遞遞迢迢 How Many Days Until It Ends
長老在馬上思量道：「徒弟啊，长老在马上思量道：「徒弟啊，
逐句解 Line by line
The elder, up on the horse, fell to musing and said, "Disciples,
思量 takes 量 as liáng, the weighing sense. Eleven characters, and then four lines of verse — the master's only poem in the chapter, and he addresses it to his disciples rather than to himself.
Since parting from my lord I came to the western lands, and stage by stage and far and far the road runs long.
遞遞迢迢 doubles two characters for by-stages and far-off, so the line stretches out as it says so. 別主 is parting from his sovereign — the Tang emperor who sent him.
Water on water, hill on hill, and no getting clear of calamity; fiend upon fiend, monster upon monster, and no escaping with your life.
Every content word in this line is doubled, which makes the whole of it a repetition — water water hill hill, fiend fiend monster monster. That is the shape of the pilgrimage as he has experienced it: not one journey but the same thing happening again and again.
Heart upon heart, only for the three baskets of scripture; thought upon thought, still seeking to rise to the ninth heaven.
The doubling carries on and the meaning turns. 三藏 is the three baskets of the Buddhist canon and it is also his own name — this is the only place in the chapter those two characters appear, against thirteen for the ordinary Tang Monk. He names his goal and his own name at once.
Toil upon toil, and what day will see the end of it? When will the walking be done and the turn made for the Tang court?"
何日了, what day will end it, takes 了 as liǎo, to finish, rather than the small grammatical marker the same character carries a hundred and two other times in this chapter. 行滿 is for the practice to be completed — a term from religious training, so the question is both when will we arrive and when will I be finished.
The poem is built almost entirely out of doubled words, and that is its argument. Water and water, hill and hill, fiend and fiend — the pilgrimage feels to him like one thing repeating rather than a journey with an end.
He has just been kidnapped, tied to a tree, mourned as dead and rescued, and this is his response: not fear, but tiredness. Ninety chapters in, the master's complaint is that it keeps happening.
The two characters of his own name arrive in the third line, where he says his heart is set only on the three baskets of scripture. He is named after the thing he is walking towards, and the poem lets that land without remarking on it.