徑上黑風山 Up Black Wind Mountain
好行者，急縱觔斗雲，徑上黑風山，尋找這袈裟。正是那：好行者，急纵觔斗云，径上黑风山，寻找这袈裟。正是那：
畢竟此去不知袈裟有無，吉凶如何，且聽下回分解。毕竟此去不知袈裟有无，吉凶如何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
Good Pilgrim! He mounted his somersault cloud in haste and went straight up Black Wind Mountain to seek that cassock. And it was just as the saying has it:
觔斗雲 is the somersault cloud; 斗 is dǒu. 正是那 introduces the capping poem that closes the chapter and sums it up: eight lines, and in the strictest form Chinese has — the tones of every syllable governed, the middle lines required to answer one another word for word. It is the most formal thing in the whole episode, and it arrives at the moment of least dignity.
The Golden Chan sought the True and left the capital's precincts; leaning on his staff he turned west and waded the blue-green hills.
金禪 is Sanzang under his celestial name — the Golden Cicada (written elsewhere 金蟬), the Buddha's second disciple, exiled to ten mortal births for inattention during a sermon. 京畿 is the metropolitan region around Chang'an. 仗錫 is leaning on the pilgrim's tin staff; 翠微 is the blue-green haze on distant hills.
Tigers, leopards, wolves and vermin are found wherever he passes; merchants, scholars and travellers are rarely to be seen.
The couplet sets the road's two populations against each other: beasts everywhere, men nowhere. 狼蟲 ("wolves and vermin") is a fixed compound for wild creatures at large; 工商士客 — craftsmen, merchants, scholars, travellers — names the ordinary traffic of a civilised road, and finds none of it.
On the road he met a foreign land where an ignorant monk was envious; and had to rely wholly on the might of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.
愚僧妒, "an ignorant monk was envious," is the poem's entire verdict on the old abbot, in three characters. And 全仗 ("relied entirely upon") answers the 仗錫 of the first line: he set out leaning on a staff, and he is kept alive leaning on a monkey.
Fire broke out and wind arose, and the Chan cloister was laid waste; and the black bear, in the night, stole the brocade-bordered robe.
火發風生 — "the fire broke out and the wind arose." The poem sets the two side by side and gives neither of them an author, which is the exact truth of the matter. 錦襴衣 is the brocade-bordered cassock; 黑熊 names the thief, a black bear, for the first time in the book.
But whether, going thus, the cassock was to be had or not, and whether the issue would be fortunate or ill — for that, listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
The storyteller's formulaic close: 畢竟…不知…且聽下回分解, "and after all, not knowing… hear it explained in the next session." It is the cliffhanger of a man who wants his audience back tomorrow. The chapter that opened on a monastery wrapped in coloured cloud ends with a monkey on a cloud of his own, chasing a bear across twenty lǐ of morning.
The closing poem is a chapter summary in the strict eight-line form, and its work is done by the third couplet. 路逢異國愚僧妒，全仗齊天大聖威 — on the road he met a foreign land where an ignorant monk was envious, and relied wholly on the might of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. Two hundred and thirty monks, a burnt monastery, a dead abbot and a stolen relic, compressed into the single word 妒, envy. And the remedy compressed into 威, might.
The fourth couplet declines to allocate blame, and the refusal is deliberate. 火發風生禪院廢 — the fire broke out, the wind arose, the Chan cloister was laid waste. Three clauses, three subjects, no agents anywhere. The fire was Guangmou's; the wind was Wukong's; the ruin belongs to them both, and the poem will not separate them. Then, in the last line, the theft: 黑熊夜盜錦襴衣. The bear is named at last, and named as a thief, and the chapter ends exactly where it began — with a garment, and somebody who wants it.
What is left behind is worth counting. A monastery of seventy-odd quarters, gone. Its patriarch, dead against a wall of his own house. Its two hundred and thirty survivors, kneeling in the ashes and promising to make offerings. A treasure given by Guanyin to guarantee a pilgrimage, now in a cave twenty lǐ away. And a fire-shield returned to Heaven with thanks, on time, by the one person in the chapter who kept a promise about a borrowed thing. Wukong goes off to Black Wind Mountain in perfectly good conscience, and the Bodhisattva whose house he has burned is going to have to come down herself.