請佛降魔 Heaven Sends for the Buddha
當時眾神把大聖攢在一處，卻不能近身，亂嚷亂鬥。早驚動玉帝，遂傳旨著遊奕靈官同翊聖真君上西方請佛老降伏。当时众神把大圣攒在一处，却不能近身，乱嚷乱斗。早惊动玉帝，遂传旨着游奕灵官同翊圣真君上西方请佛老降伏。
逐句解 Line by line
At that time the assembled gods pressed the Great Sage into their midst, yet could not get near him — all shouting, all fighting in confusion.
攢 is cuán here, to crowd and mass together, rather than zǎn, to hoard up. 一 before 處 (chù, falling tone) is yí. And note what all that massing achieves: 亂嚷亂鬥, all shouting and all fighting, is the combined strength of Heaven reduced to noise.
Soon the Jade Emperor was alarmed, and at once issued a decree dispatching the Roving Inspector Officer together with the True Lord Yisheng to go to the Western Quarter and invite the Old Buddha to subdue him.
傳旨著 takes 著 as zhuó, putting someone on a job. The two envoys are 遊奕靈官 and 翊聖真君. 降伏 keeps 降 as xiáng, to subdue. This single sentence is the hinge of the chapter: Heaven puts in writing that it cannot manage this, and that somebody else must.
This short hinge-passage decides everything that follows. Every instrument of celestial force has now failed in order — heavenly troops, Erlang, Laozi's furnace, Wang Lingguan, thirty-six Thunder Generals — and the Jade Emperor, alarmed (驚動), does the one thing left to him: he sends west for the Buddha. The verb is worth pausing on. It is 請, to invite. Heaven cannot order the Buddha about; it can only ask.
The handover from Daoist to Buddhist authority is the chapter's underlying shape. Everything that has failed is Daoist and celestial: the Jade Emperor's bureaucracy, Laozi's alchemy, the trigram furnace. What none of it can do is change the 心猿; it can only fight him to a standstill. By having Heaven concede the point itself and call on Śākyamuni, the story states its governing claim — a disordered mind is not subdued by power but converted by wisdom. Anthony C. Yu and Plaks both read this Daoist-to-Buddhist handoff as the backbone of the early chapters: syncretic throughout, but with Buddhist prajñā given the last word.