皈依取經 Conversion and the Quest
逐句解 Line by line
The tally of seven sevens complete, they opened the cauldron to look; / my body sprang out, and I was fierce and swaggering again.
七七數完: 數 = shù, the noun — the seven-times-seven count, forty-nine days in the crucible. 開鼎看: 看 = kàn. 兇張 = "fierce and blustering."
The gods shut their doors and had nothing that could hold me off; / the assembled sages took counsel and entreated the Buddha.
商量: 量 = liáng ("to deliberate"), against the liàng of 無量 in the next couplet — the two readings stand one line apart. 把佛央: 央 = "to beg, to entreat."
In truth the Tathāgata has power of dharma in abundance; / his wisdom is broad indeed and without measure.
廣無量: 量 = liàng, the noun "measure." The compliment is not idle: the chapter will end with Pilgrim going to Vulture Peak to ask for exactly this.
In his palm we laid our wager, and I turned my somersaults; / then he pressed me under a mountain, and my strength availed nothing.
觔斗: 斗 = dǒu, never dòu — the cloud-somersault of a hundred and eight thousand miles. 手中: 中 = zhōng; 將山: 將 = jiāng, disposal; 不能強: 強 = qiáng.
Only then did the Jade Emperor set out the Feast of Peace for Heaven, / and the Western Region came to be called the Field of Utmost Bliss.
安天會 is the Feast for the Pacification of Heaven held in Chapter 7 after the capture. 極樂場: 樂 = lè — 極樂 renders Sukhāvatī, the Land of Utmost Bliss; 方稱: 稱 = chēng.
They kept Old Monkey pressed down five hundred years; / not a morsel of tea or rice did I taste.
五百載: 載 = zǎi. 一些: 一 sandhis to yì before 些 (first tone). The five hundred years under the Mountain of Five Phases are the hinge between the uproar in heaven and the pilgrimage.
The Elder Golden Cicada came down into the world of men, / dispatched from the Eastern Land to do homage in the Buddha's country.
金蟬長老: 長 = zhǎng — Golden Cicada is Tripitaka in his previous existence, the Buddha's second disciple, exiled to ten mortal lives. 東土差他: 差 = chāi, "dispatched on commission."
He would fetch the true scriptures and carry them back to his sovereign land, / that the Emperor of Great Tang might ferry over the dead.
度先亡: 度 = dù, the Buddhist "to ferry across, to deliver" — the Land and Water Mass of Chapters 11 to 12, held for the souls of those killed in Taizong's wars.
Guanyin urged me to take refuge in the good; / holding the teaching and keeping its discipline, I gave over my wildness.
觀音: 觀 = guān; 秉教: 教 = jiào (the doctrine). 迦持 stands for 加持, Sanskrit adhiṣṭhāna — to uphold and be upheld by the teaching.
Loosed from my affliction at the mountain's root, / I now go westward for the scripture-scrolls.
根下難: 難 = nàn, the noun "calamity, tribulation," not the adjective nán. 解脫: 解 = jiě — and the word is also the Buddhist mokṣa, release; the poem lets the pun stand.
Foul fiend, have done with your roebuck-and-fox cunning: / give me back my Tang monk, that he may pay homage to the King of the Law."
還我唐僧: 還 = huán ("give back"), not hái. 獐狐智 — the wit of roebuck and fox, i.e. petty animal cunning. 法王 is the Buddha, the King of the Dharma; the poem ends on the rhyme-word it has been walking toward for thirty-five couplets.
The last eleven couplets turn the poem from a boast into a credential, and the pivot is the Buddha. Everything before it is what Wukong could do and did; from the palm and the mountain onward the sentences are done to him — pressed down, kept, loosed, urged, converted. He does not resist the reversal, and the poem's rhetorical claim depends on it: the fiend should be frightened not because Old Monkey is strong but because Old Monkey now acts for a King of the Law.
The closing couplet gives the whole recitation its purpose, and it is a small one. Thirty-five couplets of cosmic history — Subodhi, the peaches, the Jade Emperor, Erlang, the crucible, Vulture Peak, five hundred years under a mountain — come down at last to 還我唐僧, give me my master back. The demand is the same one he made at the gate two chapters ago and will make again, and the autobiography has not improved his position by a hair. What it has done is put the answer in the record: eleven couplets earlier, the diamond snare of Lord Lao.