貪圖之理 Where Is the Sense in It
八戒笑道：「師父成佛，我也望成佛，豈有貪圖之理？潑大粗人？都在此等我，待交了經，就來與你回向也。」獃子挑著擔，沙僧牽著馬，行者領著聖僧，都按下雲頭，落於望經樓邊。八戒笑道：「师父成佛，我也望成佛，岂有贪图之理？泼大粗人？都在此等我，待交了经，就来与你回向也。」呆子挑着担，沙僧牵着马，行者领着圣僧，都按下云头，落于望经楼边。
逐句解 Line by line
Pigsy laughed. “My master is to become a buddha, and I look to become one too — where would be the sense in my coveting anything?”
He laughs first, which is the tell. Pigsy is not offended; he is enjoying being able to answer this one. 豈有…之理 — where is the sense in. A stock rhetorical frame, and slightly grand for him. And the argument is sound. He is four days from becoming a buddha. Whatever wealth and rank the road offers is worth less than what is waiting. It is the first time in the book that Pigsy has had the better of an accusation about his appetites, and he gets it by pointing at the finish line.
“A great coarse lout, am I?”
Four characters, thrown out, and the novel gives them their own sentence. 潑 is an insult-intensifier — rascally, low — and the rest is great coarse fellow. The phrase occurs nowhere else in the novel. It reads as Pigsy repeating back what he thinks they think of him, which is how people who have been called something all their lives usually say it: as a question, with the sting still in it.
“Wait for me all of you here. When the scriptures are handed over I shall come straight back and turn round with you.”
回向 is a small joke and a big one at once. In plain speech it is what Pigsy means — to turn back, to head the other way. In Buddhism it is pariṇāmanā, the dedication of merit you have earned to somebody else, and the closing prayer of this very chapter is one of those. And the novel has used the word against Pigsy before. Four chapters ago somebody told him he knew nothing but eating and cared nothing for the cause of merit-dedication — the same two characters. Here he uses them himself, in the flat sense, and does not notice. 交了經 — once the scriptures are handed in. Even Pigsy is talking like a courier now.
The idiot shouldered the load, Sha Monk led the horse, Monkey took the holy monk by the arm, and all of them pressed the cloud down and came to earth beside the Tower for Watching for the Scriptures.
Three clauses, identically built, and the middle character of each is the light 著 that hangs on a verb to say the action is going on — shouldering, leading, taking by the arm. It is read zhe, quite unlike the same character elsewhere in the book. 經擔 once more, and once more the noun, dàn. This is the load Monkey said his master could not carry, and here is Pigsy carrying it, exactly as arranged. The last line is a tableau. Pig with the luggage, Sha Monk with the horse, Monkey holding his master's arm, all four coming down beside a tower an emperor built eleven years ago and climbs every year. After a hundred chapters they arrive in marching order.
Pigsy defends himself and wins, which does not often happen. He is four days from buddhahood; what could the road offer him that would be worth losing that? The argument is unanswerable and he clearly enjoys making it.
Then he says he will come back and turn round with them. The word he uses is the Buddhist term for dedicating your merit to somebody else — the thing the closing prayer of this chapter does — and he means it in the plain sense of going the other way. The novel has already used those two characters to tell him he cares about nothing but his dinner.
And it ends on a tableau. Pig shoulders the load, Sha Monk takes the horse, Monkey takes his master's arm, and the four of them press the cloud down beside the tower. Every one of those three verbs carries the same little zhe, saying the action is in progress — three men, three jobs, arriving in marching order.
The load Pigsy is carrying is the one Monkey said the master could not manage. That objection is what bought them the last mile, and here they are walking it.