菩薩嘆詩 The Bodhisattva's Lament
菩薩看罷，嘆惜不已，作詩一首。詩曰：菩萨看罢，叹惜不已，作诗一首。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
When the Bodhisattva had looked, she sighed without ceasing and composed a poem. It says:
In 不已 the 不 keeps bù before the dipping tone of 已; 一首 takes yì. 詩曰 introduces the eight-line regulated poem. She looks at her prisoner and writes him a poem, which is not how gaolers usually behave.
Pity the demon-monkey who would not serve the common good,
In 不奉公 the 不 takes bú before the falling tone of 奉.
who in his day, wild and arrogant, played the hero.
當 is dāng in 當年, back in those days. The poem opens on his past rather than his present, which is what makes it a lament and not a telling-off.
With a deceitful heart he wrecked the Peach Festival,
欺心 is the self-deceiving arrogance that lets a man talk himself into anything — the same word used of him during the fight with Nezha. The peach banquet is named as the specific charge.
and brazenly stole into the Tuṣita Palace.
兜率宮 is the palace in the Tuṣita Heaven where Laozi keeps his furnace and his pills, and where the monkey helped himself. 率 is read shuài here.
Among a hundred thousand troops he met no match,
中 is zhōng. A hundred thousand troops and not one of them a match for him: the poem concedes the boast before it states the fall.
and in the ninefold heaven his might held sway.
九重天 is the ninefold heaven; 重 is read chóng, a layer, not zhòng, heavy.
Since he met our Buddha the Tathāgata's snare,
自遭 marks the hinge of the poem. Everything before it is what he did; everything after is what was done to him.
what day shall he stretch free and show his powers again?
The poem ends on a question instead of a verdict — which is exactly why the monkey is able to answer it in the next passage.
At the sight of the pinned monkey the Bodhisattva sighs and writes an eight-line poem, the last of the chapter's inserted verses and a sharp change of key. The action treats Wukong as a culprit to be reformed. The poem mourns him, and sets his crimes against the sheer capability that made them possible.
It cuts both ways. It lists the offences — wrecking the Peach Festival, robbing the Tuṣita palace — and then lingers with obvious admiration on the unbeatable strength: 十萬軍中無敵手，九重天上有威風. Andrew Plaks notes that the novel never allows the monkey to become a simple villain. Even his punishment is framed as greatness put on hold, and the closing question — what day will he stretch free again? — comes close to sympathy.
Yu reads the lament as preparing the reader to take Wukong's coming redemption as a recovery rather than a pardon. His power was never the problem; the lack of any discipline on it was. What the poem grieves for is a force going to waste, and the pilgrimage is the channel that will finally put it to use.