紫竹提籃 The Purple Bamboo Basket
不多時，只見菩薩手提一個紫竹籃兒，出林道：「悟空，我與你救唐僧去來。」行者慌忙跪下道：「弟子不敢催促，且請菩薩著衣登座。」菩薩道：「不消著衣，就此去也。」那菩薩撇下諸天，縱祥雲騰空而去。孫大聖只得相隨。不多时，只见菩萨手提一个紫竹篮儿，出林道：「悟空，我与你救唐僧去来。」行者慌忙跪下道：「弟子不敢催促，且请菩萨着衣登座。」菩萨道：「不消着衣，就此去也。」那菩萨撇下诸天，纵祥云腾空而去。孙大圣只得相随。
逐句解 Line by line
In a little while she came out of the grove, a purple bamboo basket in her hand, and said: "Wukong, I'll go with you to save the Tang Monk."
紫竹籃兒: 兒 the diminutive suffix er, on 籃 — the humble object, finished at last. 我與你, "I with you." The basket is the whole apparatus of the rescue, and it is made of bamboo.
Pilgrim hurriedly knelt and said: "Your disciple dared not press you. I beg the Bodhisattva to put on her robes and mount her seat."
弟子 子 zǐ, honorific; 著衣 著 zhuó, "to put on" (clothing) — the causative-lexical reading, not durative. Wukong is still trying to restore the proper ceremony.
The Bodhisattva said: "No need to robe — I'll go just as I am."
不消著衣: 著 zhuó again, "to don." 就此去也, I'll go exactly thus. She declines the ceremony a third time — she will save the master barefoot and undressed, basket in hand.
So the Bodhisattva left the Devas behind, and mounting an auspicious cloud rose into the sky.
那菩薩 deictic nà; 撇下, to leave behind. She goes without retinue and without regalia — the informality of the grove carried straight into the rescue.
The Great Sage could only follow.
只得 得 dé; 相隨 相 xiāng, to follow along. Wukong, who came to fetch her, is reduced to trailing after — the scene keeps subordinating him to her deliberate simplicity.
The basket emerges, and with it the answer the chapter has withheld since Guanyin went into the grove: the instrument that will subdue a demon who defeated three armed pilgrims is a small basket of purple bamboo, woven by hand. She names her errand plainly — 我與你救唐僧去來, I'll go with you to save the Tang Monk — and there is no more explanation than that; the reader, like Wukong, will not learn what the basket does until it is dipped in the river.
Wukong's persistence about the robes is the block's fine comic thread. Three times now he has tried to reinstate the proper form — announce himself, beg her to dress, beg her to take her seat — and three times she has declined: 不消著衣，就此去也, no need to robe, I go just as I am. She leaves her whole court behind (撇下諸天) and rises barefoot into the sky, and the Great Sage, who flew to the Southern Sea to summon her, can do nothing but follow. The chapter has by now thoroughly inverted its hierarchy: the demon governs by ceremony and loses, and the Bodhisattva discards ceremony and wins.