對袈裟痛哭 Weeping over the Cassock
卻說那和尚把袈裟騙到手，拿在後房燈下，對袈裟號咷痛哭。慌得那本寺僧不敢先睡。小幸童也不知為何，卻去報與眾僧道：「公公哭到二更時候，還不歇聲。」有兩個徒孫是他心愛之人，上前問道：「師公，你哭怎的？」老僧道：「我哭無緣，看不得唐僧寶貝。」小和尚道：「公公年紀高大，發過了。他的袈裟放在你面前，你只消解開看便罷了，何須痛哭？」老僧道：「看的不長久。我今年二百七十歲，空掙了幾百件袈裟。怎麼得有他這一件？怎麼得做個唐僧？」却说那和尚把袈裟骗到手，拿在后房灯下，对袈裟号咷痛哭。慌得那本寺僧不敢先睡。小幸童也不知为何，却去报与众僧道：「公公哭到二更时候，还不歇声。」有两个徒孙是他心爱之人，上前问道：「师公，你哭怎的？」老僧道：「我哭无缘，看不得唐僧宝贝。」小和尚道：「公公年纪高大，发过了。他的袈裟放在你面前，你只消解开看便罢了，何须痛哭？」老僧道：「看的不长久。我今年二百七十岁，空挣了几百件袈裟。怎么得有他这一件？怎么得做个唐僧？」
逐句解 Line by line
Now, the monk, having got the cassock into his hands by a trick, carried it to the back chamber, set it beneath the lamp, and wailed over it, weeping bitterly.
騙到手 — the narrator states flatly what the scene has been far too courteous to say: it was got by a fraud. 號咷 (háo táo) is unrestrained wailing, and 號 is háo, "to cry aloud," not hào.
So alarmed were the monks of the house that none dared go to bed before him.
慌得 takes a neutral de. The whole monastery is lying awake because an old man is crying; and not one of two hundred and thirty men asks whether the thing he is crying over is his.
The little page, not knowing what it was about, went off to report to the assembly: "Grandfather has wept into the second watch and has still not left off."
為何 takes wèi. 二更 (èr gēng) is the second night-watch, roughly nine to eleven o'clock — the night was divided into five such watches, and they will matter for the rest of the chapter; 更 is gēng. 公公, "grandfather," is what this house calls its patriarch: a family word, in a community of celibates.
Two disciples' disciples, being dear to his heart, came forward and asked, "Master's master, what are you weeping for?"
徒孫 is "disciple-grandsons." Look at the whole vocabulary of this monastery and it is a vocabulary of descent — 師祖, 師公, 徒孫, 公公. None of it concerns the Way; all of it concerns inheritance. And 傳家之寶, "the treasure handed down in a family," is the phrase on which the plot will turn.
The old monk said, "I weep that I have no bond, and cannot look my fill at the Tang monk's treasure."
看不得 is the negative potential, with 得 read dé: not "I refuse to look" but "I cannot manage to look." And he says it holding the cassock, under a lamp he had lit for the purpose. The impossibility is not in his eyes. It is in what he actually wants, which is not looking.
A young monk said, "Grandfather, you are far advanced in years; you have carried it too far.
發過了 is "you have overdone it," said of a fit of feeling. The young are practical here; and being practical, they will shortly propose murder.
"His cassock lies there before you. You need only untie it and look, and there is an end. What need of all this weeping?"
只消 is "you need only." The boy states the entire rational case, and it is no comfort at all — because what the old man wants is not to look at the cassock.
The old monk said, "The looking does not last. I am two hundred and seventy years old this year, and to no purpose have I amassed some hundreds of cassocks.
不長久: 長 is cháng. 空掙 is "earned to no purpose"; 掙 is zhèng, to gain by labour. The hundreds of robes that an hour ago were the proof of his eminence have become, in the dark, the measure of his poverty.
"How am I to come by this one of his? How am I to become a Tang monk?"
Both instances of 得 are dé, the potential: "how am I to get." The second question is by far the more terrible of the two, and he does not appear to hear himself ask it. He does not wish to be holy. He wishes to own what holiness owns.
An old man sits alone under a lamp with a beautiful thing in his lap and weeps until the whole house is afraid to go to bed. It is, on the face of it, a grotesque scene, and Wú Chéng'ēn plays it with almost no comedy at all. The young monk's advice is entirely sensible — untie it, look at it, be done — and it is useless, because looking is not what the old man wants, and he knows it. 看的不長久: the looking does not last. Behind the greed lies something more desolate than greed, which is the discovery, at two hundred and seventy, that nothing he has gathered will stay.
The passage turns on two questions, and the second is the abyss. 怎麼得有他這一件？ — how am I to get this one of his? — is avarice, and it is answerable: one might steal it. 怎麼得做個唐僧？ — how am I to become a Tang monk? — is not answerable at all, and the old man asks it in the same breath, in the same grammar, as though it were the same kind of question. He has confused a state of being with a possession, the way a man might buy running shoes instead of running. That confusion is the whole disease of this monastery, and the cassock — a robe only a 真僧 dare wear — is the one object in the world exactly shaped to expose it. He wants the garment because he cannot have the sanctity, and he will die because he cannot tell the difference.