天亮了 Day Has Broken
行者叫道：「師父，天亮了，起來罷。」三藏才醒覺，翻身道：「正是。」穿了衣服，開門出來，忽擡頭，只見些倒壁紅牆，不見了樓臺殿宇。大驚道：「呀！怎麼這殿宇俱無，都是紅牆，何也？」行者道：「你還做夢哩，今夜走了火的。」三藏道：「我怎不知？」行者道：「是老孫護了禪堂，見師父濃睡，不曾驚動。」三藏道：「你有本事護了禪堂，如何就不救別房之火？」行者笑道：「好教師父得知：果然依你昨日之言，他愛上我們的袈裟，算計要燒殺我們。若不是老孫知覺，到如今皆成灰骨矣。」三藏聞言，害怕道：「是他們放的火麼？」行者道：「不是他是誰？」三藏道：「莫不是怠慢了你，你幹的這個勾當？」行者叫道：「师父，天亮了，起来罢。」三藏才醒觉，翻身道：「正是。」穿了衣服，开门出来，忽擡头，只见些倒壁红墙，不见了楼台殿宇。大惊道：「呀！怎么这殿宇俱无，都是红墙，何也？」行者道：「你还做梦哩，今夜走了火的。」三藏道：「我怎不知？」行者道：「是老孙护了禅堂，见师父浓睡，不曾惊动。」三藏道：「你有本事护了禅堂，如何就不救别房之火？」行者笑道：「好教师父得知：果然依你昨日之言，他爱上我们的袈裟，算计要烧杀我们。若不是老孙知觉，到如今皆成灰骨矣。」三藏闻言，害怕道：「是他们放的火么？」行者道：「不是他是谁？」三藏道：「莫不是怠慢了你，你干的这个勾当？」
逐句解 Line by line
The Pilgrim called out, "Master, day has broken. Get up." Sanzang, just waking, turned over and said, "So it has."
天亮了, "day has broken" — three graphs of appalling understatement. 醒覺, to wake and be aware.
He put on his clothes, opened the door and came out — and lifting his head, saw nothing but toppled walls and reddened brick; the towers and halls were gone.
倒壁紅牆, "toppled walls and red brick" — 紅 here is the colour fire leaves. 不見了樓臺殿宇: the towers and halls are simply not seen. The 賦 of the first passage, hall upon hall and tier upon tier, is being unwritten line by line.
In great alarm he cried, "Ah! How is it the halls are all vanished, and everything is red walls? What is this?"
Sanzang's question is the reader's, and it is answered by his disciple with a jest. Note that the man who prophesied all of this — 殞身滅命，皆起於此 — does not recognise his own prophecy in its fulfilment.
The Pilgrim said, "You are still dreaming. A fire got away in the night." Sanzang said, "How is it I knew nothing of it?"
你還做夢哩, "you are still dreaming" (還 is hái). 走了火, "a fire got away" — precisely the phrase Guangmou coached the monks to use. Wukong repeats the arsonists' cover story to his master, and it is not even a lie.
The Pilgrim said, "Old Sun was guarding the meditation hall; and seeing my master deep in sleep, I did not disturb him."
濃睡, deep sleep. He offers the fact as consideration: he did not wake him. It is also, as it happens, the reason there was no one to stop him.
Sanzang said, "If you had the power to guard the meditation hall, how is it you did not put out the fire in the other quarters?"
The one question that matters, and Sanzang asks it: if you could shield one hall, why not save the rest? Wukong will answer it in the next passage, and the answer will be worse than an evasion.
The Pilgrim laughed. "Let me tell my master how it was. It fell out just as you said yesterday:
好教師父得知 ("let master be informed"): 教 is causative jiào, 得知 takes dé. 果然依你昨日之言 — "it turned out exactly as you said yesterday." He concedes the point cheerfully, having refused it at the time.
"they took a liking to our cassock, and laid a plan to burn us to death.
愛上, to conceive a love for. It is the same verb one would use of a person. 算計, to reckon and scheme.
"Had old Sun not perceived it, by now we should both be ashes and bones."
灰骨, "ashes and bones"; 矣 gives the sentence a classical finality. What Wukong claims — that they would both be dead — is exactly true.
Sanzang, hearing it, was afraid. "Was it they who set the fire?" "If not they, who?" said the Pilgrim.
不是他是誰？ "If not they, who?" The question is rhetorical, and it is about to be turned back on him with more justice than he expects.
Sanzang said, "Can it be that they slighted you, and this is a piece of your own work?"
怠慢, to slight, to fail in hospitality. 勾當 is read gòu dàng, "a piece of business," always with a disreputable colour. Sanzang has known this disciple for two chapters and asks, at once, the right question.
Sanzang steps out of a door and the monastery is gone. What he sees is given in six graphs — 倒壁紅牆, toppled walls and reddened brick — and what he does not see in six more: 不見了樓臺殿宇. The chapter opened on a 賦 of halls in tiers, coloured cloud, ageless pines, and a quatrain calling the place a Jetavana. It is now brick and ash, and the man who was so pleased to bow to the Bodhisattva's image slept through the whole of it under a shield borrowed from Heaven.
The exchange that follows is superb comedy played at the edge of something terrible. Wukong is cheerful. He reports, accurately, that his master was right and he was wrong — 果然依你昨日之言 — and takes evident pleasure in it, as though the fulfilment of a prophecy of death were a point scored. And Sanzang, alarmed but not stupid, asks the two questions the situation demands. First: 你有本事護了禪堂，如何就不救別房之火？ If you could shield this hall, why not save the rest? Second, and immediately: 莫不是怠慢了你，你幹的這個勾當？ Did they slight you, and is this your doing? He has his disciple's measure exactly. The answer, in the next passage, will be a denial that concedes everything.