原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
牢關月下門 When The Donors Stay Away
諸檀越不來啊，新的舊的、生的熟的、村的俏的，一個個合著掌，瞑著目，悄悄冥冥，入定蒲團上，牢關月下門。诸檀越不来啊，新的旧的、生的熟的、村的俏的，一个个合着掌，瞑着目，悄悄冥冥，入定蒲团上，牢关月下门。
逐句解 Line by line
諸檀越不來啊，新的舊的、生的熟的、村的俏的，一個個合著掌，瞑著目，悄悄冥冥，入定蒲團上，牢關月下門。
诸檀越不来啊，新的旧的、生的熟的、村的俏的，一个个合着掌，瞑着目，悄悄冥冥，入定蒲团上，牢关月下门。
"when the almsgivers do not come, new and old, raw and seasoned, rough and polished, every one of us puts his palms together, closes his eyes, and quiet as quiet enters meditation on the prayer mat, with the gate under the moon barred fast."
Two 著, both the sustained zhe: palms held together, eyes held shut. The closing image borrows a famous line about a monk knocking at a gate under the moon — the poem that gave Chinese the word for agonising over word choice.
The matched half of the previous passage, and the comedy is in the symmetry. Donors present: everyone chants and jostles. Donors absent: everyone sits down, shuts his eyes and bars the gate.
The three pairs of opposites are chosen to cover every kind of monk in the house, exactly as the previous passage did. The joke is that the categories change — there they were sorted by body, here by experience and polish — but the behaviour is unanimous either way.
The gate under the moon is a quiet piece of literary showing-off. It points at a celebrated story about a poet unable to decide between push and knock for that line, and the phrase for that agonising is still the Chinese word for painstaking revision.