佛法無邊 Why It Cannot Help
諦聽道：「妖精神通，與孫大聖無二。幽冥之神，能有多少法力？故此不能擒拿。」地藏道：「似這般怎生祛除？」諦聽言：「佛法無邊。」谛听道：「妖精神通，与孙大圣无二。幽冥之神，能有多少法力？故此不能擒拿。」地藏道：「似这般怎生祛除？」谛听言：「佛法无边。」
逐句解 Line by line
Diting said: "The fiend's spirit-powers are not two things from the Great Sage Sun's.
與孫大聖無二 'not two from the Great Sage's' — the phrase 無二 will recur in Kṣitigarbha's verdict, and the chapter's title turns on 二心.
What magic power can the gods of the shades command? Therefore we cannot seize him."
多少 shǎo. The 6-Han tail 故此不能擒拿。」 is joined backwards here (§6 J3), since it completes the same speech.
Kṣitigarbha said: "In a case like this, how is he to be driven out?"
似 sì corpus-wide. 怎生 'how', the vernacular interrogative of the vernacular novel rather than the literary 何如.
Diting said: "The Buddha's Law is without bound."
佛法無邊 — seven graphs, and the whole remaining plot of the chapter. 佛 fó by GLOBAL_PY.
Diting's account of its own limits is a piece of clear institutional reasoning. The fiend's powers equal Wukong's; the underworld's gods do not; therefore the underworld cannot hold him. Nothing about identity enters into it. The beast has already solved the identification problem and is now explaining a logistics problem.
佛法無邊 is the answer, and it is delivered in four graphs with no elaboration. It is worth noticing what it is not: it is not a claim that the Buddha will see more clearly. Diting already sees clearly. It is a claim about power — only the Buddha can both name the thing and hold it. The chapter has quietly redefined what it is asking for.
The exchange also completes a pattern. Five courts have now been consulted and the sixth is named by the fifth, exactly as the Bodhisattva named Heaven and the underworld named the world of light. But this referral is different in kind: it is the first made by someone who knows the answer.