這正是 Earth Is Wide Enough for Evil
寇洪教安排筵宴，酬謝府縣厚恩。個個未坐回衙。至次日，再掛齋僧牌，又款留三藏。三藏決不肯住。卻又請親友，辦旌幢，如前送行而去。咦！這正是：寇洪教安排筵宴，酬谢府县厚恩。个个未坐回衙。至次日，再挂斋僧牌，又款留三藏。三藏决不肯住。却又请亲友，办旌幢，如前送行而去。咦！这正是：
畢竟不知見佛何如，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知见佛何如，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
Kou Hong had a banquet laid on to thank the prefecture and county for their great kindness. Not one of them sat down, and they went back to their offices. Next day he hung out the monk-feeding board again and pressed Tripitaka to stay; but Tripitaka would not stay on any account.
⚠ 再掛齋僧牌 — hung out the monk-feeding board again. He has been dead for a day and his first act on the second morning is to start feeding monks again. His vow was completed, his ten thousand were made up, and he puts the board back out. 個個未坐回衙 — not one of them sat down; they went back to their offices. The officials decline the banquet, which is the only apology any of them manages. ⚠ 三藏決不肯住 — Tripitaka would not stay on any account. The refusal that started all this. He refused the same hospitality in the last chapter, the widow took it as an insult, and it is one of the reasons she invented the accusation. He refuses again, in the same house, and this time nobody minds.
So once more they called in relatives and friends, got out banners and streamers, and saw him off as before. Ah! Truly it is:
⚠ 如前送行而去 — saw him off as before. ⚠ THE CHAPTER ENDS WITH THE PROCESSION THAT BEGAN IT. The gaudy send-off with banners and drums is what told the robbers the house was worth robbing, what the widow blamed for the calamity, and what the prefect quoted back at her sons in court. And here it is again, in the same street, arranged by the same family. 咦 — ah! The storyteller's exclamation, and it always comes just before the closing couplet. ⚠ 這正是 — truly it is. The cue for the final verse, and the one cue in this chapter that the inherited list of set phrases already knew.
Earth is wide enough to hold a deed of violence; / heaven is high, and does not fail a man of good heart.
⚠ 地闢能存凶惡事 — earth is wide enough to hold a deed of violence. The couplet answers the chapter's question a second time, and quite differently from the way the bodhisattva did. Dizang said the man's number was up; the couplet says the world has room in it for wickedness and heaven settles the account anyway. ⚠ 天高不負善心人 — heaven is high and does not fail a man of good heart. ⚠ AND IT IS THE EXACT CONTRARY OF THE POEM AT THE CHAPTER'S MIDDLE, which said that kindness repaid with kindness is rare in this world and that a man who goes into the water to save another will drown. The book has put two flatly opposed morals in one chapter, four and a half thousand characters apart, and left both standing.
At ease and steady of step on the Buddha's road, / on and on to the gate of Ultimate Bliss on the Spirit Mountain.
如來徑 — the Buddha's road. The journey resumes in four characters. ⚠ 極樂門 — the gate of Ultimate Bliss, the Pure Land. Its second character is the everyday word for joy and comes out right — in a chapter where the same character had to be ruled twice as the word for music. 靈山 — the Spirit Mountain, journey's end. They are three chapters away from it.
In the end there is no telling how they fared on seeing the Buddha; listen to the next instalment, and it will be explained.
The closing formula, in every chapter of the book. It is the storyteller putting down his fan for the night. 見佛何如 — how they fared on seeing the Buddha. Three chapters left, and the formula is now naming the destination rather than the next monster.
The chapter ends with the procession it began with. The same family, the same street, the same banners and streamers — the gaudy send-off that told thirty robbers where the money was, that a grieving widow blamed for her husband's death, and that a magistrate quoted back at her sons in open court. Nobody has learned anything about processions.
Nor about hospitality. Tripitaka refuses to stay, exactly as he did in the previous chapter, and that refusal was one of the seeds of the whole disaster — it slighted the widow and fed her grudge. He refuses again, in the same room, and this time it passes without a murmur.
The closing couplet is worth setting against the poem at the chapter's centre. That one said kindness is rarely repaid, that a rescuer drowns, that a wise man thinks three times before acting. This one says heaven does not fail a man of good heart. Both are in the narrator's own voice, five thousand characters apart, and the book makes no attempt to reconcile them. A reader who has just watched a good man robbed, murdered, and brought back to a twelve-year extension by an accident of who happened to be listening at a window may feel that both are true.