皈依取經 Conversion and the Quest
逐句解 Line by line
The tally of seven sevens complete, they opened the cauldron to look; / my body sprang out, and I was fierce and swaggering again.
七七數完: 數 is shù, the noun — the count of seven sevens, forty-nine days in the crucible. 開鼎看: 看 is kàn. 兇張 is "fierce and blustering."
The gods shut their doors and had nothing that could hold me off; / the assembled sages took counsel and entreated the Buddha.
Two readings of one character, one line apart. 商量: 量 is liáng, to deliberate — against the liàng of 無量 in the very next couplet. 把佛央: 央 is "to beg, to entreat."
In truth the Tathāgata has power of dharma in abundance; / his wisdom is broad indeed and without measure.
廣無量: 量 is liàng, the noun "measure." The compliment is not idle padding: the chapter will end with Pilgrim going to Vulture Peak to ask for precisely this.
In his palm we laid our wager, and I turned my somersaults; / then he pressed me under a mountain, and my strength availed nothing.
觔斗: 斗 is dǒu, never dòu — the cloud-somersault that covers a hundred and eight thousand lǐ at a jump. 手中: 中 is zhōng; 將山: 將 is jiāng; 不能強: 強 is qiáng.
Only then did the Jade Emperor set out the Feast of Peace for Heaven, / and the Western Region came to be called the Field of Utmost Bliss.
安天會 is the Feast for the Pacification of Heaven, held in Chapter 7 after the capture. 極樂場: 樂 is lè — 極樂 translates Sukhāvatī, the Land of Utmost Bliss; 方稱: 稱 is chēng.
They kept Old Monkey pressed down five hundred years; / not a morsel of tea or rice did I taste.
五百載: 載 is zǎi. 一些: 一 shifts to yì before 些 (first tone). The five hundred years under the Mountain of Five Phases are the hinge between the uproar in heaven and the pilgrimage — the sentence in which the hero changes sides.
The Elder Golden Cicada came down into the world of men, / dispatched from the Eastern Land to do homage in the Buddha's country.
金蟬長老: 長 is zhǎng. Golden Cicada is Tripitaka in his previous existence — the Buddha's second disciple, exiled to ten mortal lives. 東土差他: 差 is chāi, dispatched on official business.
He would fetch the true scriptures and carry them back to his sovereign land, / that the Emperor of Great Tang might ferry over the dead.
度先亡: 度 is dù, the Buddhist "to ferry across, to deliver" — the Land and Water Mass of Chapters 11 and 12, held for the souls of those killed in Taizong's wars. The whole pilgrimage begins as a memorial service.
Guanyin urged me to take refuge in the good; / holding the teaching and keeping its discipline, I gave over my wildness.
觀音: 觀 is guān; 秉教: 教 is jiào, the doctrine. 迦持 stands for 加持, Sanskrit adhiṣṭhāna — to uphold the teaching and be upheld by it, the two directions at once.
Loosed from my affliction at the mountain's root, / I now go westward for the scripture-scrolls.
根下難: 難 is nàn, the noun for a calamity or an affliction, not the adjective nán, difficult. 解脫: 解 is jiě — and the word is also the Buddhist term for release, Sanskrit mokṣa. The poem lets both senses stand.
Foul fiend, have done with your roebuck-and-fox cunning: / give me back my Tang monk, that he may pay homage to the King of the Law."
還我唐僧: 還 is huán, give back, not hái. 獐狐智 is "the wit of roebuck and fox" — petty animal cunning. 法王, King of the Law, is the Buddha, and the poem lands on the rhyme-word it has been walking towards for thirty-five couplets.
The last eleven couplets turn the poem from a boast into a credential, and the Buddha is the pivot. Everything before that point is what Wukong could do and did; from the palm and the mountain onward, the sentences are things done to him — pressed down, kept, loosed, urged, converted. He does not resist the reversal, and the poem's whole rhetorical claim depends on it. The fiend should be frightened not because Old Monkey is strong but because Old Monkey now acts for a King of the Law.
The closing couplet gives the recitation its purpose, and it is a very small one. Thirty-five couplets of cosmic history — Subodhi, the peaches, the Jade Emperor, Erlang, the crucible, Vulture Peak, five hundred years under a mountain — come down at last to 還我唐僧: give me my master back. It is the same demand he made at the gate two chapters ago and will make again, and the autobiography has not improved his position by a hair. What it has done is put the answer on the record: fifteen couplets before the end, the diamond snare of Lord Lao.