埋怨番禍 Sanzang Rebukes the Pilgrim
唐僧埋怨行者道：「你這個猴頭，番番撞禍。你偷吃了他的果子，就受他些氣兒，讓他罵幾句便也罷了，怎麼又推倒他的樹？若論這般情由，告起狀來，就是你老子做官，也說不通。」唐僧埋怨行者道：「你这个猴头，番番撞祸。你偷吃了他的果子，就受他些气儿，让他骂几句便也罢了，怎么又推倒他的树？若论这般情由，告起状来，就是你老子做官，也说不通。」
逐句解 Line by line
The Tang Monk reproached the Pilgrim: "You monkey-head, time and again you stir up disaster!
埋怨, mán yuàn, is to reproach or grumble at somebody; note the reading mán, not the mái of "to bury." 猴頭, hóu tóu, "monkey-head," is the master's scolding name for Wukong. 番番撞禍, fān fān zhuàng huò, is "blundering into disaster time after time" — and the doubled 番 carries the weariness of a complaint made often before.
"You stole and ate his fruit, and took some abuse for it—had you let him curse a few times, that would have been the end of it; but why must you go and topple his tree besides?
The moral distinction the whole chapter rests on, drawn in one sentence. Eating the fruit and taking a scolding for it was a bounded, forgivable trespass; felling the tree was not. 氣兒, a helping of abuse, takes the diminutive suffix 兒, ér; 推倒 takes 倒 as dǎo, "to topple."
"If one weighed up the whole affair, and a suit were brought against us, then even were your own father the presiding official, there would be no talking it away."
Sanzang reaches for a courtroom, which tells you how he is thinking. 情由, qíng yóu, is the whole circumstances of a case; 告起狀來, gào qǐ zhuàng lái, is to lodge a formal suit. 你老子做官 — "even if your own father were the magistrate" — is a nicely barbed choice for a monkey born from a stone, who has no father at all. 老子 takes 子 as the toneless suffix zi.
Sanzang's rebuke is short and it is the chapter's moral centre. He does not dispute that the theft happened or that the abuse was deserved; he draws a line between the offence that could have been settled with an apology and the one that could not. Take the scolding, he says, and it ends there. But the tree.
The legal framing is characteristic of him. He imagines the case going before a magistrate and losing, and reaches for the sharpest comparison he can find: not even a father on the bench could argue this away. It is a sensible, worldly, entirely human way to measure a disaster — and it is about to be overtaken by an adversary no court could hold.