第一要行 The First Thing Is Convenience
他傷的是他的子民，與你何干？且來寬衣服睡覺，莫替古人耽憂。」三藏滴淚道：「徒弟啊，你是一個不慈憫的。我出家人積功累行，第一要行方便。他伤的是他的子民，与你何干？且来宽衣服睡觉，莫替古人耽忧。」三藏滴泪道：「徒弟啊，你是一个不慈悯的。我出家人积功累行，第一要行方便。
逐句解 Line by line
"It is his own people he harms — what has it to do with you?
The clinching argument of Bajie's speech, and it is the oldest excuse there is. 子民 zǐ mín — literally the ruler's children-people — is the standard term for subjects, and it is a horrible word to use here, since the harm in question is being done to actual children.
"Come and loosen your robe and sleep, and do not fret on behalf of people long dead."
覺 is jiào in 睡覺, to sleep — not the jué of waking or realising. 莫替古人耽憂 — do not worry on behalf of the ancients — is a proverb, and Bajie has got it wrong on purpose or by accident: the children are not ancients, they are alive and five streets away.
Tripitaka said through his tears, "Disciple, you are a creature without compassion.
Tripitaka does not argue with the proverb. He makes it personal, and it is one of the very few times in the novel he calls a disciple something worse than lazy.
"We who have left the household life pile up merit and gather up good conduct, and the first thing is to be of use to others.
累 is lěi here, to accumulate — not the lèi that means weary. And in 第一, 一 keeps its full yī, because an ordinal is not a count. 行方便 xíng fāng biàn is a Buddhist term of art: 方便 translates the Sanskrit upāya, the skilful means a teacher uses to help someone along, and in ordinary speech it long ago softened into simple helpfulness — doing somebody a good turn.
The two arguments in this passage are the whole moral question of the chapter, and the novel puts them in the mouths of a pig and a man who faints. Bajie says: not your country, not your subjects, go to bed. Tripitaka says: our entire vocation is being of use to people we do not know.
He answers with a technical term, which is characteristic. The word he reaches for is the one Buddhist teaching uses for the skilful means by which anyone is helped toward release — and which the language has since worn down into ordinary everyday helpfulness. Both senses are live in the line. Tripitaka is claiming that the small kindness and the great deliverance are the same discipline.