叩頭哀告 Wukong Pleads on His Knees
行者道：「師父，我回去便也罷了，只是不曾報得你的恩哩。」唐僧道：「我與你有甚恩？」那大聖聞言，連忙跪下叩頭道：「老孫因大鬧天宮，致下了傷身之難，被我佛壓在兩界山。幸觀音菩薩與我受了戒行，幸師父救脫吾身。若不與你同上西天，顯得我知恩不報非君子，萬古千秋作罵名。」行者道：「师父，我回去便也罢了，只是不曾报得你的恩哩。」唐僧道：「我与你有甚恩？」那大圣闻言，连忙跪下叩头道：「老孙因大闹天宫，致下了伤身之难，被我佛压在两界山。幸观音菩萨与我受了戒行，幸师父救脱吾身。若不与你同上西天，显得我知恩不报非君子，万古千秋作骂名。」
逐句解 Line by line
Said Pilgrim, "Master, it would be no great matter for me to go back — only that I have never yet repaid your kindness."
便也罷了 (biàn yě bà le) "would be well enough, no great matter." 不曾報得你的恩 "have never managed to repay your kindness," 報得 with the complement 得 (de). Wukong's tone shifts from argument to feeling: what pains him is not exile but a debt unpaid — the first note of the plea.
The Tang Monk said, "What kindness have I ever done you?"
我與你有甚恩 (wǒ yǔ nǐ yǒu shén ēn) "what kindness have I shown you?" — 甚 (shén) "what." The elder's cold question draws out the very history that binds them, which Wukong now recounts.
At these words the Great Sage fell at once to his knees and knocked his head on the ground: "Because I made great havoc in the Palace of Heaven, I brought upon myself the calamity of a maimed body, and was pinned by my Buddha beneath the Mountain of Two Frontiers.
那大聖 (nà dà shèng) "the Great Sage," 那 (nà). 大鬧天宮 (dà nào tiān gōng) "the great havoc in Heaven" — Wukong's youthful rebellion, recounted in the novel's opening chapters. 傷身之難 (shāng shēn zhī nàn) "the calamity of bodily harm," 難 (nàn) "ordeal, disaster" (not 難 (nán) "difficult"). 我佛 (wǒ Fó) "my Buddha," the Tathāgata who imprisoned him. The kowtow is extraordinary — the once-untameable Sage abasing himself in gratitude.
"By good fortune the Bodhisattva Guanyin conferred on me the discipline of the precepts, and by good fortune, Master, you delivered my very self.
觀音菩薩 (Guān yīn pú sà) "the Bodhisattva Guanyin," 觀 (guān); 受了戒行 (shòu le jiè xíng) "received the observance of the precepts," 行 (xíng) "conduct, discipline." 救脫吾身 (jiù tuō wú shēn) "delivered my person." Wukong names the double debt — to Guanyin for the vows, to Tripitaka for his release from the mountain — that makes his service a matter of honour.
"If I did not go with you all the way to the Western Heaven, it would show me one who knows a kindness and does not repay it — no true gentleman — and for ten thousand ages, a thousand autumns, my name would be a byword for reproach."
顯得 "it would appear, show [me to be]," 得 (de). 知恩不報非君子 (zhī ēn bù bào fēi jūn zǐ) "to know a kindness and not repay it is to be no gentleman," 子 (zǐ) (君子 "gentleman"). 萬古千秋作罵名 "for all ages [my name] would be a curse." Wukong frames his loyalty in Confucian terms — the repayment of kindness as the mark of the 君子 — fusing Buddhist gratitude with the ethic of the gentleman.
This plea is the moral centre of the chapter, and it works a remarkable reversal: the Great Sage who once shook Heaven now kneels and knocks his head on the ground before a mortal monk. What moves him is not fear of the fillet but a debt of gratitude — to Guanyin, who gave him the precepts, and to Tripitaka, who freed him from under the Mountain of Two Frontiers. His whole rebellion has been transmuted into service.
Notably, Wukong frames his loyalty not in Buddhist but in Confucian terms: 知恩不報非君子, "to know a kindness and not repay it is to be no gentleman." The value that binds him to the quest is the 君子 ethic of requited kindness, dread of the "byword for reproach" that abandonment would earn. The novel characteristically fuses its Buddhist frame with this Confucian moral core.
The pathos is sharpened by dramatic irony. Wukong abases himself to keep a bond that the master, deceived, is bent on severing; his gratitude is most eloquent at the very moment it is least wanted. That the plea succeeds — the elder relents in the next passage — is a reprieve, but only a temporary one: the same rupture will recur, and in a later chapter the dismissal will finally hold.