The Pilgrim received her instruction gladly.

領教 is to receive instruction, with 教 read jiào. The assent is remarkably quick. Wukong is quarrelsome but he is not stupid, and he has just been handed the method for winning a fight he could not win.

The Bodhisattva stepped forward and plucked away the luminous pearl from beneath the little dragon's chin.

The pearl beneath a dragon's chin is the seat of its power and the emblem of its nature — and this is the third time the chapter has put a pearl in front of us. He was condemned for burning one; the rhapsody at the duel showed his own 明珠 spitting coloured mist as a weapon; and now Guanyin simply reaches out and takes it off him. No struggle is described. That is the transformation, really — everything after it is procedure.

She dipped a sprig of willow in the sweet dew, brushed it once across his body, blew upon him a breath of immortal air, and cried aloud: "Change!"

楊柳枝 and 甘露, the willow sprig and the sweet dew, are Guanyin's constant attributes in Chinese art: if you have seen a statue of her holding a vase and a twig, that is what they are, and they mean healing and purification. 將 jiāng here shunts the sprig in front of the verb. 吹口仙氣, "blow a breath of immortal air", is the standard mechanism of transformation throughout this novel — Wukong does it himself, constantly.

And the dragon changed at once into the very image of the horse, hair and hide the same.

毛片 is hair and markings. He becomes not merely a horse but that horse, the one he ate, so that Sanzang will find his own mount handed back to him. The Bodhisattva has thought about the monk's feelings, which is more than anybody else in this chapter has done.

Then she gave him her charge in words: "You must set your heart on discharging your karmic debt. When your merit is accomplished, you shall rise above the common dragons, and I will give you back a golden body and the true fruit."

還了業障 takes 還 as huán, to repay or discharge; 業障, Sanskrit karmāvaraṇa, is the obstruction a creature builds up by its own deeds — a debt that blocks the road. Then 還你個金身正果, where 還 is huán again, "give back". The wording matters: the golden body is not a prize for good behaviour but a restitution, the nature he forfeited being returned to him. And notice which verb has just changed hands. All chapter, 還我馬來 was Wukong's. Now it is hers, and what is being given back is a life.

The little dragon took the bit-bone in his mouth and, in his heart of hearts, assented.

The 橫骨 is the crosswise bone of a horse's mouth, the bare gap in the jaw where a bit rests; 口啣著 takes the unstressed zhe of a hold kept up. 心心領諾 is "assented in his heart of hearts". Read the sequence slowly: he takes the bit, and therefore he can no longer speak, and therefore his consent has to be given inwardly. That is the chapter title happening in one line — 意馬收韁, the will-horse taking the rein — and the novel does not point at it.

The Bodhisattva bade Wukong lead him to see Sanzang.

教 is causative, jiào. Guanyin does not present the horse to Sanzang herself. The disciple has to lead it to the master, which is the whole of what a disciple is for.

"And I shall return to the sea."

海上, "the sea", means her island of Potalaka. She turns to go, and is immediately grabbed.

The Pilgrim seized hold of the Bodhisattva and would not let her go, saying: "I will not go on. I will not go on.

扯住… 不放 is to seize and refuse to let go. The Great Sage, three minutes after winning his horse, is hanging onto a Bodhisattva's robe like a child at a shop door, and the doubled 我不去了 renders the sulk exactly.

The road to the West is rugged as this, and I must guard this mortal monk. When shall we ever arrive?

崎嶇, rugged and broken, is the same word used of the road in the chapter's second sentence. 凡僧, "a mortal monk", is said with some contempt. 幾時得到 takes 得 as dé, "manage to arrive".

With such grinding and such wearing as this, old Sun's very life can hardly be kept whole. What merit shall I ever accomplish?

似這等 takes 似 as sì, "at this rate"; 多磨多折 is "much grinding, much breaking", of ordeals; 功果 is merit and the fruit it earns. 成得甚麼 takes 得 as dé and 甚 as shén.

I will not go on. I will not go on."

The refrain comes back unchanged. And notice what the complaint is no longer about: not the fillet, not the dragon, not his master's temper. Just the length of the road.

Said the Bodhisattva: "In the years when you had not yet attained the Way of man, you were willing to give your whole heart to the cultivation of insight; now that you have escaped Heaven's calamity, how is it that you turn slothful?

未成人道 is "before you had attained the Way of man", that is, in his beginnings as an animal; 修悟 is to cultivate insight. 盡 is always jìn. Her rebuke is not that he complains. It is that he was more diligent when he was a monkey on a rock with nothing than he is now, saved and equipped.

In my gate it is by extinction that one becomes true; you must have faith in the true fruit.

我門中 is "within my gate", meaning the Buddhist school. 寂滅 jì miè renders Sanskrit nirvāṇa, "extinction" — the blowing-out of a flame. The paradox is left standing without a word of explanation: it is by being extinguished that one becomes true.

If ever you come to a place of wounding and bitter torment, I grant you this: call upon Heaven, and Heaven will answer; call upon Earth, and Earth will prove efficacious.

傷身苦磨 is wounding of the body and bitter grinding; 叫天天應 takes 應 as yìng, to answer. And the promise is built by inverting a proverb. The ordinary phrase describes total helplessness — you call on Heaven and Heaven does not answer, you call on Earth and Earth gives nothing back. She takes that sentence and turns it the right way up.

And if you come at the last to some pass from which there is no escaping, I will come myself to save you.

十分 is "utterly, in the extreme"; 難脫之際 is a pass hard to escape from, with 難 read nán. The undertaking has no conditions attached to it, and the novel holds her to it many times over the next eighty-five chapters.

Come here to me. I will bestow on you one further power."

一般本事 is "one further art or power". She has just refused to release him; what she does instead is equip him. That is what compassion generally looks like in this book.

The Bodhisattva plucked three leaves from her willow, set them behind the Pilgrim's head, and cried: "Change!"

楊柳葉兒, willow leaves, from the same sprig that transformed the dragon a page ago. 將 jiāng shunts the leaves in front of the verb.

They changed straightway into three life-saving hairs.

救命的毫毛 is "life-saving hairs". Wukong's own body is already a walking armoury of hairs he can turn into anything he likes; the difference with these three is that they are hers, not his, and so they will work when nothing of his own will.

She charged him, saying: "When you come to a season with no aid and no master, you may shift and turn as the moment requires, and they shall save you from the calamity of your extremity."

無濟無主 is "without aid and without a master" — a precise description of the situation he will actually find himself in later. 隨機應變, "adapt as the moment requires", takes 應 as yìng, and it is one of the most thoroughly current idioms in modern Chinese: it is what a manager praises in an employee who thinks on their feet. 救得 takes 得 as dé.

When the Pilgrim had heard all these good words, he thanked at last the greatly merciful, greatly compassionate Bodhisattva.

大慈大悲, "greatly merciful, greatly compassionate", is Guanyin's formal epithet — the one that heads her invocations. He opened this scene by throwing her titles at her as insults. He ends it by using one of them, at last, for what it means.

And the Bodhisattva, wreathed in fragrant wind and drifting coloured mist, went straight back to Potalaka and away.

香風繞繞，彩霧飄飄 — fragrant wind winding, coloured mist drifting — is a rhythmic flourish built on doubled syllables, the same trick as the ice and wind of the chapter's opening line. 普陀 is Putuo, the Chinese seat of Potalaka: a real island off Zhejiang, and still a pilgrimage site. She goes without ceremony, exactly as she came.