The chapter ends where it began, and the two poems answer each other almost word for word. The opening lyric asked where the work of Chan was to be done and gave the instruction: bind the horse and the ape, do not pause, do not let the elixir leak, sweep the feelings clean. The closing couplet reports the result: 懶散無拘禪性亂 — idle, loose, unrestrained, and the Chan nature has run to disorder.

What lies between them is a fortnight of nothing wicked at all. A monastery that would not stop feeding people. A garden worth admiring. A pagoda swept out of genuine devotion, from the top of which the view was very fine. Three nights of lanterns, each one further from the gate than the last, on the only nights of the year when the curfew lifts and a town may stay out until dawn. Not one person in Jinping behaved badly, and the pilgrims lost their master.

And the last four characters before the sign-off are the chapter's coldest. 災危有分 — disaster and danger have their allotted share. It is the 分 of 緣分, the portion that falls to you: not punishment, not bad luck, but the reckoning that was always going to come due. The opening poem said as much in its second line, before a single lantern was lit — pause a moment, rest a moment, and you fall into the three paths. The chapter has simply spent five and a half thousand characters showing how gently, and how politely, that can be arranged.