The Holy Teacher descends in his most familiar Living-Buddha persona — warm, direct, greeting his disciples with a plain hello before turning straight to the work. His subject is Right Effort (正精進), the sixth limb of the Noble Eightfold Path: not gritted-teeth striving, but the composed move of saying excuse me, let me through to every obstacle that blocks the way — laziness, craving, habit-energy, idle jostling — because there is a Buddha to become just ahead. The opening verse splits the character 正 (“upright”) into 止 + 一 — to be upright is to stop and rest at the One — then borrows the Book of Documents’ image of bitter medicine that must bring on vertigo before it heals: the disorientation of the path is itself the sign of the cure. The main teaching parades exemplars of effort (Zhang Zhi blackening a pond with ink, Su Xun rousing himself late to study, Yan Hui rejoicing in poverty, Xuanzang journeying west), then threads the Great Learning’s ladder of self-cultivation, the Lotus Sutra’s One Vehicle, and the union of gradual practice with sudden awakening — refining the pure gold from the ore so that all beings may be carried across. Its anchoring line, ordinary folk are forever jostling and shoving — I haven’t the time, is the whole teaching’s compass: let the world push and elbow as it will; the seeker has a path to walk and no time to be drawn in. (The text is sung to the borrowed melody 〈借過一下〉 (Excuse Me a Moment), whose “let me through” chorus the teaching turns to its own spiritual purpose.)
The upright is this: stop at one — the doctrine of seeing one’s nature. Ward off the depraved and preserve sincerity — without pride, without idle slack.To be “upright” (正) is to come to rest in the One and see your own true nature; shut out what is false, hold to sincerity — never proud, never idly slack.
The character 正 (“upright”) decomposes visually into 止 (“stop”) + 一 (“one”): to be upright is to stop and rest at the one. That “one” carries three traditions at once — the Confucian “rest in the highest good,” the Daoist “embrace and guard the One” of the Daodejing, and the Buddhist single-pointed mind that does not waver — all converging on collecting the scattered mind onto its one true object. “Seeing one’s nature” (見性) is the Sixth Patriarch’s signature: to look directly into your own self-nature is to see the path. 閑 here is the archaic 防 (“guard against”), not “leisure” — 閑邪存誠 is the Book of Changes’s daily discipline of guarding the gates of the heart and preserving what is true; never proud, never idly slack.
Search to the depth and refinement of the mystery; the false-and-empty is broken. Drifting on the surface — of no use, barren and adrift, going nowhere.Search deep into what is subtle and hidden, and what is false breaks apart; drifting on the surface gets you nothing — empty, aimless, going nowhere.
精賾探索 compresses the Book of Changes’s “probe what is deep, seek what is hidden”: real cultivation goes into the folds where the surface mind does not look, and there the false-and-empty breaks apart. Skimming the books, chanting without searching, claiming the path without descending into one’s own depths — that drifting on the surface yields nothing.
進德修業結善果 轉識成智古佛侔
jìn dé xiū yè jié shàn guǒ · zhuǎn shí chéng zhì gǔ fó móu
Advance in virtue and refine the work — bind the fruits of good; transform consciousness into wisdom, and match the ancient Buddhas.Grow in virtue and steady your work until it bears good fruit; turn ordinary awareness into wisdom, and you stand level with the Buddhas of old.
進德修業 is again from the Book of Changes: virtue and work are two wheels of the same cart, the inner and the outer advancing together. 轉識成智 (“transforming consciousness into wisdom”) is the Yogācāra signature of Xuanzang’s tradition — the eight consciousnesses become the four wisdoms — and when that transformation is complete you “match the ancient Buddhas.” 古佛 (“the ancient Buddhas”) is also among the names the lineage uses for the speaker, placed here with a quiet wink.
Where the cultivation cannot pass, dig into the principle of the illness; the medicine, yes — it brings on vertigo, and that very illness is healed.Where your practice gets stuck, study the root of the ailment; the cure may make you dizzy at first — and that is exactly how the illness is healed.
This is the Book of Documents’s line “if the medicine does not bring on vertigo, the sickness will not be cured”: bitter advice and strong medicine must disturb in order to work; treatment that feels comfortable is not reaching the root. So where your practice stalls — where you cannot move forward — that is exactly where the illness is showing itself. Do not detour around it; probe the principle. The vertigo is not failure; it is proof the cure has begun.
The opening verse lays the whole arc of Right Effort in eight tight lines. It begins by decomposing the character 正 (“upright”) into 止 (“stop”) + 一 (“one”): to be upright is to collect the scattered mind and rest it at the one true object, and the heart of that holding is to see one’s own nature directly. From there it sets the two poles of effort — guard the gates of the heart and preserve sincerity, yet without pride and without idle slack: effort without sincerity is showy, sincerity without effort is sleepy, and both are needed. Real cultivation, the verse insists, goes into the hidden folds the surface mind avoids; those who only skim get nowhere. Virtue and work advance as two wheels of one cart until ordinary consciousness is transformed into wisdom and one stands level with the awakened of old. The verse closes by turning the rest of the teaching into a medical procedure: where the practice stalls is exactly where the illness is showing itself — do not detour around it, probe its root, and take the medicine that brings on vertigo, for the disturbance is not failure but proof the cure has begun.
I am — your teacher, Ji-Gong, bearing Φ’s decree; descending to the Buddha-palace, entering the gate, bowing in obeisance before the countenance of the Sovereign Mother — my disciples, hello.I am your teacher, Ji-Gong, sent by the Eternal Mother; I come down to the hall, step through the gate and bow before the Sovereign Mother — hello, my disciples.
This brief self-introduction sets the voice for everything that follows. The Holy Teacher who has descended is not the sober Chan-abbot persona nor the historical eccentric, but the familiar Living-Buddha — your teacher, Ji-Gong — the one who arrives unannounced and goes straight to the work. Sent by the Eternal Mother, he comes down to the hall, bows before the Sovereign Mother, and then turns at once to greet his disciples with a plain, direct hello, my disciples. That single warm line tells the reader which Holy Teacher this is, and it frames the whole teaching to come: the bitter medicine ahead will be administered, from first line to last, in this same familiar warmth.
本訓 Main Teaching · sung to 〈借過一下〉 · all registers
張芝臨池作書 明允發憤苦讀
Zhāng Zhī lín chí zuò shū · Míng Yǔn fā fèn kǔ dú
Zhāng Zhī at the pond’s edge practicing his calligraphy — wash by wash until the water ran black; Míng-Yǔn rousing himself to study with bitter effort.Zhang Zhi wore the pond black with ink; Su Xun woke late and threw himself into study.
Four lives that show what Right Effort looks like, not gritted-teeth striving. Zhāng Zhī, the late-Han “Sage of Cursive Script,” washed his ink brushes by the pond day after day until the water itself ran black. Míng-Yǔn (the courtesy name of Su Xun, father of Su Shi) did not begin serious study until twenty-seven, then became a literary patriarch — a late start matters less than the willingness to throw oneself in.
顏淵樂道安貧 玄奘取經西赴
Yán Yuān lè dào ān pín · Xuán Zàng qǔ jīng xī fù
Yán Yuān delighting in the Dao at peace with poverty; Xuán-Zàng going west to fetch the scriptures.Yan Hui rejoiced in the Way amid poverty; Xuanzang journeyed west to seek the scriptures.
Yán Yuān (Yan Hui), Confucius’s most cherished disciple, lived in a back alley with one bamboo dish of rice and one gourd of water; as the Analects records, the poverty that would have crushed others did not diminish his joy. Xuánzàng crossed the deserts to India and returned seventeen years later with the scriptures — an undeflected decision that moved for nothing. Right Effort is this long, sometimes silent, sometimes joyous orientation toward the one thing.
定靜安慮得 信愿行證篤
dìng jìng ān lǜ dé · xìn yuàn xíng zhèng dǔ
Settling, stilling, easing, reflecting, attaining; faith, vow, practice, verification — held firmly.Settle, still, find peace, reflect, attain — let faith, vow, practice, and realization be steadfast.
Two complete classical sequences stacked together. “Settle, still, ease, reflect, attain” is the Great Learning’s five-step ladder, beginning with knowing where to rest. “Faith, vow, practice, verification” is the Pure Land four-element formula. They are placed side by side because each rhymes with the other — settling and faith are the foundation, attaining and verification are the proof — the same shape told in two vocabularies.
修子登堂入室 依發心設渡
xiū zǐ dēng táng rù shì · yī fā xīn shè dù
The cultivating son ascends the hall, then enters the inner chamber; relying on the vow-mind, he sets out to ferry beings across.Seeker, climb the hall and enter the inner room; from a sincere heart, open the way to deliver others.
登堂入室 (“ascend the hall, then enter the inner chamber”) is the Analects’s image of a disciple’s progress: Confucius said of Zilu that he had ascended to the hall but not yet entered the inner chamber — there are two thresholds, and most students stop at the first. 發心 (the arousal of the mind toward awakening) is the Mahayana’s bodhicitta; to “set the ferry” is the commitment that the practice is for others as much as for oneself.
究竟一乘何解 勤身可達至呼
jiū jìng yī shèng hé jiě · qín shēn kě dá zhì hū
The Ultimate One Vehicle — how is it untied? By diligence of body it can be reached — reach for it!How to grasp the one ultimate path? Diligent effort can carry you all the way there.
究竟一乘 (“the Ultimate One Vehicle”) is the Lotus Sutra’s most famous claim: in all the Buddha-lands there is only the One Vehicle, not two nor three. The three vehicles are skillful means; the underlying truth is that everyone is on the path to full awakening. And the way in is embodied diligence — physical, in-the-world effort. Reach for it!
Leading the multitudes into the Buddha’s seeing-and-knowing; advancing through gradual cultivation that ripens into sudden awakening.Lead the many into the awakened way of seeing; advance step by step, then break through in sudden insight.
「引眾入佛知見」同樣出自《法華經·方便品》「開、示、悟、入佛之知見」，是諸佛出世的根本目的。「漸修頓悟」一筆收攝禪宗最大的辯論（神秀漸修 vs. 慧能頓悟）：二者並不對立——在境界上漸修，功夫成熟時自然頓悟，這是中道的立場。
“Leading the multitudes into the Buddha’s seeing-and-knowing” is again the Lotus Sutra: the four moments — open, demonstrate, awaken, enter — by which the awakened open the door for beings. 漸修頓悟 folds together the great Chan debate between gradualism and suddenism, taking the integrated position: ripen through gradual practice, and when the moment lands, it lands all at once. The long road and the door at its end are not enemies.
增上無漏學 思精體大務
zēng shàng wú lòu xué · sī jīng tǐ dà wù
Cultivating with ascent the three trainings without leakage; thinking with refinement, embodying the great work.Rise higher in the flawless discipline; let thought be fine and your aim be vast.
The three trainings “without leakage” (無漏學) are the precepts, stillness, and wisdom — the root curriculum walked with nothing of the awakening leaking away — while thought is kept fine and the aim kept vast.
礦中精金提純 眾生皆得渡
kuàng zhōng jīng jīn tí chún · zhòng shēng jiē dé dù
Like refined gold drawn out of the ore and purified — all sentient beings will be ferried across.Refine the pure gold from the ore — and all beings are brought across.
The central simile: refined gold is already inside the ore. The cultivator does not make gold but refines what is there. This is the engine of the whole soteriology — every being already carries the awakened nature, and the task is the smelting. When each person draws out the gold within, all beings are carried across.
What all the Buddhas have realized: the supreme, right, equal awakening — the road of bright light.The supreme, perfect awakening that all the awakened ones have realized — the bright and shining road.
無上正等菩提 is anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, the Diamond Sutra’s name for full awakening — unsurpassed, correct, equal. The “road of bright light” is what opens once that awakening lands. Every stretch of effort before and after points to this one terminus.
Investigating things and extending one’s knowing, by which the intention is made sincere, the heart is rectified, the self is cultivated; and thereafter, prospering, one benefits all and universally ferries them across.Investigate and know, make the intention sincere, the heart upright, the self cultivated — then go on to better the world and deliver all.
A compressed naming of the Great Learning’s Eight Steps in five terms — investigate things, extend knowing, make the intention sincere, rectify the heart, cultivate the self — joined to Mencius’s “when one prospers, benefit all under heaven,” and from there to the bodhisattva’s universal ferrying. The Confucian arc that ends in bringing peace to the realm and the bodhisattva’s vow to liberate all beings are revealed as the same arc in two registers.
Extending from the Way to the Vessel so that trust may be made; the myriad things — in their nature, feeling, breath, and bearing — each unfolds and shines forth.Set the means in motion to inspire trust; let each thing’s nature, feeling, temper, and measure each come fully into the open.
This draws on the Book of Changes’s distinction between 道 (the Way, the abstract source) and 器 (the Vessel, its concrete manifestation): to extend from the one to the other is to make the abstract trustworthy through its real-world expression, so that genuine trust is established. Then each thing’s nature, feeling, temper, and bearing comes fully into the open, each according to what it truly is.
The Dao essentially flows and circulates; rectifying the customs, the teacher’s method handed down through generations; the principle is discriminated — refined and coarse alike expounded.The Way flows freely by nature; mend the customs of the age, hand the teaching down, and expound it — fine and plain alike — to each.
The Way flows freely by nature and need not be forced; what is asked is to mend the customs of the age, hand the teacher’s method down through generations, and expound the principle at the grade that lands. 理別精粗 is the compressed form of “teaching according to capacity,” echoing the Analects: meet the advanced with the refined transmission and the beginner with the plain ground floor — both expounded, neither side abandoned — and the act of discriminating which-for-whom is itself the teacher’s first labor.
The skillful gateways transform the deluded back to the real, without error — respond as one whose mind abides nowhere.By skillful means, turn the lost back to the true without error — yet abide in nothing.
“Skillful gateways” (方便法門, upāya) is the Lotus Sutra’s strategy of meeting each being at its own capacity, all of it turning the lost back to the true without error. The closing phrase 應無所住 is the Diamond Sutra’s most famous instruction — the mind that abides nowhere — the line said to have awakened Huineng when he heard it spoken in a marketplace. Facing every skillful means, let the mind cling to none of them.
自性具圓覺 體無明破生滅離
zì xìng jù yuán jué · tǐ wú míng pò shēng miè lí
Self-nature inherently possesses perfect awakening; its substance — ignorance broken, arising-and-perishing departed.Your own nature already holds perfect awareness; realize it, shatter ignorance, and leave birth-and-death behind.
The marriage of two sutras in nine characters. The Sutra of Perfect Awakening teaches that perfect awakening is already complete within the self-nature; the Heart Sutra teaches that no ignorance arises and none is extinguished, that nothing is born and nothing dies. Realize the nature you already hold, shatter ignorance, and birth-and-death is left behind.
人者仁 仁無敵 寡嗜慾現天機
rén zhě rén · rén wú dí · guǎ shì yù xiàn tiān jī
A person — rén — is benevolence — rén: benevolence has no enemy; few desires — and the Heavenly Workings appear.To be human is to be humane; the humane have no rival; curb your cravings, and the deep design of Heaven shows itself.
An exquisite pun: 人 (“person”) and 仁 (“benevolence”) sound identical. The Doctrine of the Mean states “to be benevolent is to be a person” — to be a person, fully, is to be humane. Mencius supplies the consequence: the benevolent has no enemy, not by force but because no one wishes to oppose it. And the Mencius again: nothing cultivates the heart better than reducing desires — when the noise of wanting falls quiet, the deep workings of Heaven (天機) become visible.
Virtue’s nature, the precepts, the heart-thought’s fire-timing, the vow-and-practice — how are they?Virtue within, precepts without, the careful tending of each thought — how stand your vow and your practice?
火候 (“fire-timing”) is from Daoist inner alchemy: the precise modulation of the inner flame during cultivation — when to use the fierce martial fire, when the gentle literary fire. Mismanage it and the alchemy fails, and the mind’s thoughts have the same character — too forceful and they crack, too slack and they wander. The line is the teacher’s check-in: how stand your virtue, your precepts, the tending of each thought, your vow and your practice?
The true cultivator does not weary of the troublesome: hearing the good, he enacts it in person; he binds it close to the chest.The true practitioner never tires of trouble — hears what is good, lives it out in person, holds it close to the heart.
The true cultivator “does not weary of the troublesome” — hears what is good and enacts it in his own body (躬行, the Analects’s test of whether you actually know), and binds it close. 膺服 echoes the Doctrine of the Mean’s “clutching it to the chest, never letting it go.” Small phrases with long pedigrees that together sketch the everyday posture of one who is doing the work.
總持故得 爾無見役於物
zǒng chí gù dé · ěr wú jiàn yì yú wù
The all-holding is then attained — and you no longer see yourself enslaved by things.Hold the whole and so you gain it: no longer enslaved by things.
總持 (Dhāraṇī) is the all-holding formula that grips the whole teaching in one phrase. To attain it is to no longer be “enslaved by things” — the condition the Zhuangzi warns against, in which a heart controlled by name, rank, or wealth becomes the servant of what it chased.
其操存否 適分妙應如來囑
qí cāo cún fǒu · shì fèn miào yìng Rú Lái zhǔ
Held or released? — that is the question: fit your portion, and wondrously answer the Tathāgata’s commission.Do you keep your true heart, at rest in your own measure, answering with skill the charge entrusted to you?
操存 echoes Mencius: “if held, the heart remains; if released, it is lost” — cultivation is holding, day after day. 適分 is the Zhuangzian resting in one’s own measure. Do these, and you “wondrously answer the Tathāgata’s commission” — the charge handed to the bodhisattvas at the close of so many sutras: carry the teaching forward, do not let it die. The work is both ordinary (fit your portion) and cosmic (the great commission).
行者行如法 馳騁於天下
xíng zhě xíng rú fǎ · chí chěng yú tiān xià
The cultivator-traveler walks in accord with the Dharma — galloping across all under heaven.The practitioner acts in accord with the truth, and so ranges freely through the world.
馳騁 (“gallop”) is from the Daodejing, “galloping through the hardest thing under heaven.” Here it carries its realized, positive sense: the cultivator who has settled at the one and transformed consciousness into wisdom now moves freely through the world without being tossed by it. Acting in accord with the truth, you range through the whole world unhindered.
與道相親故不困乏
yǔ dào xiāng qīn gù bù kùn fá
Intimate with the Dao, therefore never depleted, never wanting.Close to the Way, and so never confused nor in want.
與道親密相熟，所以永遠不會枯竭、不會匱乏。內在有道的滋養，外境再難也不會被擊倒。
When the Dao is close, neither the inner supply nor the outer protection runs short. With the nourishment of the Way within, the hardest outer circumstance cannot deplete or topple you.
真如寶無價 契印施造化
zhēn rú bǎo wú jià · qì yìn shī zào huà
The Suchness-treasure has no price; the seal-of-realization bestows transformation.The jewel of true suchness is beyond price; once your heart is sealed to it, it works like the very power that makes and nurtures all.
真如寶 (the Suchness-treasure) is the Lotus Sutra’s jewel sewn into the lining of a friend’s robe — the friend who wandered for years not knowing it was there, then finally met the giver and was shown what he had always carried. Suchness is that jewel: the real condition of all things, always already present. Once the heart is sealed to it, that transmission works like the very power that makes and nurtures all.
夫人輒傾軋 我不暇
fū rén zhé qīng yà · wǒ bù xiá
Ordinary folk are always jostling and shoving each other — I haven’t the time.Ordinary folk are forever elbowing and clawing — I have no time for that.
夫人 here is the classical 凡人 (“ordinary folk”), with 夫 as the classical opening particle — not “wife” or “madam.” 輒 is “always”; 傾軋 is the elbowing and shoving for advantage. 我不暇 — “I haven’t the time.” This is the chorus of the borrowed melody landing on the same syllable as the teaching: the world below jostles endlessly, and there are awakenings to reach, beings to ferry, no time for the elbowing. Excuse me a moment — let me through. Right Effort is precisely this: the clear, undeflected refusal to enter the jostling.
The main teaching unfolds Right Effort across seven stanzas. It opens with four exemplars who show what it looks like — the calligrapher who blackened a pond, the late starter who became a literary patriarch, the poor man whose joy was undiminished, the monk who walked across continents for scriptures. Right Effort is not gritted-teeth striving but long, undeflected orientation toward the one thing, sometimes laborious, sometimes contented, sometimes joyous. The stanza then stacks two classical ladders side by side — the Great Learning’s settle-still-ease-reflect-attain and the Pure Land’s faith-vow-practice-verify — to show that the Confucian and Buddhist routes use different vocabulary over one underlying shape, and closes with the Analects’ image of ascending the hall and then entering the inner chamber: there are two thresholds, and the vow-mind carries one through the second, setting out to ferry others across.
The middle stanzas climb into the Mahayana. The One Vehicle is entered by embodied effort, leading beings into the awakened way of seeing; gradual cultivation and sudden awakening are not enemies but the long road and the door at its end. Atop the three flawless trainings sits the stanza’s engine-image: gold drawn from ore. The cultivator does not make gold but refines what is already there — every being already carries the awakened nature, and the task is the smelting, so that all may be ferried across. The third stanza is a single terse line naming the destination — the supreme, perfect awakening all the awakened have realized, and the road of bright light it opens.
The longest stanza weaves Confucian, Book of Changes, Mencian, Lotus, and Diamond Sutra sources into one argument: the Great Learning’s Eight Steps join Mencius’s benefit all under heaven and the bodhisattva’s universal ferrying — self-cultivation that ends in peace for the realm and liberation of all beings revealed as one arc told in two registers — then extend from the Way to the Vessel, meet each learner at their grade (the refined for the advanced, the plain for the beginner, neither abandoned), and land on the mind that abides nowhere. The fifth stanza turns inward: self-nature already holds perfect awakening, ignorance broken and birth-and-death departed; the pun that to be a person is to be benevolent meets benevolence has no enemy, and when the noise of wanting falls quiet the subtle workings of Heaven become visible. The sixth is the practical examination — virtue, precepts, the careful fire-timing of each thought, vow and practice, how are they? The true cultivator does not weary of trouble, enacts the good in person, binds it to the chest; attaining the all-holding, one is no longer enslaved by things, holding the heart day after day, fitting one’s portion and answering the commission entrusted by the awakened.
The seventh and final stanza is the high point, where the borrowed melody comes home. The cultivator who walks in accord with the Dharma can now range freely through the world — here the galloping is positive: having settled at the one and transformed consciousness into wisdom, one rides through the world without being tossed by it, and being intimate with the Dao is never depleted. The treasure of suchness is beyond price, the jewel already sewn into the lining, sealed to the heart and set to work like the very power that makes and nurtures all. And on the last line: ordinary folk are forever jostling and elbowing one another — I haven’t the time. That, plainly, is the Right Effort the Holy Teacher has come to give: not anxious strain but clear priority — saying excuse me a moment to every trivial entanglement, because there is something far more important to finish.
訓中訓 Embedded Teaching · 「正精進 / Right Effort」 · recited
佛乘學思精進勤
fó chéng xué sī jīng jìn qín
The Buddha-Vehicle: learning, thinking, diligent effort —The path to awakening is walked by learning, reflecting, and steady effort —
The path to awakening is walked by learning, thinking, and diligent effort — learning paired with thinking, as the Analects insists that one without the other leaves you either lost or in peril.
依何入圓通法門
yī hé rù yuán tōng fǎ mén
by what is the gate of perfect penetration entered?so which gateway leads all the way through?
圓通法門 (“the gate of perfect penetration”) is from the Śūraṅgama Sūtra’s chapter in which twenty-five great beings each report which sense-faculty was their gate to perfect penetration — most famously the ear-faculty gate. “By what shall you enter?” is a question to each seeker: which is your door? Yours will not be another’s; find your own.
化迷歸覺體正信
huà mí guī jué tǐ zhèng xìn
Transforming the deluded, returning to awakening; embody true faith —Turn confusion back into clarity, and hold a true, clear-eyed faith —
so that the myriad things may complete their nature and persist.so that all things can settle into what they truly are and endure.
（併見上句「成性存存」之釋：使萬物各自成其本性而長存，這正是道義的門戶。）
成性存存 is the Book of Changes’s “completion-of-nature and persistence-of-being is the gateway of the Way and of righteousness” — when delusion turns back to clarity on a foundation of true, examined faith, each thing can settle into what it truly is and endure.
故不得不爾適分
gù bù dé bù ěr shì fèn
Therefore one cannot help but fit one’s portion:And so, naturally, you live true to your own measure:
所以修行者「不得不爾」——不能不這樣，即「適分」：適順自己的本分。
無煩馳騁妙見聞
wú fán chí chěng miào jiàn wén
with no idle vexation, no aimless galloping — wondrous seeing-and-hearing.no restless chasing — and the senses open onto something wondrous.
Here the galloping image returns in its negative valence: “no aimless galloping” — the cultivator stops racing away from the work into trivia. The same word that in the main teaching meant riding freely with the Dao through the world here warns against scattering outward; the difference is 正, the upright orientation that rests at the one. Then the senses open onto something wondrous — fine discernment, and the threefold practice of hearing, thinking, and cultivating, the inward world as alive as the outward.
The embedded sub-teaching compresses the whole arc once more in six lines. The path to awakening is entered by learning, thinking, diligent effort — but through which gate of perfect penetration? That is a question put to each disciple: everyone’s faculty and circumstance differ, the gate is always there, and each must find their own. Transforming the deluded back to awakening requires embodying right faith — the kind that survives examination, not the credulous kind — so that the myriad things may complete their nature and persist. The cultivator therefore cannot help but fit their portion; and here the galloping image returns in its cautionary sense — no idle vexation, no aimless galloping away from the work into trivia — replaced by wondrous seeing-and-hearing, the wisdom of fine discernment joined to the practice of hearing, thinking, and cultivating. The same word that in the seventh stanza meant riding freely with the Dao here means scattering away from the work; one positive, one negative, and the difference is precisely uprightness — the orientation that rests at the one. The whole teaching on Right Effort is gathered into these six lines.