三藏念咒 The Spell Is Recited
三藏自此一言，就是晦氣到了。果然信那獃子攛唆，手中捻訣，口裡念咒。行者就叫：「頭疼，頭疼。莫念，莫念，有話便說。」唐僧道：「有甚話說？出家人時時常要方便，念念不離善心，掃地恐傷螻蟻命，愛惜飛蛾紗罩燈。你怎麼步步行兇，打死這個無故平人，取將經來何用？你回去罷。」三藏自此一言，就是晦气到了。果然信那呆子撺唆，手中捻诀，口里念咒。行者就叫：「头疼，头疼。莫念，莫念，有话便说。」唐僧道：「有甚话说？出家人时时常要方便，念念不离善心，扫地恐伤蝼蚁命，爱惜飞蛾纱罩灯。你怎么步步行凶，打死这个无故平人，取将经来何用？你回去罢。」
逐句解 Line by line
From this one word of Tripitaka's, ill luck was upon them.
自此一言 (zì cǐ yì yán) "from this one utterance." 晦氣 (huì qì) "ill fortune, bad luck." The narrator's brief, ominous frame marks the elder's decision to believe Bajie as the hinge on which the whole disaster turns.
Sure enough, taking that idiot's slander for truth, he pinched his fingers into the sign and began to recite the spell.
信那獃子攛唆 (xìn nà dāi zi cuān suō) "believing that idiot's incitement," 那 (nà), 子 (zi). 捻訣 (niǎn jué) "to make the mystic finger-sign"; 念咒 (niàn zhòu) "to recite the spell" — the 緊箍咒 (Jǐn gū zhòu), the Tight-Fillet Spell that constricts the golden band on Wukong's head. 手中 (shǒu zhōng) "in his hand," 中 (zhōng).
Pilgrim at once cried out, "My head! My head aches!
頭疼 (tóu téng) "the head hurts." The doubled cry conveys the sudden, crushing pain of the fillet — the one power on earth that masters the Great Sage, and the instrument the master now turns on him for seeing truly.
"Stop, stop! If you have something to say, say it."
莫念 (mò niàn) "do not recite [it]." Wukong's plea — pain forcing him to sue for a hearing — reverses the natural order of authority: the strongest of the pilgrims begs the weakest for mercy.
The Tang Monk said, "What have you to say?
有甚話說 (yǒu shén huà shuō) "what have you to say?" — 甚 (shén) "what." The curt question opens the elder's indictment.
"A monk must be merciful at every moment, keeping a heart of goodness in his every thought — sweeping the floor for fear of harming an ant, and screening the lamp with gauze to spare the moths.
Tripitaka expounds the ideal of boundless Buddhist compassion. The famous couplet — 掃地恐傷螻蟻命，愛惜飛蛾紗罩燈 "in sweeping, he fears to harm the ants; cherishing the moths, he screens the lamp" — images a mercy so scrupulous it guards even insect life. Held up against a supposed "murder," it makes Wukong's blow seem monstrous — though the reader knows no creature died.
"How is it that you do violence at every step, striking dead this innocent, ordinary person? What use would there be in fetching the scriptures?
步步行兇 (bù bù xíng xiōng) "committing violence at every step," 行 (xíng) "to do, act." 無故平人 (wú gù píng rén) "an innocent commoner, [killed] without cause." 取將經來 "fetch the scriptures," 將 (jiāng). The elder's logic — a killer cannot fetch holy scripture — is sound in the abstract and wholly misapplied here.
"Go back where you came from."
回去罷 (huí qù bà) "go back, then." The dismissal — expelling the disciple who alone protects him — is the emotional nadir toward which the chapter has been building.
The Tight-Fillet Spell is the chapter's cruellest irony made physical. The one power that can master the Great Sage — the golden band, tightened by the 緊箍咒 — is here wielded not against a demon but against the disciple for the crime of seeing a demon. Pain forces the strongest of the pilgrims to beg the weakest for a hearing, inverting the whole order of their strength.
Tripitaka's rebuke is built on the loftiest Buddhist ideal — a compassion so fine it sweeps the floor lest an ant be crushed and screens the lamp to spare the moths. In the abstract it is beautiful; applied here it is catastrophically wrong, condemning as "murder" a blow that killed nothing. The chapter's tragedy is precisely that the elder's highest virtue, mercy, is the lever by which the demon undoes him.
The dismissal — 你回去罷, "go back where you came from" — expels the party's only true safeguard on the strength of an illusion. It is the emotional low point of the episode, and it sets up both Wukong's plea and, once he is gone in a later chapter, the disasters that follow from his absence.