各持兵器 各持兵器 | Each Gripping His Weapon
八戒道：「哥哥，老豬沒甚坐性，我隨你去罷。」行者道：「好，好。」教：「沙僧將馬匹、行李俱潛在樹林深處，小心守護，待我兩個上門去尋師父耶。」那沙僧依命。八戒相隨，與行者各持兵器前來。正是：八戒道：「哥哥，老猪没甚坐性，我随你去罢。」行者道：「好，好。」教：「沙僧将马匹、行李俱潜在树林深处，小心守护，待我两个上门去寻师父耶。」那沙僧依命。八戒相随，与行者各持兵器前来。正是：
畢竟不知這一去吉兇何如，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知这一去吉凶何如，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
Eight Rules said: "Brother, old Hog has no gift for sitting still. I will go along with you."
Pigsy volunteers, and the reason he gives is pure Pigsy: not courage but restlessness. 沒甚坐性, "no sitting-nature," is a wonderfully exact self-description. The bare 甚 meaning "any" is read shèn, as it is elsewhere in this chapter. The sentence-closing 罷 is the light everyday ba, the sound that turns a statement into a suggestion, not the bà that means to stop.
Pilgrim said: "Good, good."
Five characters, and no discussion. The decision is made.
and gave the order: "Sha Monk, take the horse and the luggage and hide them deep in the wood, keep careful watch, and wait while the two of us go up to the door to look for the Master."
The dispositions are sensible and will not survive the next chapter. 教 is the order-giving jiào; 將 is jiāng, holding up the horse and luggage ahead of the verb. 深處 takes chù. The closing 耶 (yé) is a colloquial sound of the period, softening an order into something closer to a plan.
That Sha Monk obeyed the command.
Five characters for the disciple who is always given the waiting job and never argues. 那沙僧 takes the pointing nà.
Eight Rules followed after, and he and Pilgrim came on, each gripping his weapon. Truly it was so:
正是, "truly it was so," is the storyteller's cue that a closing couplet follows — and in the printed edition the line after it is set off as verse. 相隨 has the mutual 相, xiāng.
Till the Infant be refined, the heretic fire prevails; / Mind-Ape and Wood-Mother uphold each other still.
The chapter's closing couplet, and it answers the title couplet at the head of the chapter. 未煉嬰兒, "the Infant not yet refined," works on two levels at once: the Red Boy, a child who has not been brought under control, and — in the language of inner alchemy that runs through this whole stretch of the novel — the immortal embryo that the adept must slowly refine within himself. Until that work is done, 邪火勝: the wrong kind of fire has the upper hand. The second line names the two who walk to the cave door together: 心猿, the Mind-Ape, is Wukong, and 木母, the Wood-Mother, is Pigsy. Set this against the second line of the chapter title, 猿馬刀圭木母空, where the same pair came to nothing; here they at least hold each other up. 嬰兒 is a word in its own right, so its 兒 keeps the full ér.
In the end there was no knowing whether this venture would turn out well or ill; so listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
The formula that ends every chapter of the novel, and a reminder of where these books came from: a storyteller breaking off at the cliff-edge so the audience comes back tomorrow. 分解, "to break it down, to explain," is what the next session promises. In 這一去 the 一 lifts to yí before the falling tone of 去.
The chapter ends with its forces divided, which is the arrangement the next one will punish. Pigsy volunteers to come along, and his reason is characteristically unheroic — he has 沒甚坐性, "no sitting-nature," so he would rather walk into danger than wait quietly beside a horse. Sha Monk, as always, takes the job nobody wants and makes no complaint about it. Two go up to the door; one stays hidden in the trees with the luggage. The whole party has been reassembled only to be split again.
The closing couplet answers the title couplet across the length of the chapter, and it is worth reading the two together. The chapter opened by promising that 嬰兒戲化禪心亂 — the Baby, playing at transformation, would throw the Chan-mind into chaos — and it closes with 未煉嬰兒邪火勝, the Infant unrefined and the wrong fire winning. The word for infant is doing double duty, as it has all chapter: it is the Red Boy, an actual child who has not been brought under control, and it is the immortal embryo of inner alchemy, the thing the adept must patiently refine inside himself before he is safe from his own passions. Until that refining is done, the fire burns the wrong way. But the second line offers the first comfort the chapter has given: 心猿木母共扶持, Mind-Ape and Wood-Mother hold each other up. Where the title couplet left them 空, emptied out, they are at least walking to the cave door together. Then the storyteller breaks off, as he does at the end of every chapter, and sends the audience away wanting to know what happens.