Do not allow colour, sound and smell to stir your heart

“Do not allow colour, sound and smell to stir your heart” is a Buddhist expression of inward discipline: sensory impressions should not disturb the mind, and release from attachment requires more than shutting out the senses. Duan Yu offers it as an ideal while acknowledging that his love for Wang YuYan keeps him far from it. The expression’s meaning is sharpened by the surrounding plot, where images of the moon and mooncakes become coded clues precisely because they stir memory and suspicion.

Meaning and Use

Duan Yu articulates the expression while discussing how a person might escape suffering. He dismisses external force as ineffective and says that one must cultivate the inner self; beyond that, letting go of the self would mean reaching Buddhahood. He immediately distinguishes the ideal from his own condition: he is still a layman, caught in resentment, hatred, love, separation, helplessness, and the great sufferings of life.

His reflection is prompted by thoughts of Wang YuYan. Having heard her voice and seen her smile and movements, he cannot stop thinking about her. The expression therefore names a discipline he understands but cannot practice: sensory impressions do not merely arrive and pass; in his case, they remain bound to longing. The passage makes the gap between spiritual aspiration and emotional attachment explicit without claiming that he has overcome it.

Sensory Clues and Concealed Meaning

The narrative also gives sensory images a very different function in the exchange between A'Zhu and Madam Ma. A'Zhu hears Madam Ma say that the moon is round and bright, although the sky is dark and it is only the second day of the lunar month. She answers that the moon will be full on the fifteenth, then mentions that Ma Dayuan will not see it again. The talk turns to salty or sweet mooncakes, which appear at first to be strange, grief-tinged conversation.

In fact, the images carry a hidden message. Madam Ma is recalling flirtatious remarks exchanged with Bai Shijing on the fourteenth night of the eighth lunar month. When A'Zhu, disguised as Bai Shijing, responds in a way that does not fit those private memories, Madam Ma recognizes the deception. The moon and mooncakes thus work not as invitations to detach from the senses, but as signals whose meaning depends on memory, intimacy, and close attention to words.

Detachment and Attachment in the Plot

The contrast between Duan Yu’s teaching and the coded exchange reveals two directions in which sensory language can operate. His expression asks the listener not to let sights, sounds, and scents govern the heart; his own fixation on Wang YuYan shows how difficult that command is when perception has become emotionally charged. In Madam Ma’s conversation, meanwhile, apparently ordinary sensory references expose a concealed history and identify an imposture.

The expression consequently serves as more than a general maxim about Buddhist detachment. Set beside the plot’s use of indirect speech and remembered impressions, it highlights the difference between escaping attachment and reading the meanings that attachment leaves behind. Duan Yu can describe the path toward release, but his longing remains; A'Zhu can exploit coded speech, but Madam Ma’s remembered intimacy defeats her disguise.