淨瓶收海 一步一拜 The Vase Reclaims the Sea; a Bow at Every Step
菩薩念動真言，把淨瓶攲倒，將那一海水依然收去，更無半點存留。對行者道：「悟空，這妖精已是降了，卻只是野心不定。等我教他一步一拜，只拜到落伽山，方才收法。你如今快早去洞中，救你師父去來。」行者轉身叩頭道：「有勞菩薩遠涉，弟子當送一程。」菩薩道：「你不消送，恐怕誤了你師父性命。」行者聞言，歡喜叩別。那妖精早歸了正果，五十三參，參拜觀音。菩萨念动真言，把净瓶攲倒，将那一海水依然收去，更无半点存留。对行者道：「悟空，这妖精已是降了，却只是野心不定。等我教他一步一拜，只拜到落伽山，方才收法。你如今快早去洞中，救你师父去来。」行者转身叩头道：「有劳菩萨远涉，弟子当送一程。」菩萨道：「你不消送，恐怕误了你师父性命。」行者闻言，欢喜叩别。那妖精早归了正果，五十三参，参拜观音。
逐句解 Line by line
The Bodhisattva intoned the true words, tilted the pure vase, and drew that whole sea of water back into it as before, until not half a drop remained.
A whole sea goes back into a bottle at a word - 更無半點存留, not half a drop left behind. The 淨瓶 is Guanyin's pure vase, the kuṇḍikā she carries in every image of her, and this is the only place the chapter names it.
To Pilgrim she said, "Wukong, this fiend is now subdued, yet his wild heart is still unsettled."
降 is xiáng here, brought to heel, not the jiàng of coming down from above. Six of its seven appearances in the chapter take that reading; the odd one out is 降旨, issuing a decree, much later on.
"Let me make him bow at every step, bowing all the way to Mount Potalaka, and only then shall I withdraw the spell."
Her sentence is the punishment: a full prostration at every single step, all the way to 落伽山 - Mount Potalaka, or Putuo, her island seat. Pilgrims still do this on Chinese mountains, three steps and a bow, for weeks at a time.
"Go now, and quickly, into the cave to rescue your master."
去來 looks like "go and come," but the 來 is doing nothing except pushing the verb along - "off you go." Sha Monk uses the same pairing later, at the river.
Pilgrim turned and knocked his head to the ground, saying, "I have troubled the Bodhisattva to come so far; your disciple ought to see you off a stretch of the way."
He kowtows and offers to walk her part of the way home. 一程 is one stage of a road. The 一 is yì here because 程 is a rising tone; it would be yí before a falling one, and yī at the end of a phrase.
"You need not escort me," said the Bodhisattva, "lest you delay and endanger your master's life."
She declines, and the reason is a good one. 不消 is everyday speech for "no need to," with 消 in the sense of requiring rather than melting away; it comes back twice more in the chapter.
At these words Pilgrim, rejoicing, bowed his farewell.
His second head-to-the-ground bow in one short exchange. 叩別 is to take leave that way.
The fiend had by now entered the true fruit, and among the fifty-three visitations paid his homage to Guanyin.
And the fiend is folded into scripture. 五十三參 counts the fifty-three teachers the pilgrim boy Sudhana (善財童子) calls on in the Gaṇḍavyūha sutra, going from one to the next until he has the whole teaching. The Red Boy has just become that boy - which is why the child standing at Guanyin's right hand in Chinese temples is him.
The vase swallowing back its own ocean is a set-piece of Guanyin's power, and the water in it is 甘露, the sweet dew of the previous scene. Her sentence on the boy is not imprisonment but a walking penance: 一步一拜, a full prostration at every step, the whole way to her island.
The last line does something larger and does it very quietly. In one clause the defeated demon becomes Sudhana, the boy of the fifty-three visitations, and a Huayan pilgrimage narrative is bolted onto the novel's own machinery for converting enemies. If you have seen a Guanyin altar with a small attendant on her right, you have seen the end of this scene.
Pilgrim, meanwhile, is all courtesy - two kowtows in seven lines - and gets waved off with the practical objection that his master is still tied up somewhere.