回前詩 The Chapter-Opening Verse
逐句解 Line by line
Bound in righteousness as brothers dear, the Dharma comes home to the original nature.
孔懷 (kǒnghuái), an echo of the Classic of Poetry, names the deep bond between brothers. 本性 (běnxìng) is the "original nature," the Buddha-nature to which all cultivation returns.
Metal made pliant and Wood grown tame, they ripen the true fruit; the Mind-Monkey and the Wood-Mother merge in the cinnabar prime.
In the novel's inner-alchemy allegory, 金 (Metal) and 木 (Wood) are Five-Phase ciphers for the disciples; 心猿 (xīnyuán), the "Mind-Monkey," is Wukong, and 木母 (mùmǔ), the "Wood-Mother," is Bajie. 丹元 (dānyuán) is the alchemical cinnabar prime, the unified elixir-nature.
Together they climb to the World of Ultimate Bliss; together they pass through the Gate of Non-Duality.
極樂世界 (jílè shìjiè) is Sukhāvatī, the Pure Land of Amitābha. 不二法門 (bù'èr fǎmén), the "Dharma-gate of non-duality," is a term from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra for the undivided truth that lies beyond all opposites.
The scriptures are the master-road of cultivation; the Buddha is matched to one's own primal spirit.
總徑 (zǒngjìng) is the trunk-road that gathers every lesser path. 元神 (yuánshén), the "primal spirit" of Daoist physiology — the line quietly binds the outward Buddha to the practitioner's own inmost spirit.
Elder and younger, in their meeting, make the three concords; fiends and demons, each in its kind, answer to the Five Phases.
三契 (sān qì) is the threefold accord among the brethren. 色 (sè) here carries the sense "kind, category"; even the demons are ruled by the same Five-Phase correspondences — 應 (yìng), "to answer to, correspond with."
Shear away the lures of the six gates, and hasten straightway to the Great Thunderclap.
六門 (liù mén) are the six sense-gates (the 六根: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind), and 趣 (qù) their beckoning objects. 大雷音 (Dà Léiyīn) is the Great Thunderclap Monastery on Vulture Peak, the Buddha's seat and the pilgrims' goal.
Like every chapter of the novel, the thirty-first opens with a verse in the register of inner-alchemy (內丹) allegory rather than plain narration. Its Five-Phase ciphers — Metal and Wood, the Mind-Monkey and the Wood-Mother — are the standing emblems by which the book reads its own cast: Wukong as the restless mind, Bajie as the earthy "Wood-Mother," the fellowship itself as an elixir whose ingredients must be brought into concord before the "true fruit" can ripen.
Read against the story, the poem is a promise of repair. Chapters 27 through 30 have shown the band broken — Wukong banished, the master transformed, the disciples scattered and beaten. Here the verse insists in advance that Metal will be made pliant and Wood tamed, that the brethren will re-form their "three concords," and that even the demons obstructing them belong to the same cosmic order. The obstacle and the pilgrimage are governed by one law.
The closing couplet turns from allegory to injunction: cut away the pull of the six senses and press on to the Thunderclap Monastery. It is the moral the chapter will dramatize, as Wukong's return restores both the fellowship and its forward motion toward the West.