初居洞府 Beginning Life at the Cave
話表美猴王得了姓名，怡然踴躍，對菩提前作禮啟謝。那祖師即命大眾引孫悟空出二門外，教他灑掃應對、進退周旋之節。眾仙奉行而出。悟空到門外，又拜了大眾師兄，就於廊廡之間安排寢處。次早，與眾師兄學言語禮貌、講經論道、習字焚香。每日如此。閑時即掃地鋤園、養花修樹、尋柴燃火、挑水運漿。凡所用之物，無一不備。在洞中不覺倏六七年。话表美猴王得了姓名，怡然踊跃，对菩提前作礼启谢。那祖师即命大众引孙悟空出二门外，教他洒扫应对、进退周旋之节。众仙奉行而出。悟空到门外，又拜了大众师兄，就于廊庑之间安排寝处。次早，与众师兄学言语礼貌、讲经论道、习字焚香。每日如此。闲时即扫地锄园、养花修树、寻柴燃火、挑水运浆。凡所用之物，无一不备。在洞中不觉倏六七年。
逐句解 Line by line
The tale now takes up how the Handsome Monkey King, having won himself a name, was filled with joy and leapt about, and made his bows before Bodhi to give thanks.
話表 (huà biǎo) is a storyteller's resumptive formula reopening the narration after the chapter break — roughly "the tale now relates that…," a cousin of 話說/卻說. 美猴王 is the title the stone monkey won in 第一回. In 對菩提前作禮, 菩提 stands for the master 須菩提祖師 (Subodhi), named for the bodhi element. 得 is a 多音字: full-tone dé "to obtain" here (得了姓名 "having obtained a name"), as against the neutral particle de and děi "must."
The Patriarch straightaway ordered the assembly to lead Sun Wukong out past the second gate and to instruct him in the disciplines of sprinkling and sweeping, of answering when addressed, and of stepping forward and back.
灑掃應對進退 is the classic Confucian formula for a young disciple's elementary curriculum (cf. the Neo-Confucian account of 小學: 灑掃 sprinkling-and-sweeping, 應對 responding, 進退 advancing-and-withdrawing) — gently ironic for a pupil of cosmic origin. The name stands in full as 孫悟空 in the 世德堂本; some reprints abbreviate to 悟空. 多音字: 教 = jiāo "to teach (a thing to someone)" here, not jiào "to cause / teaching, religion"; 掃 = sǎo "to sweep" (verb), not sào (掃帚 "broom"); 應 = yìng "to respond," not yīng "ought."
The host of immortals carried out the command and withdrew.
眾仙 are Subodhi's senior disciples. 奉行 (fèng xíng) "to carry out a command"; 多音字 行 = xíng "to do / go" here, not háng "row, trade."
Wukong, once outside the gate, again bowed to all his elder brothers-in-study, and there among the corridors and side-galleries he settled his sleeping quarters.
師兄 are senior fellow-disciples ("elder brothers" in study). 廊廡 (láng wǔ): the roofed corridors and the covered side-rooms flanking a hall — 廡 wǔ are a building's wings. 多音字: 處 = noun chù "place" here (寢處 "sleeping quarters"), not verb chǔ "to dwell, manage"; 間 = jiān "space between," not jiàn "gap, to separate."
The next morning, together with his elder schoolmates, he took up speech and the forms of courtesy, the expounding of scriptures and the discussion of the Way, the practice of writing and the burning of incense. So passed each day.
講經論道 already blends 經 (here both Buddhist sūtra and the classics) with 道 (the Daoist Way) — the syncretic key of Subodhi's school. 多音字: 與 = yǔ "with, together with" here, not yù "to take part in" or the final particle yú; 論 = lùn "to discuss," not lún (論語). 次早 = "the next morning" (= 次日早晨).
In his idle hours he swept the grounds and hoed the garden, raised flowers and trimmed trees, sought out firewood and kindled the fire, drew water and carried gruel.
鋤 chú "to hoe." 漿 jiāng is a thin liquid or starchy gruel/swill; 運漿 pairs with 挑水 to evoke the humblest chores. 多音字: 挑 = tiāo "to carry on a shoulder-pole" here (挑水), not tiǎo "to provoke, poke."
Of everything that was wanted, there was not one thing left unprovided.
無一不備 is a double negative — "not one thing not provided" = everything was seen to. Sandhi chain: 備 bèi (4th tone) pulls 不 to bú (2nd tone), and that 2nd-tone 不 in turn pulls 一 to yì — so the run reads wú yì bú bèi (sandhi feeds sandhi).
In the cave, before he was aware of it, six or seven years had flickered by.
倏 shū "in a flash, suddenly" (倏忽); the years pass unnoticed. The 世德堂本 reads 倏 alone — there is no 然 here (a reading some modern retellings insert). 多音字: 覺 = jué "to perceive" (不覺 "without realizing"), not jiào "sleep" (睡覺).
After the cascade of cosmic event in the first chapter — the stone egg, the survey of the four continents, the ocean-crossing quest for a teacher — the second chapter opens on an almost comic deflation. The monkey has just been granted the grand dharma-name 悟空, "Awakened to Emptiness," and the Patriarch's very first act is to set him sweeping the courtyard and hauling water. The curriculum named here — 灑掃應對進退, sprinkling-and-sweeping, answering when addressed, advancing and withdrawing — is the standard Confucian syllabus for a young pupil, lifted almost verbatim from the Neo-Confucian account of elementary learning. That Subodhi's disciples should in the same breath 講經論道, expound (Buddhist) scriptures and discourse on the (Daoist) Way, marks the master's mountain as the syncretic "Three Teachings in one" space that Andrew Plaks identifies as the novel's habitual intellectual key.
The single most telling fact about this school is encoded in its address back in 第一回: the 斜月三星洞, "Cave of the Slanting Moon and Three Stars," on the 靈臺方寸山, "Mountain of the Numinous Terrace and the Square Inch." Both 方寸 ("the square inch") and 靈臺 are old metonyms for the heart-mind, and a crescent moon set over three stars is simply the graph 心, xīn. Wukong's whole apprenticeship is therefore staged, allegorically, inside his own mind — the reading that lets later chapters call him the 心猿, the "mind-monkey," the restless attention that cultivation must discipline. Anthony C. Yu and Plaks alike treat this spatial pun as programmatic rather than decorative.
The internal-alchemy commentators read the chapter break as a deliberate sequence. The Qing exegete 悟元子 (Liu Yiming) opens his notes on this chapter by observing that the first chapter set out only the source of the Great Way and the cultivation of mind and nature, never saying how it is to be cultivated — and that the second chapter exists to make that method plain, point by point. The unhurried six or seven years of menial chores before any esoteric transmission dramatize a principle dear to that tradition: the gradual, near-invisible groundwork that must precede the sudden breakthrough promised by the chapter title's 悟徹, a thorough awakening. The narrator's compression of those years into a single clause — 倏六七年, "in a flash, six or seven years" — is his quiet signal that the real action is still to come.