化鉤降妖 The Barbed Hooks Subdue the Fiend
行者卻道：「菩薩啊，那怪物不怕痛，還拔刀哩。」菩薩見了，喚上木叉：「且莫傷他生命。」卻又把楊柳枝垂下，念聲「唵」字咒語，那天罡刀都變做倒鬚鉤兒，狼牙一般，莫能褪得。那妖精卻才慌了，扳著刀尖，痛聲苦告道：「菩薩，我弟子有眼無珠，不識你廣大法力。千乞垂慈，饒我性命，再不敢恃惡，願入法門戒行也。」行者却道：「菩萨啊，那怪物不怕痛，还拔刀哩。」菩萨见了，唤上木叉：「且莫伤他生命。」却又把杨柳枝垂下，念声「唵」字咒语，那天罡刀都变做倒须钩儿，狼牙一般，莫能褪得。那妖精却才慌了，扳着刀尖，痛声苦告道：「菩萨，我弟子有眼无珠，不识你广大法力。千乞垂慈，饶我性命，再不敢恃恶，愿入法门戒行也。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said: "Bodhisattva — that monster doesn't fear the pain, and is still pulling out the blades."
Wukong's report is almost admiring. 那 points, so nà; 還 in 還拔刀 is hái, still pulling.
The Bodhisattva, seeing this, called Moksha up: "Do not yet take his life."
The most important line in the sequence: do not yet take his life. Everything that follows is shaped by that limit.
Then she lowered the willow sprig again and recited the syllable "Oṃ," and those Sky-Net Blades all turned into backward-barbed hooks, like a wolf's fangs, that could not be slipped off.
So the blades become barbs — hooks turned backward like a wolf's fangs, which go in easily and will not come out. It is a device for holding rather than killing. 倒 in 倒鬚鉤 is dào, reversed or backward-facing — the other sense from the dǎo of toppling. 那 points, so nà; 都 is dōu; 兒 in 鉤兒 is the light er ending; 得 in 褪得 is the light de.
Only then was the fiend frightened, and, clutching at the blade-points, cried out in pain and bitter entreaty: "Bodhisattva, your disciple had eyes but no pupils, and failed to recognize your vast and mighty power.
And now he breaks. 有眼無珠 — eyes but no pupils — is still the standard self-reproach for having failed to recognize somebody important, and it is exactly what he did. 那 points, so nà; 扳 is bān, clutching; 著 is zhe; 子 in 弟子 is zǐ.
I beg a thousandfold your mercy — spare my life, and I'll never again presume on my wickedness, but will enter the gate of the Law and keep its discipline."
The vow, offered in exchange for his life. 法門 is the gate of the Law, the Buddhist community; 行 in 戒行 is xíng, the keeping of the precepts.
The demon's refusal to yield forces the next turn. Guanyin stays Moksha's killing blow — do not yet take his life — and transforms the blades into backward-barbed hooks that cannot be withdrawn, a device that subdues without slaying and holds him fast in his own pain. Only now, unable to free himself, does he break: he clutches at the blade-points and begs, confessing that he had eyes but no pupils and was blind to her power, and vows to enter the Law. The passage enacts the chapter's doctrine of compassionate force. The aim is conversion, not destruction, and the barbs that hold him are, in their way, an instrument of mercy, bringing him to the submission that will save him.
The barbs are the chapter's most precise theological image. A blade kills and a hook holds, and the whole difference between destroying an enemy and converting one lies in that choice. Guanyin does not lessen his pain; she makes it inescapable, and the confession follows. It is an uncomfortable kind of mercy, and the book does not soften it — but the measure of it is that he is alive to be named at the end of the chapter, which no other outcome would have allowed.