鶯啼鳥語 We Cannot Subdue Tigers
一任他鶯啼鳥語閑爭鬥，不上我方便慈悲大法乘。因此上，也不會伏虎，也不會降龍；也不識的怪，也不識的精。一任他莺啼鸟语闲争斗，不上我方便慈悲大法乘。因此上，也不会伏虎，也不会降龙；也不识的怪，也不识的精。
逐句解 Line by line
"Let the orioles cry and the birds chatter and quarrel idly as they please; it does not reach up to our great vehicle of expedient means and mercy.
方便 renders the Sanskrit upāya, skilful means — the doctrine that teaching adapts itself to its hearer. The birds are the noise of the world, and the claim is that it does not get in.
And so we cannot subdue tigers, and we cannot tame dragons;
降 is xiáng here, to subdue or make submit, not the jiàng of descending. Taming dragons and subduing tigers is the standard four-character phrase for a hero's power over wild things — and the reading of this character flips entirely with the sense.
and we cannot tell a monster, and we cannot tell a spirit."
Four parallel clauses of cannot, ending on the one that matters: they would not recognise a fiend if they saw one. They have, every day for three days, at dinner.
Here is the point the whole long recitation has been building to. All that liturgy, all that doctrine, all that daily discipline, and the conclusion is a list of things they cannot do.
The last pair is the sharpest. They cannot recognise a monster or a spirit — and the novel has spent this chapter showing a monastery feeding one, bedding it down behind the guardian statues and crowding round to look at it under the lamps.
The claim about the birds is quietly undercut too. They say the world's noise does not reach them. Six of them are dead in the garden.