徑轉南海 On to Potalaka
行者道：「既是無方，我且奉別。」九老又留他飲瓊漿，食碧藕。行者定不肯坐，止立飲了一杯漿，吃了一塊藕，急急離了瀛洲，徑轉東洋大海。早望見落伽山不遠，遂落下雲頭，直到普陀巖上，見觀音菩薩在紫竹林中與諸天大神、木吒、龍女講經說法。有詩為證。詩曰：行者道：「既是无方，我且奉别。」九老又留他饮琼浆，食碧藕。行者定不肯坐，止立饮了一杯浆，吃了一块藕，急急离了瀛洲，径转东洋大海。早望见落伽山不远，遂落下云头，直到普陀岩上，见观音菩萨在紫竹林中与诸天大神、木咤、龙女讲经说法。有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
The pilgrim said, “Since there’s no remedy, I’ll take my leave.”
既是無方 ("since there is no cure"); 奉別 ("respectfully to take leave"). Wukong, as at each isle, does not linger once the door has closed.
The Nine Elders would still have kept him, to drink jasper wine and eat green lotus-root.
瓊漿 ("jasper nectar," an immortal drink); 碧藕 ("green lotus-root"). The elders’ hospitality, like Donghua’s, presses upon a guest who cannot stay.
But the pilgrim would by no means sit; standing, he drank a single cup of nectar and ate one piece of lotus-root, then hurriedly left Yingzhou and turned straight back across the Great Eastern Ocean.
定不肯坐 ("would absolutely not sit"); 止立 ("standing only," not sitting to the feast). The clipped tally — one cup, one piece — conveys Wukong’s haste, the deadline at his back.
Soon he sighted Mount Potalaka not far off, brought down his cloud-head, and came straight to the Putuo Cliff, where he found the Bodhisattva Guanyin in her purple bamboo grove, expounding the scriptures to the devas, to Mokṣa, and to the Dragon Maiden.
落伽山 (Mount Potalaka) and 普陀巖 (the Putuo Cliff) are Guanyin’s island abode; 觀音菩薩 ("the Bodhisattva Guanyin," 觀 = guān in her name); 木吒 (Mokṣa) and the 龍女 ("Dragon Maiden") are her attendants. Wukong, refused by the Daoist immortals, turns now to the Buddhist realm.
There is a poem to prove it:
有詩為證 ("there is a poem in witness"), the storyteller’s formula.
The poem says:
詩曰 ("the poem says"), heading the verse.
The sea-lord’s city stands high, its auspicious vapors thick; behold besides its wonders, marvels without end.
海主城 ("the sea-lord’s city"), Guanyin’s island seat; 更觀 ("further behold," 觀 = guān, the verb); 奇異事無窮, "marvels beyond number."
Know that, past a thousand things dimly half-seen, all issues forth from a single rarefied essence.
隱約 ("faint, half-discerned"); 希微 ("rare and subtle," the imperceptible source, a term from the 道德經); 一品, "one grade, a single [supreme] rank." The couplet turns from scenery to the metaphysical ground beneath it.
The Four Sages, when taught in season, attain the true fruit; the Six Common Orders, having heard, escape the cage.
四聖 ("the Four Holy Ones") and 六凡 ("the Six Mundane [realms]") together make the Ten Dharma-realms of Buddhism; 正果 ("the true fruit," enlightenment); 脫樊籠 ("to escape the cage" of transmigration). The verse names Guanyin’s work of universal deliverance.
The Shaolin has a true savor all its own; fragrant with flower and fruit, its trees are heavy with red.
少林 (Shàolín) here evokes the Chan Buddhist tradition; 真滋味 ("a true savor"), the flavor of authentic realization. The closing image of blossoming, fruit-laden trees quietly answers the chapter’s central emblem — the very tree Wukong has come to restore.
The Yingzhou episode ends, and with it the tour of the three Daoist isles, as Wukong sets his course at last for Mount Potalaka — the island paradise of Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. The shift is significant: having exhausted the resources of the Daoist immortals, he turns to the Buddhist realm, and the reader, tracking the pattern of the quest, understands that the true remedy must lie here. The passage finds Guanyin in her purple bamboo grove, expounding the Dharma — the very image of the compassionate power to which the desperate finally come.
The verse that closes the passage moves, tellingly, from description to doctrine — the "single rarefied essence" behind all appearances, the Four Sages and Six Common Orders of the Buddhist cosmos, the escape from the "cage" of rebirth. Its final image is the most resonant: trees "heavy with red," fragrant with flower and fruit. After a chapter spent among the elixirs of the Daoist deathless, the poem lets a Buddhist grove bear the fruit that the Daoist immortals could not restore — a quiet foreshadowing that here, in Guanyin’s realm, the broken tree will find its cure.