佛祖冷笑 The Buddha's Cold Rebuke
佛祖聽言，呵呵冷笑道：「你那廝乃是個猴子成精，焉敢欺心，要奪玉皇上帝尊位？他自幼修持，苦歷過一千七百五十劫。每劫該十二萬九千六百年。你算他該多少年數，方能享受此無極大道？你那個初世為人的畜生，如何出此大言！不當人子！不當人子！折了你的壽算，趁早皈依，切莫胡說！但恐遭了毒手，性命頃刻而休，可惜了你的本來面目。」佛祖听言，呵呵冷笑道：「你那厮乃是个猴子成精，焉敢欺心，要夺玉皇上帝尊位？他自幼修持，苦历过一千七百五十劫。每劫该十二万九千六百年。你算他该多少年数，方能享受此无极大道？你那个初世为人的畜生，如何出此大言！不当人子！不当人子！折了你的寿算，趁早皈依，切莫胡说！但恐遭了毒手，性命顷刻而休，可惜了你的本来面目。」
逐句解 Line by line
The Buddha heard him out and laughed a cold "ha-ha": "You wretch are but a monkey become a spirit — how dare you cheat your own heart and scheme to seize the honored seat of the Jade Emperor?
那廝 takes 那 as nà, the pointing word that, not nǎ, which. 成精 (chéng jīng) is to become a spirit: what happens when an animal or an object cultivates long enough to turn into something that talks. Using it here is a demotion, and a deliberate one. The Buddha refuses the monkey's account of himself as a cosmic immortal and files him instead under beast that learned tricks. And 欺心 is the opening lyric's word, come back exactly.
He has cultivated himself from infancy, bitterly passing through one thousand seven hundred and fifty kalpas. Each kalpa is one hundred twenty-nine thousand six hundred years. Reckon how many years that makes — only then may one enjoy this Boundless Great Way.
一千七百: 一 before 千 (qiān, level tone) is yì. The figure of 十二萬九千六百年 to a kalpa is not decorative arithmetic. It is exactly one cosmic 元 (yuán) in Shào Yōng's 《皇極經世》, the chronology chapter 1 laid out. The Buddha answers presumption with scale — and makes the monkey do the sum himself.
You beast, only first entering upon human form — how dare you utter such big words! Unbecoming of a human! Unbecoming of a human! You shorten your own allotted span — submit at once, and by all means talk no nonsense!
初世為人 keeps 為 as wéi, to be or become. 不當人子 takes 當 as dàng, fitting or proper: not fit to be anybody's child, an old phrase of reproach roughly equal to you ought to be ashamed. He says it twice. 折 (zhé) is to cut short, 壽算 your reckoned span of years — you are shortening your own life by talking like this. 切莫 keeps 切 as qiè.
I fear only that you will meet a cruel hand, your life ended in an instant — and what a pity that would be for your Original Face."
本來面目 (běn lái miàn mù) is the Original Face, the Chan term for one's true nature, from the famous question in the Platform Sūtra: what was your original face, before your parents were born? The warning is double-edged. He is threatening death, and yet the phrase he reaches for gives away what he actually cares about — the buried Buddha-nature under all the noise, which the whole pilgrimage will exist to recover.
The rebuke answers the boast-poem point for point, and its weapon is scale. The monkey claimed the throne by strength and by the logic of rotation (皇帝輪流做); the Buddha replies with arithmetic. The Jade Emperor earned his seat across one thousand seven hundred and fifty kalpas, each of 129,600 years. That figure is not picked at random — it is precisely one cosmic 元 in the Shào Yōng chronology the novel set out in chapter 1, so the rebuke quietly brings the entire 《皇極經世》 time-frame down on a few centuries of monkey.
The deeper move is a ruling about category. The Buddha throws out the monkey's self-description altogether: not a cosmic immortal but a 猴子成精, a beast that became a sprite, only just arrived at human form. Read as inner alchemy or as Chan, this is the 心猿 being told the truth about its actual station — enormous in raw power, infantile in understanding.
Yet the rebuke ends not on the threat but on 本來面目, the Original Face — the most loaded phrase in Chan, the nature one had before father and mother were born. That the Buddha should pity the loss of the monkey's Original Face even while warning him of death tells you what is really at stake here. As Anthony C. Yu notes, the punishment about to fall is never merely a sentence; the five hundred years under the mountain are a refining confinement, aimed at exactly the nature the Buddha has just named.