原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
含詞賦 With rhapsody
慈航赴難 The Compassionate One Sets Forth
那菩薩：那菩萨：
逍遙欣喜下蓮臺，雲步香飄上石崖。逍遥欣喜下莲台，云步香飘上石崖。
只為聖僧遭障害，要降妖怪救回來。只为圣僧遭障害，要降妖怪救回来。
逐句解 Line by line
那菩薩：
那菩萨：
That Bodhisattva —
Deictic 那菩薩: 那 = nà. The descriptor-tag introducing the descent-verse.
逍遙欣喜下蓮臺，雲步香飄上石崖。
逍遥欣喜下莲台，云步香飘上石崖。
In ease and gladness she comes down from the lotus throne; / on cloud-steps, trailing fragrance, she mounts the stone crag.
上石崖: 石 = shí ("stone crag"). Guanyin descends the lotus seat on cloud-steps.
只為聖僧遭障害，要降妖怪救回來。
只为圣僧遭障害，要降妖怪救回来。
Only because the holy monk has met with harm, / she would subdue the fiend and bring him back to safety.
只為聖僧: 為 read wèi ("only because, for the sake of" — the purposive sense, distinct from the wéi of 為當); 要降妖怪: 降 read xiáng ("to subdue"). Her sole motive: the holy monk's peril.
The short showcase-couplet marks the turn from persuasion to action: Guanyin, persuaded at last, comes down from her lotus throne "in ease and gladness," and the verse states her sole motive plainly — only because the holy monk has met with harm would she subdue the fiend and bring him home. The couplet is compact and unadorned beside the tortoise-riddle before it, and deliberately so: where that poem heaped cosmological grandeur, this one fixes the Bodhisattva's compassion as pure purpose, the still point from which the whole rescue proceeds.