原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
我有金線 I Have Golden Threads
行者笑道：「我有金線在身，你不曾見哩。」即伸手下去，尾上拔了三根毫毛，捻一把，叫聲：「變！」行者笑道：「我有金线在身，你不曾见哩。」即伸手下去，尾上拔了三根毫毛，捻一把，叫声：「变！」
逐句解 Line by line
行者笑道：「我有金線在身，你不曾見哩。」
行者笑道：「我有金线在身，你不曾见哩。」
Pilgrim laughed. "I have golden threads about me. You have never seen them."
在身 — about his person. He answers a question about learning with an answer about equipment, which is his whole method in one move.
即伸手下去，尾上拔了三根毫毛，捻一把，叫聲：「變！」
即伸手下去，尾上拔了三根毫毛，捻一把，叫声：「变！」
He reached down at once, plucked three hairs from his tail, rolled them between his fingers and cried, "Change!"
一把 shifts tone in the ordinary way before the third tone that follows. 毫毛 are the transformable body hairs, the standing resource he reaches for whenever equipment is wanted.
The answer to a bibliography is three hairs off a tail. Tripitaka named four medical classics; Pilgrim reaches behind him, and the mismatch is the joke the whole quarrel has been building towards.
His last line is worth hearing precisely. Not 'I know medicine' — he has never claimed that — but that his master has not seen everything he carries. It is perfectly true, and it is not an answer to anything that was asked.