〈荊棘嶺悟能努力　木仙庵三藏談詩〉是《西遊記》中頗令人費解的一則本事。其樹倒身毀的結局，古今學者雖多所詮論，卻仍難解決讀者心中之疑竇。筆者以為此回目甚得禪家三昧，係為僧侶於詩情、禪心二者間糾葛的矛盾寫照。「心生，種種魔生；心滅，種種魔滅」，八戒的一頓毒鈀，旨在戡破三藏蕩思侈懷之詩心。本文之寫作，或可為「樹妖一定得死」的百年公案提供另類的思考路徑。

The 64th section (Wuneng works hard on Thorn Ridge; Sanzang talks of poetry in the Wood Immortals' Hermitage.) of Journey to the West is more unexplainable than the other sections. Ancient and modem scholars have a lot of arguments about the final ending of the story which the tree was chopped. However, there still exists unsolved uncertainties in audiences' minds. The author proposes that the story is deeply related to the contradiction between Zen and Poetry. All the fiends are the reflection of the Sanzang's contradictive emotion facing the poetry effusion. Actually, the death of the tree fiend insinuated that Sanzang should control the motive of writing poems. This article is anticipated to solve the difficult problem for several decades: “Why does the tree fiend have to die?”