泣訴師恩 Weeping for the Master
沙僧攙著行者，一同到松林之下坐定。少時間，卻定神順氣，止不住淚滴腮邊。又叫：「師父啊！沙僧搀着行者，一同到松林之下坐定。少时间，却定神顺气，止不住泪滴腮边。又叫：「师父啊！
逐句解 Line by line
Sha the Monk supported the Pilgrim, and together they went beneath the pine-wood and sat down.
Sha Monk supports him under the arm and they go and sit down under the pines. After the oceans and the fire, three travellers sitting in a wood.
After a little while, when he had steadied his spirit and calmed his breath, he could not stop the tears dripping down his cheeks.
Spirit steadied, breath calmed -- and then the tears start. The order matters: he does not weep while he is dying or while he is being revived. He weeps once he is well enough to think.
And he cried again: ‘Master! —
The lead into the lament. Everything after this is the content of the cry, delivered as verse.
I recall those years of old, when we set out from Great Tang; before the cliff you saved me and freed me from calamity.
The lament opens on gratitude, and reaches back a long way. The cliff is the Mountain of Five Phases, where Wukong was pinned under the rock for five hundred years after the havoc in heaven, and where Tripitaka lifted the seal and let him out in Chapter 14. That is the debt this whole poem is built on: the master freed him first.
Through three mountains and six waters we met with demon-snares; ten thousand hardships, a thousand toils, cut me to the inmost gut.
三山六水, three mountains and six waters, is a way of saying "everywhere we have been" rather than a count. 魔障 is a fine word -- a demon-obstruction, used both for actual monsters and for the inner obstacles that block a practitioner. 割寸腸, cutting the inch of gut, is the standard Chinese image for grief; 寸 is the length-unit, used here for the innermost part of a person.
With alms-bowl at morning's meal, taking rich fare or poor; in Chan at dusk we lodged, now in a wood, now a hamlet.
The texture of the road, in two lines. Begging bowl in the morning, taking whatever came, rich or thin; Chan practice in the evening, sleeping in a wood or a farmstead. 朝 is read zhāo, morning, not the cháo that means a court or to face toward. What Wukong is remembering with affection is fourteen years of discomfort.
Single-minded I hoped to achieve the fruit of merit; how could I have known that today I would suffer such grievous hurt?
And the turn. All that, single-mindedly, in hope of reaching the goal -- and today, this. The poem ends on the question rather than an answer, which is where the chapter is too.
The lament is a regulated eight-line poem, four couplets, and it is the most tender thing Wukong says in the entire chapter. Half-drowned and just revived, he weeps -- and not for himself.
What he remembers is the debt. Tripitaka lifted the seal on the Mountain of Five Phases and let him out from under five hundred years of rock. Everything since has been the road: the alms-bowl at dawn, whatever food was going, a wood or a farm to sleep in, and demons the whole way. He recalls the hardship with something close to fondness, which tells you what the fourteen years have actually meant to him.
And then the last line turns it. Single-minded in hope of the goal -- and how could I have known it would come to this? The chapter has reached its lowest point. The Great Sage has tried force twice, water once, and his own body, and none of it worked. What comes next has to come from somewhere other than his own power, and the next passage is where the disciples finally say so.