Sanzang said: "Enough idle talk. Let us be off early."

少題閑話, "raise less idle talk" — Sanzang's way of ending an argument he cannot win on the merits. 趕早兒 again, with 兒 as er.

So they made up a load of baggage, and Bajie shouldered it;

One character, two readings, five characters apart. In 一擔行李 the 擔 is the counter for a carrying-pole load, read dàn, and the 一 before it takes the rising tone, yí. In 八戒擔著 it is the verb, to shoulder, read dān. The load and the act of carrying it, spelled the same and said differently.

the white horse was saddled and Sanzang rode; the Pilgrim carried his iron rod on his shoulder and led the way in front.

The marching order set down in this line will not change for eighty chapters: the Idiot under the baggage, the monk on the horse, the Pilgrim out in front with the rod. 肩擔 is the verb again, dān.

The three of them together took leave of old Gao and all the kinsfolk, and set off westward.

一行三眾, the party, three persons. Worth pausing on the arithmetic. The Tang monk rode out of Chang'an alone; he leaves the Gao Farm with two disciples and a horse, and the horse used to be a dragon.

There is a poem in evidence. The poem says:

有詩為證 takes 為 as wéi, and then 詩曰：. Both are run-ups to the verse and stay with the prose that introduces them.

The ground is full of mist and rose, the trees stand tall in colour; the Buddha's son of the house of Tang toils bitterly on.

唐朝佛子, the Buddha-son of the Tang — 子 is a full word here, zǐ, not a suffix. 苦勞勞, toiling and toiling bitterly: a doubled syllable carrying the whole weight of the journey, which no single word could.

Hungry, he eats from one bowl the rice of a thousand houses; cold, he wears one patched robe stitched with a thousand needles.

千家飯, the rice of a thousand households collected in one begging bowl; 一衲袍, one patched robe of a thousand stitches. The two thousands answer each other. 寒著千針 takes 著 as the full verb zhuó, to wear — a rarer sense than the ones this chapter has used so far.

Let the will-horse not run loose in the breast; let the mind-monkey, wayward and unruly, not be set howling.

意馬 and 心猿, the will-horse and the mind-monkey, are the standing figures for a mind that will not sit still, and the couplet names them together. The party at this moment consists of a horse, a monkey and a monk. 莫教嚎 takes 教 as the causative jiào.

When nature and feeling are settled and all conditions accord, the moon is full, the flower golden, and the coarse hair shed.

情和性定, feeling and nature both settled; 諸緣合, all the conditions falling into place. Then two alchemical images of completion: 月滿金華, the moon at the full and the golden flower open, and 伐毛, which is the first half of 伐毛洗髓 — to cut away the coarse hair and wash out the marrow, the sloughing of the mortal body for a better one.