趁火打劫

Loot a Burning House

原文 Content

敌之害大，就势取利，刚决柔也。

英文注释：When a country is beset by internal conflicts, when disease and famine ravage the population, when corruption and crime are rampant, then it will be unable to deal with an outside threat. This is the time to attack.

探源 Origin

英文：In the story of Journey to the West, Xuan Zang and his disciples embarked on a pilgrimage to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures. They passed through a temple on the way to their destination. The abbot hospitably received them. He requested to borrow Xuan Zang's beautiful cassock to get a better look and Xuan Zang agreed. In the dead of night, the abbot bolted the door when Xuan Zang and his disciples fell asleep, and then set the bedroom on fire. Meanwhile, the Monkey King had stayed awake due to his suspicions of the evil intentions of the abbot. To spoil the abbot's scheme, he transformed himself into a honeybee and lingered outside. The Monkey King blew a strong puff of wind. The enormous fire spread to the entire temple and all of the Buddhist monks joined the task of extinguishing the flames. However, a black bear monster came out unexpectedly. He concealed the cassock under the shield of the fire. Although the Monkey King had severely penalized the black-hearted abbot, he lost the master's cassock once again. With no idea of its current possessor or how to reclaim it, he turned to the Bodhisattva Guanyin for assistance. She helped him defeat the black monster and finally acquired the cassock.

中文：话说《西游记》中唐玄奘和他的徒弟去西天取经，途中路过一座寺庙。庙里的方丈热情地接待了他们，并请求借玄奘美丽的袈裟好好看一看，玄奘同意了。深夜，方丈趁师徒四人睡着时将他们的房门锁上，然后放火烧他们的卧房。但此时孙悟空并没有睡着，他早就洞察到方丈的阴谋。为了不让方丈的阴谋得逞，他变成只蜜蜂飞出屋外。孙悟空吹了一阵风，大火一下子蔓延到整个寺庙，庙里所有的和尚都忙着救火。可谁知这时来了只黑熊怪，他趁火劫走了袈裟。孙悟空虽然惩罚了黑心的方丈，却再次弄丢了师傅的袈裟。万般无奈之际，他请求观音菩萨帮忙。在菩萨的帮助下，孙悟空制服了黑熊怪，并最终要回了袈裟。（引用自《您好漫画-三十六计》）

词汇 Vocabularies

ravage: 摧毁，蹂躏；表示摧毁的常用词还有devastate，它们的区别是：devastate表示完全的大范围的一种破坏，如:war devastate a country（战争摧毁了一个国家），ravage强调的是一种严重的暴力行为，常是累积的造成破坏，如：a hurricane which ravaged the Gulf coast（飓风蹂躏了整个海湾地区）

disciple: 信徒，门徒；注意，耶酥的十二门徒应翻译为：twelve apostles，apostles是指受主差遣的人，而disciple是跟随主的人，所以可以这么理解，apostle一定是disciple，但disciple不一定是apostle

conceal: 隐蔽，隐藏；该词常与hide通用，多指有意将某事物隐藏起来或不予以泄漏，它只作及物动词，hide还可以作不及物动词，指有意或无意地将某物（或人）藏（躲）在人们不易看到或发现的地方，如：He concealed his motives.（他隐藏了他的动机。） The moon was hidden by the clouds.（月亮被云彩遮住了。）

总结 Summary

“趁火打劫”即是乘机搏乱，有两种方式：一是乘人之危去混水摸鱼；一是自己放火，然后贼喊捉贼，达成自己的企图。不管趁火也好，纵火也好，其目的都是在对方身处困境的时候，瞅准时机，坚决果断地出击，从中获利。同时这个计谋也警示大家，在出现内部纷争时，最容易给敌人可乘之机，此时一定要当心鹬蚌相争，渔翁得利。

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（来源：沪江英语 编辑：崔旭燕）