原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
含詞賦 With rhapsody
僧讚僧 Monks Praising Monks
正是：正是：
積功須在慈悲念，佛法興時僧讚僧。积功须在慈悲念，佛法兴时僧赞僧。
逐句解 Line by line
正是：
正是：
And so it is that:
The last tag in the chapter, two characters.
積功須在慈悲念，佛法興時僧讚僧。
积功须在慈悲念，佛法兴时僧赞僧。
Merit is piled up only in a compassionate thought; / when the Buddha's law flourishes, monks give praise to monks.
興 is xīng, to flourish or rise, not the xìng of mood and inclination. The second line is a proverb in its own right, and it is being used to explain why a house of lamas has just taken in four Chinese pilgrims without asking anything.
The closing couplet is the chapter's own verdict and it praises hospitality between strangers. When the teaching is healthy, clergy look after each other; and merit is not built out of masonry but out of a single compassionate thought.
Read against the day just past, it is double-edged in a way the book does not underline. A compassionate thought is exactly what got Tripitaka into this. He heard a cry, he felt for it, and he has brought the result of that feeling in through the gate with him and sat it down to supper.
The couplet is not wrong. That is what makes it uncomfortable. Compassion really is where merit comes from, and this chapter has spent five thousand characters showing that it is also the one thing in a good man that can be operated from outside by anybody who knows the words.