遇佛拜佛 Where I Meet A Buddha
行者道：「不可進去，此處少吉多凶。若有禍患，你莫怪我。」三藏道：「就是無佛，也必有個佛像。我弟子心願，遇佛拜佛，如何怪你？」行者道：「不可进去，此处少吉多凶。若有祸患，你莫怪我。」三藏道：「就是无佛，也必有个佛像。我弟子心愿，遇佛拜佛，如何怪你？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said, "We must not go in. There is little luck about this place and much harm."
The last plain warning anybody gives. 少吉多凶 is a four-graph formula out of the fortune-teller's vocabulary, balanced little-against-much, and it picks up the 凶氣 he reported from the ridge — the same word, the same worry, now stated as a forecast.
"If disaster comes of it, do not blame me."
Eight graphs to close his quotation, and he has stopped arguing. Fixing responsibility in advance is what a subordinate does when he has lost and knows it.
Tripitaka said, "Even if there is no Buddha, there is bound to be a Buddha image."
就是 once more, and the premise has slipped a second time: first it was Thunderclap, then a Buddha of some sort, now merely a statue of one. The conclusion has not moved a hair.
"It is this disciple's own vow: where I meet a Buddha I bow to a Buddha. How should I blame you?"
遇佛拜佛 — where I meet a Buddha I bow to a Buddha. The vow is unimpeachable, and it is being applied without anybody first asking whether the thing in front of him is a Buddha, which is the exact danger Pilgrim named. 子 reads zǐ in 弟子, the literary compound, not the throwaway suffix.
Two exchanges, and the argument collapses by concession. Tripitaka gives ground on every point of fact — not Thunderclap, perhaps not even a Buddha, perhaps only a statue — and none of it touches his conclusion, because his reason for going in was never a claim about the building in the first place.
遇佛拜佛 is the whole of it. The vow says nothing about checking the Buddha first, and a rule of that shape cannot be argued with by somebody pointing out that this one may be counterfeit. Pilgrim stops trying and settles for a disclaimer.