堅執不吃 The Monk Will Not Eat
三藏道：「善哉！善哉！我有徒弟摘果子去了，就來。我不敢吃，假如我和尚吃了你飯，你丈夫曉得，罵你，卻不罪坐貧僧也？」那女子見唐僧不肯吃，卻又滿面春生道：「師父啊，我父母齋僧，還是小可；我丈夫更是個善人，一生好的是修橋補路，愛老憐貧。但聽見說這飯送與師父吃了，他與我夫妻情上，比尋常更是不同。」三藏也只是不吃。三藏道：「善哉！善哉！我有徒弟摘果子去了，就来。我不敢吃，假如我和尚吃了你饭，你丈夫晓得，骂你，却不罪坐贫僧也？」那女子见唐僧不肯吃，却又满面春生道：「师父啊，我父母斋僧，还是小可；我丈夫更是个善人，一生好的是修桥补路，爱老怜贫。但听见说这饭送与师父吃了，他与我夫妻情上，比寻常更是不同。」三藏也只是不吃。
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka said, "How good!
善哉 (shàn zāi) "excellent! how good!" — a Buddhist exclamation of approval (Sanskrit sādhu). Won over by the pious tale, the monk warms toward the offering.
"How good!
The doubled 善哉 conveys Tripitaka's genuine, if credulous, approbation of what he takes to be an act of merit.
"But I have a disciple gone to pick fruit, who will be back directly.
果子 "fruit," 子 (zi). The mention of the absent Wukong is quietly ominous — the one disciple who would unmask her is expected back at any moment, and the demon must act before he comes.
"I dare not eat it. Suppose I, a monk, ate your food and your husband found out and cursed you — would not the blame fall upon this poor cleric?"
曉得 "to find out, come to know," 得 (de). 罪坐 "to have blame settled upon one"; 貧僧 "this poor monk," Tripitaka's humble self-reference. His refusal is scrupulous and considerate — anxious for the woman's domestic peace — and entirely misdirected.
Seeing the Tang Monk would not eat, the woman, her face all abloom with spring warmth, pressed on: "Master, ah — my parents' alms-giving to monks is a small thing;
滿面春生 "spring blooming all over her face," i.e. beaming warmly. 那女子, 那 (nà), 子 (zǐ). 還是小可 "is still a trifle," 還 (hái) (still) — distinct from the 還 (huán) of 還誓願. The demon shifts ground, now appealing through her husband's supposed goodness.
"but my husband is a good man beyond that — all his life he has loved to mend bridges and repair roads, and to cherish the old and pity the poor.
更是 "even more so," 更 (gèng). 修橋補路 "mending bridges and roads," 愛老憐貧 "loving the aged, pitying the poor" — the stock catalogue of lay-Buddhist good works, here credited to the fictitious husband to overcome the monk's scruple.
"Were he but to hear that this food had been given to you, Master, to eat, then in his love for me as his wife he would be more pleased than ever."
夫妻情上 "in the matter of husband-and-wife affection"; 比尋常更是不同 "more so than usual, beyond the ordinary," 更 (gèng). The demon turns Tripitaka's own objection inside out: far from angering the husband, the gift would gladden him.
But Tripitaka simply would not eat.
A flat, terse close: 只是不吃 "just would not eat." For all the demon's eloquence the monk's stubborn refusal holds — the last barrier standing before Wukong's return shatters the whole scene.
Won to the woman's piety (善哉！善哉！), the monk nonetheless refuses the food — not from suspicion but from delicacy, fearing to bring a wife trouble with her husband. It is a characteristically fine-grained moral scruple, and characteristically beside the point: he weighs a domestic impropriety while blind to the fiend standing before him.
Each refusal draws a fresh appeal — now the husband's charity, now his supposed delight at the gift. Yet the passage twice glances at the true threat to the demon's plan: the disciple "gone to pick fruit" who "will be back directly." Her mounting urgency is measured against Wukong's imminent return.
The stalemate — she cannot make him eat, he cannot see what she is — is the still point before the storm. It will break in the next passage, when Wukong drops out of the sky, sees at a single glance what a whole chapter of monks could not, and swings his cudgel.