原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
偏你聽見 Why Only You
行者道：「老孫也不曾聽見。師父，他叫甚麼？偏你聽見？」行者道：「老孙也不曾听见。师父，他叫甚么？偏你听见？」
逐句解 Line by line
行者道：「老孫也不曾聽見。
行者道：「老孙也不曾听见。
Pilgrim said, "Old Monkey did not hear it either.
The third witness is himself, and he enters his own testimony last and on the same footing as the others. It is a scrupulous way to lose an argument.
師父，他叫甚麼？
师父，他叫甚么？
Master, what is she calling?
Another bare question-word 甚, shén. He asks for the content, which is the right next question and gets a real answer.
偏你聽見？」
偏你听见？」
Why should you alone hear it?"
偏 is "of all people, precisely you" — a word with a grievance in it. Four characters, and they contain the entire case.
This is the best argument made by anybody in chapter 80, and it is made in twenty characters. Three of us heard nothing. You heard something. What does that tell you about what you heard?
It is also, and this is the trap, exactly the argument that cannot be won. A voice that only one person can hear is either a delusion or a message meant for him alone, and Tripitaka is a monk in a tradition full of the second kind. Pilgrim has handed him a fact that fits his own reading of the world perfectly.