須下死工夫 Hard Work Buys a Living
行者道：「師父，你常以思鄉為念，全不似個出家人。放心且走，莫要多憂。古人云：『欲求生富貴，須下死工夫。』」行者道：「师父，你常以思乡为念，全不似个出家人。放心且走，莫要多忧。古人云：『欲求生富贵，须下死工夫。』」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said, "Master, you are forever making a matter of longing for home. It is not at all like a man who has left the household life.
In 以思鄉為念 the 為 is wéi, the linking "to be, to take as," not the wèi that means "for the sake of." The frame is "take X as Y" — he takes homesickness as his occupation. 出家, to leave the household, is the ordinary term for becoming a monk, and Pilgrim is using it as a reproach: you left the house, so stop pining for it.
Set your mind at rest and keep walking. Do not fret so much.
Eight characters of plain advice, and the shortest thing Pilgrim says here. He has run out of patience for the long version.
As the ancients said: 'If you would live in wealth and honour, you must put in deadly hard work.'"
The proverb pairs 生, to live, against 死, deadly — living well is bought with dying effort. It is the sort of thing embroidered on a schoolroom wall, and Pilgrim is quoting it at a man twice his apparent age.
Pilgrim's answer to grief is work, which is both good advice and no comfort whatsoever. He does not deny that his master misses home; he says that missing home is unprofessional.
There is a nice irony in the proverb he picks. Wealth and honour are precisely what a monk has renounced, so Pilgrim is encouraging a scripture pilgrim with a maxim about getting on in the world. He means it as "effort pays," and it does the job, but the mismatch is a good reminder that Pilgrim's moral vocabulary was assembled on a mountain full of monkeys and in a stable in heaven, not in a monastery.