五行壓猴 Sealed Under the Five Phases
好大聖，急縱身又要跳出，被佛祖翻掌一撲，把這猴王推出西天門外，將五指化作金、木、水、火、土五座聯山，喚名「五行山」，輕輕的把他壓住。眾雷神與阿儺、迦葉，一個個合掌稱揚道：「善哉，善哉！」好大圣，急纵身又要跳出，被佛祖翻掌一扑，把这猴王推出西天门外，将五指化作金、木、水、火、土五座联山，唤名「五行山」，轻轻的把他压住。众雷神与阿傩、迦叶，一个个合掌称扬道：「善哉，善哉！」
逐句解 Line by line
Fine Great Sage! He swiftly sprang to leap out again — but the Buddha turned his palm and gave a push, thrust the Monkey King out beyond the Western Heaven-gate, and changed his five fingers into five joined mountains of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth, named the "Mountain of Five Phases," and lightly pressed him down beneath them.
一撲 takes yì before pū (level tone); 將五指化作 is 將 as jiāng, with 作 as zuò. Five fingers become the 五行山, the Mountain of Five Phases: metal, wood, water, fire, earth. That system — in which everything in the world is paired off with one of the five agents and with the trigrams of the 易經 — is the operating grammar of this cosmos, and here the whole of it is folded into a single act of restraint. The act is 輕輕的, lightly done.
The Thunder Gods and Ānanda and Kāśyapa, every one, joined their palms in praise, saying: "Excellent, excellent!"
一個個 takes yí before gè (falling tone). 善哉 (shàn zāi) renders Sanskrit sādhu — well done, the standard Buddhist cry of approval, and saying it seals the deed as righteous. Note who is saying it: Daoist thunder-gods, in chorus with the Buddha's own disciples. The blended order is restored in one voice.
In the year he hatched from the egg and learned to be human, he set his will on cultivation and truly attained the Way.
卵化 is hatched from an egg — the stone egg of chapter 1. 學為人 keeps 為 as wéi, learned to be a man. The verdict-poem opens generously, granting outright that he really did attain the Way. Which makes the fall worse, not better.
Through ten thousand kalpas, unmoved, he might have dwelt in the fair realm; but in one morning, a single change scattered his spirit.
一朝: 一 before 朝 (zhāo, level tone) is yì, and 朝 here is zhāo, a morning, not cháo, a court. The couplet swings on that word — 萬劫, ten thousand kalpas, against 一朝, one morning. An eternity of standing thrown away inside a day.
Cheating Heaven, deceiving its lord, he lusted for the high seat; affronting the sages, stealing the elixir, he threw the great order into chaos.
大倫 (dà lún) is the great bonds — the cardinal relationships, ruler and subject, father and son, that hold a Confucian world together. The line lists the offences in matched pairs: against Heaven, against the throne, against the sages, against the elixir, against order itself. That is Confucian vocabulary laid over a Buddhist and Daoist story without apology, and the novel does this constantly.
His cup of evil now brim-full, today he meets requital; who knows on what day he will turn himself over again?
惡貫滿盈 (è guàn mǎn yíng) is worth knowing. The 貫 is the string old coins were threaded on, so the picture is of a man's evils strung up one by one until the string is full and payment falls due. Then 翻身, to turn the body over, which means both things at once here: to heave yourself out from under a mountain, and to turn your fortunes around. The chapter leaves that word hanging as a question.
The defeat is instant and effortless. The monkey springs to somersault again; the Buddha turns his palm, pushes him out past the Western Heaven-gate, and changes five fingers into the 五行山, the Mountain of Five Phases — metal, wood, water, fire, earth — pressing him under it 輕輕的, lightly. That adverb is the whole point. What the entire celestial army could not manage by force, the Buddha does as an afterthought.
The symbolism is precise. The 五行 are the five agents whose combinations, in the 易經 tradition and the system of matching that grew from it, generate and govern everything that happens. To imprison the 心猿 beneath them is to return the unbound mind to the very pattern it tried to overthrow — not destruction but containment inside the structure of reality. In alchemical terms the wild mind is finally fixed, 定 — which is the word standing in the chapter title: 五行山下定心猿, beneath the Mountain of Five Phases the mind-monkey is stilled.
The verdict-poem is notably fair-minded. It grants that the monkey truly attained the Way (果道真) before it lists his offences against Heaven, throne, sages and the 大倫. And it ends not in triumph but on a question: 不知何日得翻身, who knows on what day he will turn himself over again. 翻身 is deliberately double — crawling out from under a mountain, and turning one's fortunes around. That open ending is the seed of the rest of the novel. The five-hundred-year confinement is a sentence, but also, as Anthony C. Yu stresses, a refining, waiting for the pilgrim who will free him.