一茶一飯 One Tea And One Meal
行者又笑道：「越不停當。但說要了田，就要養馬當差，納糧辦草，黃昏不得睡，五鼓不得眠，好倒弄殺人也。」眾老道：「諸般不要，卻將何謝？」行者道：「我出家人，但只是一茶一飯，便是謝了。」眾老喜道：「這個容易。但不知你怎麼拿他？」行者又笑道：「越不停当。但说要了田，就要养马当差，纳粮办草，黄昏不得睡，五鼓不得眠，好倒弄杀人也。」众老道：「诸般不要，却将何谢？」行者道：「我出家人，但只是一茶一饭，便是谢了。」众老喜道：「这个容易。但不知你怎么拿他？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim laughed again. "Worse and worse.
當 is dàng in 停當, settled or in order — so 越不停當 is "the more you look at it the less it will do."
"The moment you speak of taking land, you must keep a horse and do your term of service, hand over your grain and find your fodder; no sleep at dusk and no rest at the fifth watch. It would fairly be the death of a man."
This is a joke about tax. 當差 is dāng chāi, to work off the labour a landholder owed the state — so many days a year on the roads or the dykes, alongside the grain levy and the fodder levy. 得 is the full verb dé in both of the 不得 here, because each stands in front of its own verb rather than after one. 倒 is the adverb dào: the chapter writes 好道 twice in this same position and 好倒 once, which is the same word under a different character.
The elders said, "You will have none of it. With what, then, are we to thank you?"
將 is the instrumental jiāng — "by what means" — not the jiàng of a general.
Pilgrim said, "We have left the household life. A cup of tea and a bowl of rice — that is thanks enough."
The two numbers take the ordinary tone slide, and they take it differently: the first sits before a level tone and the second before a falling one.
The elders said gladly, "That is easily done.
Their relief is at being able to pay anything at all, having just had a thousand mu turned down.
"But we do not know how you mean to catch him."
Eight characters — and a quotation-closing tail of exactly eight does not fold backward. The rule takes tails of fewer than eight, so this one stands.
Pilgrim's objection to the land is not spiritual but administrative. Land means a horse to keep, labour service to perform, grain to hand over and fodder to find, and no sleep at either end of the night. He turns down a monastery on the grounds that it comes with paperwork.
The joke works because the obligations are named exactly and in the order a landholder would actually meet them. The elders offered him a settled life; he has costed it and found it worse than the road.
What he asks for instead is what they gave him unasked on the first evening: a meal. The whole negotiation — deposit, contract, appraisal, a thousand mu of farmland — closes on the smallest sum available, and the elders are relieved rather than insulted.