Canonical Classics ← 第八十五回
第八十五回
xīnyuán
zhǔtūnchán

The Mind-Ape Envies the Wood Mother · The Fiend Lord Plots to Swallow the Chan

枉死城中
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

枉死城中 The City of the Wrongly Dead

wǎngchéngzhōngxiàndeyuānhúnquèshīsuǒwàngyǒngshìchāoshēngchánggōngguǒjìnhuàzuòfēngchénzhèquèzěnmegānjìng?」wǎngchéngzhōngxiàndeyuānhúnquèshīsuǒwàngyǒngshìchāoshēngchánggōngguǒjìnhuàzuòfēngchénzhèquèzěnmegānjìng?」


逐句解 Line by line

wǎngchéngzhōngxiàndeyuānhúnquèshīsuǒwàngyǒngshìchāoshēngchánggōngguǒjìnhuàzuòfēngchénzhèquèzěnmegānjìng?」 wǎngchéngzhōngxiàndeyuānhúnquèshīsuǒwàngyǒngshìchāoshēngchánggōngguǒjìnhuàzuòfēngchénzhèquèzěnmegānjìng?」

And in that City of the Wrongly Dead, the numberless souls with a grievance — would they not be bitterly disappointed, never through all the ages to be carried over into rebirth? A whole work of merit turned to dust and wind. How is that to be called clean?"

枉死城 is a real place in the underworld of this tradition, where those who died before their time are held. is cháng, the measure for an episode or an undertaking — a whole one of them. is gān, and this is the fourth time the word has been used in the scene: the demons meant an empty stomach, and he means a life that leaves nothing owing.


總評 Commentary

This is the answer to what has a monk to be unclean about, and it is the largest thing Tripitaka says in the chapter. His death is not one man's death; it strands a city of souls who have been waiting.

The word he has been circling lands here. Clean, for him, means having discharged what was entrusted to you — and by that measure dying tied to a tree is filthy.