誰是真假 Guanyin Comes And Defers
我佛合掌道：「觀音尊者，你看那兩個行者，誰是真假？」菩薩道：「前日在弟子荒境，委不能辨。他又至天宮、地府，亦俱難認。特來拜告如來，千萬與他辨明辨明。」我佛合掌道：「观音尊者，你看那两个行者，谁是真假？」菩萨道：「前日在弟子荒境，委不能辨。他又至天宫、地府，亦俱难认。特来拜告如来，千万与他辨明辨明。」
逐句解 Line by line
Our Buddha joined his palms and said: "Venerable Guanyin, look at those two Pilgrims — which is the true and which the false?"
He asks the chapter's question of the one person who has already failed to answer it, which makes this a teaching device rather than an enquiry.
The Bodhisattva said: "The other day, in your disciple's poor domain, I truly could not tell.
荒境, poor domain, is Guanyin's modest word for Potalaka. 弟子 takes zǐ — she uses the same self-designation Wukong has been using, one rank up the ladder.
He went on again to the Heavenly Palace and the courts of the earth, and there too none could recognise them.
亦俱難認 — she confirms Wukong's whole record of failures independently, in four characters.
I have come especially to lay it before the Tathāgata: I beg you a thousand times, make it plain for them, make it plain."
辨明辨明, the doubled command — make it plain, make it plain. It is a note of everyday urgency, unusual coming from the Bodhisattva.
The Buddha asks Guanyin the question knowing she cannot answer it, and she answers honestly: 委不能辨, I truly could not tell. There is no defensiveness in it at all. She reports her own failure, confirms the failures of Heaven and the underworld, and asks for help twice over.
The doubled 辨明辨明 at the end is a small human touch on a figure the novel usually keeps composed. She has been carrying this case since the previous chapter, declined to rule on it, sent it upstairs, and watched it defeat every court in the cosmos. The repetition is the sound of somebody who wants the thing finished.
Structurally, her arrival is what turns the Buddha's verdict into an exposition. Had she not come, he would have named the fiend and the chapter would have ended five passages earlier. Because she is there, he explains — and the explanation is the passage everybody remembers.