無言語文字 No Words and No Letters
弄虛頭，找架子，說甚麼『曉得』、『解得』。怎麼就不作聲？聽講，請解。」沙僧說：「二哥，你也信他？大哥扯長話，哄師父走路。他曉得弄棒罷了，他那裡曉得講經？」三藏道：「悟能、悟淨，休要亂說。悟空解得是無言語文字，乃是真解。」他師徒們正說話間，卻倒也走過許多路程，離了幾個山岡，路旁早見一座大寺。三藏道：「悟空，前面是座寺啊。弄虚头，找架子，说甚么『晓得』、『解得』。怎么就不作声？听讲，请解。」沙僧说：「二哥，你也信他？大哥扯长话，哄师父走路。他晓得弄棒罢了，他那里晓得讲经？」三藏道：「悟能、悟净，休要乱说。悟空解得是无言语文字，乃是真解。」他师徒们正说话间，却倒也走过许多路程，离了几个山冈，路旁早见一座大寺。三藏道：「悟空，前面是座寺啊。
逐句解 Line by line
"Playing the trickster, striking a pose, saying you know it, you understand it — how is it you have gone quiet? Let us hear the lecture. Explain, if you please." Sha Monk said, "Second brother, do you believe him?"
弄虛頭 and 找架子 are both still live insults — putting on an act, and striking an attitude. Eight Rules has picked the two words that accuse Pilgrim of being all surface.
The quoted 曉得 and 解得 sit inside the edition's inner quotation marks, which is how this printing shows one speaker throwing another's words back at him. The novel does this whenever a character is being mocked with his own vocabulary.
"Big brother spins a long tale to keep Master walking. He knows how to swing a cudgel, that is all. What would he know about expounding scripture?" Tripitaka said, "Wu-neng, Wu-jing, stop this idle talk."
扯長話 — spinning out a long tale — is one of only three places in the chapter where 長 means long rather than senior — the other two are a long road and a long-term resident. Everywhere else it is the elder in Elder, and the character does not change.
他曉得弄棒罷了 — he knows how to swing a cudgel, that is all. Sha Monk is the quiet one, and when he does join in he is the most cutting of the three.
那裡曉得講經 is a question that expects the answer no — how would he know? — and the character doing that work is the same everyday "that" from two lines earlier, read as a question instead.
"Wu-kung understands it as having no words and no letters. That is true understanding."
Here is the point of the whole scene, and Tripitaka is the one who makes it. 無言語文字 — no words, no letters — is the standard Chan formula for a teaching passed outside the scriptures, from mind to mind. Pilgrim did not explain the Heart Scripture. He stopped talking about it, which is the only commentary the text allows.
It also settles the quarrel in Pilgrim's favour without Pilgrim having to say another word — and it is Tripitaka, the man who lost, who does the settling. That is the most generous thing he does in the chapter, and worth remembering when he starts behaving badly later on.
As master and disciples were talking, they had in fact walked a good stretch of road and left several ridges behind, and beside the way a great temple came into view. Tripitaka said, "Wu-kung, there is a temple ahead."
卻倒也走過許多路程 — they had in fact covered a good deal of ground. The 倒 here is the everyday adverb meaning "as it turns out", and it is doing the same job the storyteller does: while you were listening to the argument, the miles went by.
The line ending in a colon is a cue. Whenever a character says look at that and then stops, verse is coming, and the temple is about to be described in a set piece rather than a sentence.
Tripitaka's ruling — that understanding without words and letters is the true understanding — is the novel taking a side in an argument that had run in Chinese Buddhism for eight hundred years. The scripture-reading schools held that you get there by study. The Chan schools held that the transmission happens outside the texts altogether. A monk who has spent ninety chapters walking to India to fetch texts has just conceded the second position.
It is worth noticing who is in the room. The concession is made in front of two disciples who did not follow the argument, on a road, with nobody taking notes, and then the party walks on. The novel does not stop to admire it. That offhandedness is the joke and also the seriousness: the moment is not marked because it is not supposed to be marked.
And then the scenery arrives. The narrator has been holding the temple in reserve throughout the quarrel, and produces it the instant the quarrel ends, with the little apology that they had covered a good deal of ground while talking. The temple is where the whole rest of the chapter happens.