再不離身 Never Off His Body
卻不知他的鈴兒放在何處?」娘娘道:「他那肯放下?只是帶在腰間,行住坐臥,再不離身。」却不知他的铃儿放在何处?」娘娘道:「他那肯放下?只是带在腰间,行住坐卧,再不离身。」
逐句解 Line by line
"But I do not know where he keeps those bells of his."
The question the entire visit was for, and it arrives eleven characters long at the end of a remark about sneezing. 鈴兒 takes the suffix at ér.
The queen said: "How would he ever put them down?
那 is nǎ again, the second rhetorical use in this short scene. She answers a question about place with a question about likelihood — which is a way of saying the answer is worse than he expects.
"He wears them at his waist, and walking, standing, sitting or lying he never has them off his body."
行住坐臥 — walking, standing, sitting, lying — is a Buddhist formula for the four postures of the body, used to mean at every moment of the day. It is monastic vocabulary, and it turns up here in a demon's bedchamber. 行 is xíng.
Two questions and two answers, and the second answer shuts the door the first one opened. Where does he keep them? He does not keep them — he wears them. Walking, standing, sitting, lying: the formula covers the whole of a life and leaves no interval to steal in.
This is where the plan has to change. Wukong came for a location and has been told there is no location, only a body with the things strapped to it. Everything he proposes next follows from that one sentence.