The old monk, beholding so great a treasure, was moved — sure enough — to a covetous heart;

果然 ("sure enough") is the narrator conceding Sanzang's point in a single adverb. 動了奸心 answers the maxim's 必動其心 character for character: it must stir the heart, said Sanzang; it stirred, says the narrator. 這般 takes bān.

he came forward, knelt down before Sanzang, and said with tears standing in his eyes, "Your disciple is truly without the bond."

緣 (yuán) is karmic affinity — the bond from previous lives that makes a meeting possible at all, the reason two people cross paths rather than miss each other. To plead 沒緣, "I have no bond," about a robe lying open in front of one's own eyes is a falsehood dressed in the vocabulary of the faith. And 弟子, "your disciple," from a grand-patriarch to a passing traveller: rank is a thing he sets down the moment it costs him.

Sanzang raised him up. "What has the venerable master to say?" He answered, "This treasure of your reverence's has only now been spread open, and the day has darkened;

攙起 is to raise a man by the arm — the same verb used of the pages who walked him in. And Sanzang, who called him 老院主 at their first meeting, now promotes him to 老院師, as one does a weeping man.

"and my eyes being dim and clouded, I cannot see it plainly. Is that not to be without the bond?"

看得明白 takes a neutral de. The excuse is beautifully made: he asks for nothing, accuses nobody, and lays the blame squarely on his own eyes.

Sanzang directed: "Bring up a lamp, and let him look again."

教 is the causative jiào, "have someone do it." Sanzang answers the problem that was stated — the failing light — and does not hear the problem that was not.

The old monk said, "Your reverence's treasure is bright of itself. Light a lamp and it will dazzle the more; there is no hope of seeing it in any detail."

一發 is "all the more." The objection cannot be answered, because it happens to be true: the cassock gives its own light, and a lamp set beside it would only dazzle. Every complaint the old man makes is honest, and their sum is a theft.

The Pilgrim said, "How would you have it, then, in order to see it well?"

Watch what Wukong does not do here. His master has just spent a whole speech explaining that a treasure shown to a covetous man breeds a scheme; the covetous man is kneeling in front of them both, weeping; and Wukong asks him how he would like to be accommodated. He puts the question in the flat, obliging voice of somebody who suspects nothing whatever — and it is the one question in the chapter that must not be asked.

The old monk said, "If your reverence would be broad in kindness and easy in mind, let your disciple carry it to the back chamber,

寬恩放心 — "broaden your kindness, loosen your heart." Every character of the request names a virtue in the other man. It is a technique, and it works.

"to study it minutely through the night; and in the morning I will send it back, and your reverence may go west. I do not know your honoured mind on the matter?"

送還: 還 is huán, "to give back." The word is spoken by a man with no intention of doing so — and it is the very word Wukong will use of the fire-shield he borrows from Heaven tonight and returns before breakfast.