大慈大悲 Show Us Great Compassion
老爺在上，我等怎敢欺心，盜取塔中之寶！萬望爺爺憐念，方以類聚，物以群分，捨大慈大悲，廣施法力，拯救我等性命。」老爷在上，我等怎敢欺心，盗取塔中之宝！万望爷爷怜念，方以类聚，物以群分，舍大慈大悲，广施法力，拯救我等性命。」
逐句解 Line by line
"Your Reverence being above us — how should we dare deceive our own hearts and steal the treasure out of the pagoda!"
欺心 is cheating your own heart — an offence against yourself before it is an offence against anybody else, and it is the strongest denial a monk has available. The printed text closes the sentence with an exclamation mark and not a question mark.
"We beg Your Reverence to have pity on us. Like gathers with like and creatures divide by their kinds — bestow the great mercy and the great compassion, spread abroad the power of the Law, and save our lives."
方以類聚，物以群分 — like gathers with like, and creatures divide by their kinds — is quoted from the 繫辭 commentary to the 《易經》, where the words that follow are 吉凶生矣, and from that good and ill fortune arise. And the monks are quietly answering the proverb Tripitaka used when he first caught sight of them in the street, which turned on this same character 類. He said a creature is wounded by what happens to its kind; they are now asking him to act on it.
The plea is built out of the listener. Tripitaka explained his own pity for these men, before he knew a thing about them, with a proverb about fellow-feeling within a kind; the monks close their account by quoting the 《易經》 to the same effect and then asking for exactly what that principle would oblige. It is a well-made argument and there is no reason to think it insincere.
What they ask for is also carefully limited. Not justice, not the king's punishment, not even the recovery of the treasure — 拯救我等性命, save our lives. Two cohorts are already dead and the third is asking to survive. The chapter will give them a great deal more than that, but they do not ask for it.