鳥盡弓藏 The Bow Is Stored Away
那大聖一聞得說他兩個是人，止不住傷情悽慘，對唐僧道聲：「苦啊！你那時節出了長安，有劉伯欽送你上路。到兩界山，救我出來，投拜你為師。我曾穿古洞，入深林，擒魔捉怪，收八戒，得沙僧，吃盡千辛萬苦。今日昧著惺惺使糊塗，只教我回去。這才是：『鳥盡弓藏，兔死狗烹！』罷，罷，罷，但只是多了那緊箍兒咒。」那大圣一闻得说他两个是人，止不住伤情凄惨，对唐僧道声：「苦啊！你那时节出了长安，有刘伯钦送你上路。到两界山，救我出来，投拜你为师。我曾穿古洞，入深林，擒魔捉怪，收八戒，得沙僧，吃尽千辛万苦。今日昧着惺惺使糊涂，只教我回去。这才是：『鸟尽弓藏，兔死狗烹！』罢，罢，罢，但只是多了那紧箍儿咒。」
逐句解 Line by line
The moment the Great Sage heard the two of them called human, he could not hold back his grief and desolation, and said to the Tang Monk: "Alas!
That is the line that breaks him. Not the spell, not the expulsion — being told the other two count as people and he does not. 止不住: could not stop it. The grief comes up whether he wants it to or not. (那 points, nà; 得 is toneless.)
"When you set out from Chang'an that time, it was Liu Boqin who saw you on your way.
And then he goes back to the beginning. 劉伯欽 (Liú Bó qīn) is the hunter who escorted Tripitaka out of the settled world as far as the frontier in the early chapters, and could take him no further. Wukong is starting the account from before he was even in it. (那時節 points, nà; 長安 takes 長 as cháng.)
"At the Mountain of Two Frontiers you saved me and brought me out, and I bowed to take you as my master.
The founding moment, in a single clause: you got me out, and I bowed and took you for my master. He invoked this same debt on his knees earlier in the chapter, to argue his way back in. He is reciting it now for a quite different reason. (為 is wéi, "as".)
"I have gone through ancient caves and deep forests, seized demons and caught monsters, recruited Eight Rules, gained Sha Monk — and tasted a full measure of a thousand toils and ten thousand hardships.
And here is the sharpest item on the list, placed exactly where he means you to notice it: 收八戒，得沙僧 — I recruited Bajie, I got Sha Monk. The two disciples the master has just ranked above him were brought into the party by him. 千辛萬苦, a thousand pains and ten thousand hardships, is still the ordinary Chinese for having been put through the mill. (得 is the full verb dé, "to gain"; 盡 is jìn.)
"And today, clouding your own good sense and playing the fool, you would only send me back.
This is the fairest and most damning thing anybody says about Tripitaka in the chapter. 惺惺 is clear-wittedness, being properly awake; 昧 is to darken or cover something over. So: you are smothering your own good sense and playing at being muddled. He is not accusing his master of being a fool. He is accusing him of choosing not to see. (著 is zhe; 教 is jiào.)
"This is truly a case of 'the birds all shot, the bow is put away; the hares all dead, the hounds are cooked!'
鳥盡弓藏，兔死狗烹 — when the birds are gone the bow is put away, when the hares are dead the hounds go in the pot. It comes from the 史記, the Records of the Grand Historian, and attaches to the fate of Han Xin, the general who won an empire for his emperor and was destroyed by him afterwards. It is the standard Chinese phrase for a servant discarded once he has stopped being useful, and Wukong applies it to himself with complete accuracy. (藏 is cáng, "to store away"; 盡 is jìn.)
"Enough, enough, enough! — only, there's that Tight-Fillet Spell to reckon with."
Three times 罷 — enough, enough, enough — which is a man giving up. And then the thing that stops him giving up cleanly: there is still the spell. He can leave. He cannot get out of range. (那 points, nà; the 兒 is the small tag.)
Wukong's answer to the cruel retort is not anger but a lament, and its core is the proverb about the bow put away and the hounds cooked. Drawn from the Records of the Grand Historian and the fate of the general Han Xin, it names with bitter exactness the discarding of a servant whose work is finished. He recites the whole shared journey — Chang'an, the Mountain of Two Frontiers, the demons subdued, the disciples recruited — in order to measure the ingratitude of his dismissal.
The reproach is aimed precisely. Wukong does not call his master a fool; he says he is smothering a clear mind, hiding his own good sense and playing at being muddled. That is the chapter's fairest diagnosis of Tripitaka — not stupidity but a failure of nerve, a good man declining to see. The grief in his voice is for a bond betrayed by weakness rather than by malice.
The lament closes on the one thread still tied to him: the spell. His tripled "enough" would settle the matter, but the fillet means the parting cannot be clean — separated from his master, he stays within range of a pain the master can inflict whenever he chooses. That is exactly what the next passage takes up.