原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
口舌場中
In The Arena Of Tongues
八戒道：「哥啊，師父既是輕慢佛法，貶回東土，在是非海內，口舌場中，託化做人身，發願往西天拜佛求經，遇妖精就捆，逢魔頭就吊，受諸苦惱，也夠了，怎麼又叫他害病？」八戒道：「哥啊，师父既是轻慢佛法，贬回东土，在是非海内，口舌场中，托化做人身，发愿往西天拜佛求经，遇妖精就捆，逢魔头就吊，受诸苦恼，也够了，怎么又叫他害病？」
逐句解 Line by line
八戒道：「哥啊，師父既是輕慢佛法，貶回東土，在是非海內，口舌場中，託化做人身，發願往西天拜佛求經，遇妖精就捆，逢魔頭就吊，受諸苦惱，也夠了，怎麼又叫他害病？」
八戒道：「哥啊，师父既是轻慢佛法，贬回东土，在是非海内，口舌场中，托化做人身，发愿往西天拜佛求经，遇妖精就捆，逢魔头就吊，受诸苦恼，也够了，怎么又叫他害病？」
Bajie said, "Brother, if the master made light of the Buddha's Law, he was demoted back to the Eastern Land, into the sea of right and wrong and the arena of wagging tongues, given human form to be born into, and vowed to go west to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures. He meets a fiend and is trussed up, runs into a demon and is strung up, and suffers every kind of torment. Surely that is enough. Why must he be given an illness on top of it?"
場 is chǎng here — a genuine place, standing parallel to the sea in the phrase before it, so the physical reading holds and the event measure does not. The same character read the other way in the passage before. 是非海 and 口舌場 are a matched pair of metaphors for the human world as a place of gossip and dispute.
總評 Commentary
Sixty-four characters in a single breath, and it is the most sympathetic thing Bajie says in the chapter. Having just proposed selling the horse, he now delivers a genuine protest on his master's behalf: the man has suffered enough, so why the fever as well?
It is also, quietly, a theological objection. Bajie is questioning the fairness of the karmic ledger, and he has a case. The punishment already looks disproportionate to the offence of not paying attention during a sermon.
The two metaphors for the human world are worth keeping. A sea of right and wrong, an arena of tongues. That is what being born as a person looks like from the point of view of someone who was demoted into it.