一念回天 One Thought Turned Heaven
逐句解 Line by line
This is what is meant by one thought turning Heaven, and ten thousand people getting all they hoped for.
一念回天 — the chapter's thesis, compressed to four characters and set in the middle of a rainstorm. 所謂, what is called, marks it as a saying being applied rather than a thought being had.
All owing to the Great Sage setting the prime motion working; ten thousand lǐ of rivers and hills shaded over everywhere.
A 里 is a lǐ, about five hundred and seventy-six metres in the Ming. 元運 is the primal motion, the turning of the cosmic order itself — a large claim for what was, procedurally, a loan of thunder gods from a neighbouring department.
A fine rain, tipping rivers and upending seas, blotting out the fields and blinding the sky.
倒 is dǎo, to overturn — the same reading as the toppling mountains, and the same one in the familiar idiom about overturning rivers and seas.
Waterfalls hanging from the eaves; a clear ringing sound outside the windows.
玲瓏 normally describes something small, delicate and finely wrought — and here it is used for a sound. After two lines of overturned oceans the rhapsody drops to the noise of water at a windowsill.
The rhapsody puts the chapter's argument in its own second line — one thought turning Heaven — and then immediately gives the credit to Pilgrim for setting the prime motion working.
Both are true and they are in some tension. The mountains fell because a man changed his mind; the rain fell because a monkey went upstairs twice and borrowed equipment. The verse does not adjudicate, and neither does the chapter.
What the verse does do is come back down to a windowsill. Rivers tipped over, seas upended, the sky blinded — and then the sound of water outside a window, described with a word for something small and finely made. That is the storm reaching a person.