放聲大哭 Tears Before the Lotus Throne
正講處，只見白鸚哥飛來飛去，知是菩薩呼喚，木叉與善財遂向前引導，至寶蓮臺下。行者望見菩薩，倒身下拜，止不住淚如泉湧，放聲大哭。菩薩教木叉與善財扶起道：「悟空，有甚傷感之事，明明說來。莫哭，莫哭，我與你救苦消災也。」行者垂淚再拜道：「當年弟子為人，曾受那個氣來？自蒙菩薩解脫天災，秉教沙門，保護唐僧往西天拜佛求經，我弟子捨身拚命，救解他的魔障，就如老虎口裡奪脆骨，蛟龍背上揭生鱗。只指望歸真正果，洗孽除邪。怎知那長老背義忘恩，直迷了一片善緣，更不察皂白之苦。」正讲处，只见白鹦哥飞来飞去，知是菩萨呼唤，木叉与善财遂向前引导，至宝莲台下。行者望见菩萨，倒身下拜，止不住泪如泉涌，放声大哭。菩萨教木叉与善财扶起道：「悟空，有甚伤感之事，明明说来。莫哭，莫哭，我与你救苦消灾也。」行者垂泪再拜道：「当年弟子为人，曾受那个气来？自蒙菩萨解脱天灾，秉教沙门，保护唐僧往西天拜佛求经，我弟子舍身拼命，救解他的魔障，就如老虎口里夺脆骨，蛟龙背上揭生鳞。只指望归真正果，洗孽除邪。怎知那长老背义忘恩，直迷了一片善缘，更不察皂白之苦。」
逐句解 Line by line
Just as they were talking, a white parrot came flying back and forth, and they knew the Bodhisattva was calling. Mokṣa and Sudhana went ahead to lead him in, and brought him below the Precious Lotus Throne.
The summons is a bird. 正講處 uses 處 for a moment rather than a place -- "just at the point when" -- and it reads chù, the same as the place-word and distinct from the chǔ of dealing-with. The white parrot is the Bodhisattva's messenger, and its flight back and forth is the whole of the message; nobody has to be told anything.
Pilgrim looked up and saw the Bodhisattva. He threw himself down and bowed, and could not stop his tears, which welled up like a spring; then he lifted his voice and wept aloud.
倒身 is the toppling dǎo -- the body thrown down flat in obeisance, not the "on the contrary" dào. The novel almost never lets Wukong cry, and the sequence here is careful: he sees her, he goes down, he cannot stop the tears, and only then does the sound come.
The Bodhisattva had Mokṣa and Sudhana raise him up, and said: “Wukong, what grievous matter is there? Speak it out plainly.
She asks him to make his case. 教 is causative here, jiào -- she has the two attendants raise him -- the same use as when she has Tripitaka take Wukong back later in the chapter. 有甚 is the question word 甚 at shén, not the intensifier shèn an automatic reading supplies.
“Do not weep, do not weep. I shall rescue you from bitterness and dispel your calamity.”
救苦消災 sets two four-character formulas of the Bodhisattva's job description side by side. The first half of it, 救苦, is part of her own standing title -- 救苦救難 -- which Sudhana had just finished reciting at Wukong in the previous passage. She is offering him what the doorkeeper said she was for.
Pilgrim let his tears fall, bowed again, and said: “In the years when I was a man, what insult did I ever take from anyone?
The brief opens with his standing. 為人 is 為 as the linking verb, wéi -- to be a man, to exist as one -- not the wèi of "for the sake of". 那個 sits inside a question that expects no answer and is the interrogative 那, nǎ: not "that insult" but "what insult". The sense is that he never took any.
“Since the Bodhisattva delivered me from the calamity of Heaven, I have upheld the teaching at the Śramaṇa gate and guarded the Tang Monk on his way west to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures. Your disciple has thrown away his body and staked his life to deliver him from his demon-barriers — as though snatching brittle bone out of a tiger's mouth, or prising a living scale from a flood-dragon's back.
Two images from the animal world, and they are the best thing in the speech. 拚命 keeps 拚 at pàn, the old sense of throwing something away as worthless -- here, your own life. Readers who expect pīn are reading it as the modern simplified form of a different character, which this traditional text does not intend. 解 turns up twice, jiě both times: 解脫 to release, 救解 to deliver. 背上 is the noun "back", bèi -- and the very next segment has the same character in 背義忘恩, still bèi, but meaning to turn your back on something. Snatching brittle bone from a tiger's mouth and prising a live scale off a 蛟龍's back are not scriptural images. They are the images of somebody who grew up wild.
“I looked for nothing but to come home to the truth and its true fruit, to wash off my sins and cast out what was evil.
Two four-character formulas in parallel: 歸真正果 states the goal, coming home to the truth and its true fruit, and 洗孽除邪 states the method, washing off sin and casting out evil. He is describing a contract he thought he had signed.
“How was I to know the elder would turn his back on right and forget a kindness, letting one whole span of good karma be lost in his confusion, never once looking into the bitterness of which was black and which was white?”
The word the whole chapter turns on. 皂白 is black and white -- the colours a dyer sorts, and by extension the difference between right and wrong. It is kept as an image here rather than flattened into "right and wrong", because the Bodhisattva picks the phrase straight up and rules on it in the next passage, and because the chapter's closing couplet ends on it. 長老 takes 長 at zhǎng, elder.
The novel almost never lets Wukong cry, so when it does the moment is worth marking. He has been beaten by the band, refused by his master and mocked at the gate, and the first face that meets him without hostility undoes him completely. The staging is deliberate: the parrot summons, two attendants lead him in, and he gets as far as prostrating himself before the tears arrive.
What follows is not a lament but a legal brief. He states his standing before he entered service, the terms he entered on, the risks he has run and the return he expected -- and the two images he picks for those risks, bone snatched from a tiger's jaws and a scale prised off a living dragon, come from the animal world he was born into rather than from the scriptures he now serves. He argues, in other words, like himself.
The last word of the speech sets the chapter's terms. 皂白, black and white, is a plea about examination rather than about guilt: he does not deny the killings, he complains that nobody has looked into them. The Bodhisattva will take the phrase up directly, and her answer is not the one he is asking for.