朝陽補破衲 Morning Sun Mends a Torn Robe
逐句解 Line by line
Surely there is one here who mends his tattered robe facing the sun, / and how should there not be one who finishes the last of a sutra by the moon?
Two points, and they sit next to each other. 朝 is cháo here, to face — paired with 對, also to face, in the second half — where the line before had the same character as zhāo, morning. And 了 is liǎo, to finish, not the unstressed le that marks a completed action; it is only the second time in the whole chapter that character takes its full reading.
And there is half a wall of lamplight bright in the back courtyard, / a line of scented mist lighting the middle court.
Here 行 is háng, a line or streak — a streak of mist, set against half a wall of lamplight, both of them quantities of something spread out. Chapter 36 carries almost this identical couplet, and chapter 98 has ranks of halls counted the same way. This is the third and last háng in a chapter that otherwise reads the character xíng fifty-seven times.
The rhapsody ends on people, which is the one thing the ruined half of the monastery had none of. Somebody mends a robe in the sun, somebody finishes a sutra by moonlight, and a lamp is burning in the back court.
Both images are of unfinished work being quietly got on with — a torn robe, a sutra with a bit left to read. Nothing here is complete either, but everything is being maintained, and that is the difference the whole passage has been building towards.