正好享用 Just at the Age to Enjoy It
他到四十歲上，就回心向善，齋了萬僧，不期昨夜被強盜踢死。可憐！今年才六十四歲，正好享用。何期這等向善，不得好報，乃死於非命，可嘆，可嘆！」行者一一聽之，卻早五更初點。他到四十岁上，就回心向善，斋了万僧，不期昨夜被强盗踢死。可怜！今年才六十四岁，正好享用。何期这等向善，不得好报，乃死于非命，可叹，可叹！」行者一一听之，却早五更初点。
逐句解 Line by line
"When he got to forty he turned his heart to good works, and fed ten thousand monks — and then last night, past all expectation, he was kicked to death by robbers. Pity him! Only sixty-four this year, and just at the age to enjoy it all."
回心向善 — turned his heart to good works. It is a conversion, and the old man dates it precisely: at forty, after twenty years of making money. 正好享用 — just at the age to enjoy it all. This is the ordinary human view of the matter and nobody else in the chapter takes it. He was rich, he was pious, he was sixty-four, and he should have had years of comfort in front of him. 可憐 — pity him. The same word the narrator used at the moment of the killing, now in a neighbour's mouth.
"Who would have thought that a man so given to good should get no good return for it, and should die by violence? A sad thing, a sad thing!"
不得好報 — got no good return for it. This is the chapter's central question asked plainly by an old man making beancurd, and it is the same question Tripitaka asked on the road when he first heard the name. Two thousand characters apart, and neither of them gets an answer. 死於非命 — died by violence, died out of his proper span. A four-character phrase, and it means specifically a death that was not the one fate had written. The two characters before 好報 come before their verb, so the second keeps its full weight — the same shape as the frozen robbers who could not move, and the opposite of Kou Hong himself, who could not bring himself to let go of a bundle of clothes.
Monkey took it all in, one thing after another. By now it was the first point of the fifth watch.
一一聽之 — took it all in, one thing after another. Monkey has just been handed the dead man's entire biography, his wife's childhood name and the household's finances, by two people who have no idea he is there. 五更初點 — the first point of the fifth watch, roughly three in the morning. Here the character for the watch stands after its numeral and still comes out right, where the two fourth watches did not — the same chapter, the same word, and the chain divided against itself.
The old man asks the question the chapter exists to ask, and he asks it in the plainest possible words: why does a man who does good get nothing good back? Tripitaka asked the same thing on the road, in almost the same terms, two thousand characters ago. Neither man is answered.
An answer does eventually come, from a bodhisattva, near the end. It is that Kou Hong's allotted span had simply run out and the manner of his death was incidental — an administrative reply to a moral question. Whether that settles anything is left entirely to the reader, and the book is careful to have the question asked twice by sympathetic people before it supplies one.
What Monkey does with the conversation is another matter. He came out of prison to make arrangements, stopped at a lit window out of curiosity, and has been handed everything he needs: the dead man's history, the household's money, and the wife's girlhood name. He will be using all three within the hour.