鑒貌辨色 Read The Face And Manner
樵子道：「大丈夫鑒貌辨色，只以求扇為名，莫認往時之溲話，管情借得。」行者聞言，深深唱個大喏道：「謝樵哥教誨，我去也。」樵子道：「大丈夫鉴貌辨色，只以求扇为名，莫认往时之溲话，管情借得。」行者闻言，深深唱个大喏道：「谢樵哥教诲，我去也。」
逐句解 Line by line
The woodcutter said, 'A great man reads the face and judges the manner. Just make the fan your business and don't bring up the foul words of former days — depend upon it, you'll get the loan.'
A piece of proverbial wisdom about handling people. 鑒貌辨色 — examine the face, read the expression — is the settled phrase for social tact, and it is still what Chinese reaches for when somebody needs to be told to watch the room before opening their mouth. 溲話 is coarse or filthy talk. 管情 means "depend on it, assuredly." 為 is the linking wéi in 為名, to serve as the stated purpose.
Pilgrim heard him out, made a deep and ceremonious salutation, and said, 'My thanks for your instruction, brother woodcutter. I'll be off.'
唱喏 is to bow with a spoken salutation, and in that pairing 喏 is rě, not the nuò of saying yes. The Great Sage bows deeply to a woodcutter for a piece of advice about tact, which is not a thing he does often.
The advice is worldly and it is good. A great man reads the face and judges the manner: watch how she takes it, keep to the business in hand, and above all do not raise the old quarrel. It is the sort of thing you might be told before a difficult meeting with a creditor, and the woodcutter offers it without any sense that the parties involved are a demon king's wife and an immortal ape.
溲話 is worth pausing on — coarse talk, filth. He is not asking Pilgrim to suppress a painful memory; he is telling him the whole subject is ugly and beneath the transaction. The framing is a shopkeeper's.
Pilgrim's response is the real substance of the passage. He makes a deep ceremonial bow — 唱喏, a full salutation, with 深深 to mark how low he goes — and thanks the man for his instruction. The Great Sage Equal to Heaven has just been coached in tact by somebody cutting firewood, and has taken the lesson without a trace of the insolence he shows to Bodhisattvas.