Guan Yin lot 97 of 100
Moonlight on the garden floor
Lowest (下下). Grade from the related Goodfate edition. Grades differ between temples, and many Taiwanese temples print none.
園林月色搖疎影
恍若鋪成滿地瓊
幾度兒童來收拾
豈知收拾總無成
Moonlight in the garden stirs the sparse shadows,
And it seems the ground is paved with jade.
Again and again the children come to gather it,
And who could know that they would gather nothing?
What this lot says
Moonlight on the ground looks like jade, and children keep trying to pick it up. They are doing no harm. They are simply reaching for something that has no substance to hold.
The advice is to notice what cannot be gathered and to stop spending effort on it. Beauty can be enjoyed where it lies.
If you have gone back several times to a plan, a sale or a person and come away with nothing, pause and look at what you are actually reaching for. Turn to something you can get your hands on.
A lot is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
The story behind it
Six campaigns from Mount Qi (六出祁山)
Zhuge Liang, the leading statesman of Shu Han, launched repeated campaigns against Cao Wei from 228 to 234, remembered in Chinese as the six campaigns from Mount Qi, and they fell short of his goal. Repeated effort that comes away empty-handed suits a lot about children gathering moonlight.
Source: Wikipedia, Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions
Where this text comes from
This verse is a traditional temple text with no known author. No single original edition is known and wording differs between temples, so we compare named witnesses and record where they differ.
Míguāng (覓光) (the text shown above)
園林月色搖疎影 / 恍若鋪成滿地瓊 / 幾度兒童來收拾 / 豈知收拾總無成
Retrieved 2026-11-08
Jiěqiān Gé (解籤閣)
園林月色搖疎影 / 恍若鋪成滿地瓊 / 幾度兒童來收拾 / 豈知收拾總無成
Retrieved 2026-11-08
Goodfate (今日運勢), a related edition
園林月色搖疏影 / 恍若鋪成滿地瓊 / 幾度童兒來收拾 / 豈知收拾總成空
Retrieved 2026-11-08
Where the sources differ
- Line 1 reads 園林月色搖疏影 in the related Goodfate edition.
- Line 3 reads 幾度童兒來收拾 in the related Goodfate edition.
- Line 4 reads 豈知收拾總成空 in the related Goodfate edition.
English translation and commentary are by Cast & Chart.