到？」菩薩道：「未定，約摸二三年間，或可至此。」遂辭了大仙，半雲半霧，約記程途。有詩為證。詩曰：那菩萨到山脚下，有玉真观金顶大仙在观门首接住，请菩萨献茶。菩萨不敢久停，曰：「今领如来法旨，上东土寻取经人去。」大仙道：「取经人几时方到？」菩萨道：「未定，约摸二三年间，或可至此。」遂辞了大仙，半云半雾，约记程途。有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
When the Bodhisattva reached the foot of the mountain, the Golden-Crowned Great Immortal of the Jade-Truth Abbey met her at the abbey gate and invited her to take tea.
玉真觀, Jade-Truth Abbey, and its 金頂大仙 are Daoist, and this is the first thing Guanyin meets on leaving Buddhist ground. Remember him: he turns up again in the novel's last chapters to walk Tripiṭaka up Vulture Peak.
The Bodhisattva, not daring to linger, said:
不敢久停 is the courtesy of a traveller under orders — cannot stop, sorry — and she will say it at every stop she makes on the way east.
"I now bear the Tathāgata's command, to go up to the Eastern Land and seek out a scripture-pilgrim."
法旨 is a command issued by the Buddha; the first character is what distinguishes it from an emperor's 旨. She states her authority before her errand.
The Great Immortal said: "When will the scripture-pilgrim arrive?"
The Great Immortal asks the one question the chapter cannot answer, and the vagueness of the reply is what turns the rest of the novel into a journey rather than an event.
The Bodhisattva said: "It is not fixed; reckoning roughly, in two or three years he may reach this place."
Two or three years, she reckons. One of the novel's gentler jokes: the pilgrimage takes fourteen.
Then she took her leave of the Great Immortal and, half by cloud and half by mist, noted the stages of the road. There is a poem to attest it. The poem says:
為證 is as proof, with 為 read wèi. 詩曰 introduces the eight-line regulated poem that follows.
Ten thousand li I journey to seek, yet speak not of it,
A deliberately murky poem about looking for the right person. 相尋 is to seek someone out; 相 is read xiāng.
yet they say: whose heart's desire is ever wholly met?
得 is dé and 難 is nán. 誰得意難全 sets getting what you want against getting all of it: the one who has his wish rarely has the whole of it.
If the seeking of another be all at once like this,
渾如 is wholly like. The if-clause turns the maxim back on the speaker, which is the move the poem has been building toward.
then is the whole course of my life a thing of mere chance?
豈偶然 ends on a question that expects the answer no. Nothing in a life arranged like this one is accident — cause and effect stated as a shrug.
To preach the Way by mere method becomes idle talk;
傳 is chuán here, to hand on.
to expound it plainly, yet without faith, is but empty transmission.
虛傳 is a handing-on that carries nothing; 傳 is again chuán.
I would pour out heart and liver to find a kindred mind,
相識 is someone you know, a kindred mind; 相 is xiāng.
and reckon that ahead there must surely be a karmic bond.
緣 is the bond arranged in advance — the tie that will bind Guanyin to the pilgrim she has not yet met. The word is still in daily use for chance meetings that feel meant.
Guanyin's first stop on earth is at a Daoist abbey — a small but telling detail in a Buddhist mission. The exchange is short and courteous, and it supplies the chapter's only timetable: two or three years until the pilgrim arrives. The novel will quietly overshoot that by more than a decade.
The regulated poem attached to the scene is one of the novel's deliberately obscure ones, turning on how hard it is to find the right person and on the bond, 緣, that alone makes such a meeting happen. Its paradoxes about preaching — method without faith is a handing-on that carries nothing — restate, quietly, the chapter's worry that the scriptures will be wasted on people who cannot use them.
Yu takes the closing turn toward 緣 as the point of the whole verse: her search is not a search at all but a keeping of an appointment, and the bond she trusts to be waiting ahead is the thread the entire novel follows. Plaks reads these interludes as the narrative pausing to explain its own design to itself.