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 is respectfully to take leave. The same brisk exit as at Fangzhang -- the door shuts, and he is gone.
The Nine Elders would still have kept him, to drink jasper wine and eat green lotus-root.
瓊漿 is jasper nectar; 碧藕 is green lotus-root. Three sets of immortals in a row have tried to feed him, and this is the third time hospitality has run into the deadline.
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.
The detail here is precise and funny: he refuses to sit down, drinks one cup standing, eats one piece of lotus-root, and leaves. 定不肯坐 is would absolutely not sit; 止立 is standing only. Politeness discharged in the smallest quantity that will pass.
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 seat. 觀音菩薩 is the Bodhisattva Guanyin, 觀 = guān in her name -- she who perceives the sounds of the world. 木吒 is Moksa and the 龍女 is the Dragon Maiden, both her attendants. Refused by the Daoist immortals, Wukong crosses over into the Buddhist half of the cosmos.
There is a poem to prove it:
有詩為證, there is a poem in witness.
The poem says:
詩曰, the poem says, heads 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, is Guanyin's island seat. 更觀 is further behold, 觀 = guān, the verb; 奇異事無窮 is marvels without number.
Know that, past a thousand things dimly half-seen, all issues forth from a single rarefied essence.
The poem turns from scenery to doctrine. 隱約 is faint, half-discerned; 希微, rare and subtle, is a term from the 道德經 for the source too fine to be perceived; 一品 is a single supreme grade. Behind a thousand half-seen things, one thing.
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 up the Ten Dharma-realms of Buddhism -- a complete map of everything that can be born, from a hell-being to a Buddha. 正果 is the true fruit, meaning enlightenment; 脫樊籠 is to escape the cage, the cage being the endless round of rebirth.
The Shaolin has a true savor all its own; fragrant with flower and fruit, its trees are heavy with red.
少林 (Shào lín) here stands for the Chan tradition rather than the monastery itself; 真滋味 is a true savour, the taste of genuine realisation. And then the closing image: trees fragrant with flower and heavy with red fruit. In a chapter about a felled fruit tree, the Buddhist grove is quietly shown bearing what the Daoist isles could not restore.
The Yingzhou episode ends, and with it the tour of the three Daoist isles, as Wukong sets his course for Mount Potalaka, the island paradise of Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. The shift matters: having exhausted the resources of the Daoist immortals, he turns to the Buddhist realm, and the reader, tracking the shape of the quest, understands that the real remedy must lie here. The passage finds Guanyin in her purple bamboo grove, expounding the teaching -- the very picture of the compassionate power to which the desperate come last.
The verse that closes the passage moves from description to doctrine: the single rarefied source behind all appearances, the Four Holy Ones and Six Mundane Realms of the Buddhist map, the escape from the cage of rebirth. Its final image is the most resonant. Trees heavy with red fruit, fragrant with blossom. 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 promise that here, at last, the broken tree will find its cure.