Truly time speeds swiftly: before he knew it, seven times seven made forty-nine days, and Laozi's fire-cycle was complete. Of a sudden, one day, the brazier was opened to take out the elixir.

火候 (huǒ hou) — the "fire-timing," the precisely governed sequence of heats, a core term of alchemy. Forty-nine days (七七) is a charged Buddhist–Daoist interval. Laozi opens the furnace expecting ash and elixir; he gets neither.

The Great Sage, both hands shielding his eyes, was just then rubbing them and weeping, when he heard a sound at the brazier's mouth.

侮著: 著 = zhe, the durative aspect ("with hands covering"). The detail is almost comic — the most dangerous being in Heaven caught mid-eye-rub by smoke.

Suddenly opening his eyes, he saw the light; unable to hold back, he flexed his body in a single bound, leapt out of the elixir-brazier, and with a clattering crash kicked the Eight-Trigram Brazier over and made straight for the door.

將身一縱: disposal-jiāng; 一縱 takes yí (before zòng, 4th tone). 唿喇一聲: yì before shēng (1st tone). The furnace meant to destroy him is itself wrecked.

In a fluster the fire-stokers, brazier-tenders and the Ding-Jia crew rushed to seize him — and one by one he knocked them all flat, like a white-browed tiger gone epileptic, like a wind-mad single-horned dragon.

一班 takes yì (before bān, 1st tone); 一個個 takes yí (before gè, 4th tone). 好似: 似 = sì ("resemble"). The two animal similes — 白額虎, 獨角龍 — render his fury as elemental, beyond control.

Laozi gave chase and grabbed at him — but with one wrench the monkey threw him head-over-heels, and slipped free.

一把 takes yì (before bǎ, 3rd tone); 一捽 takes yì (before zuó, 2nd tone). 捽 (zuó), to wrench/yank. 倒栽蔥, "planted head-down like a scallion" — a pratfall for the lord of the furnace himself.

At once he drew the As-You-Will cudgel from his ear; facing the wind he gave it a shake, and it grew bowl-thick as before, gripped firm in his hand. Heedless of good or ill, once more he threw the Palace of Heaven into uproar, beating the Nine Luminary Stars behind barred doors and the Four Heavenly Kings into formless flight. A fine monkey-sprite! There is a poem to prove it. The poem says:

如意棒, the As-You-Will cudgel, sized at a thought. 幌一幌 is the V-一-V echo: 一 before 幌 (huǎng, 3rd tone) is yì. The lead-in 詩曰 rides the end of this prose segment; the three poem-sets follow.

His Primal-Unity body squares true with the Before-Heaven; through ten thousand kalpas, a thousand turns, it is only Self-So.

混元 (hùn yuán) — undifferentiated primal unity; 先天 (xiān tiān) — the "Before-Heaven," the prior, uncreated state. 自然 (zì rán) here is the Daoist "Self-So," spontaneous and uncaused. The poem reframes the monkey as a cosmic, pre-creational principle.

Vague and boundless, doing-nothing, one with the Great Monad; Thus-and-Thus, unmoving, it is named First Mystery.

無為 (wú wéi), non-action; 太乙 (Tài Yǐ), the Great Monad. 如如不動 is a Buddhist term — tathatā, "suchness," unmoving. The poem fuses Daoist and Chan vocabularies, as the whole chapter does.

Long refined in the brazier, yet no lead and mercury; beyond all things, deathless — this is the root-immortal.

鉛汞 (qiān gǒng), lead and mercury, the two prime agents of external alchemy. The line insists the monkey's immortality is not the laboratory kind: he is 本仙, immortal by origin. 長生: 長 = cháng (long-life).

Transformations without end, and still he transforms; of the Three Refuges and Five Precepts, say nothing at all.

三皈五戒 (sān guī wǔ jiè) — the Buddhist Three Refuges and Five Precepts. 還變化: 還 = hái ("again / still"). The defiant close — "say nothing of vows" — marks the monkey as still wholly unconverted, the very condition the chapter will end by correcting.

Another poem: A single point of numinous light pierces the Great Void; that staff of his is likewise so.

一點靈光 (yì diǎn líng guāng) — "one point of numinous light," the spark of spirit/consciousness; 一 before 點 (diǎn, 3rd tone) is yì. 太虛, the Great Void. The cudgel is made a figure for mind itself — formless, infinitely adaptable.

Now long, now short, used as one wills; crosswise or upright, ranged at will, free to furl or unfurl.

或長或短: 長 = cháng (length, "long-or-short"). The cudgel's plasticity — sizing to the wielder's intent — is the inner-alchemical image of a disciplined will that fits every situation. 卷舒 (juǎn shū), furl and unfurl.

Another poem: The ape-and-monkey, body of the Way, is matched to the human mind; the mind is the ape-and-monkey — the meaning runs deep.

This is the chapter's allegorical thesis stated outright: 心即猿猴, "the mind is the monkey." The 心猿 reading is not a later gloss but written into the text. 道體, the "body of the Way," makes the monkey the very substance of mind-on-the-path.

"Great Sage Equal to Heaven" is no empty boast; but the post of Bì-mǎ — how could that know his true note?

弼馬 (Bì mǎ) — "Keeper of the Horses," the demeaning office Heaven first fobbed him off with (Chapter 4). 知音, "one who knows the tune," i.e. a true match. The couplet argues the title fit and the office insulted — the grievance driving the whole revolt.

Horse and ape working as one, mind in accord with intent; bind them fast and tether them tight — seek not outside.

馬猿 (mǎ yuán) — the "horse of the will" (意馬) and the "monkey of the mind" (心猿), the classic paired figures for a scattered consciousness. "Bind fast, seek not outside" is direct cultivation-counsel: the work is inward discipline, not external search.

Let the ten thousand forms return to the true, following the single principle; one in tally with the Tathāgata, dwelling in the Twin Groves.

萬相: 相 = xiàng (forms/phenomena). 從一理: 一 before 理 (lǐ, 3rd tone) is yì — "the one principle." 雙林 (Shuāng lín), the twin sāla groves where the Buddha entered nirvāṇa. The poem ends by pointing past the rampage to the convergence with the Buddha that closes the chapter.