Wu Cheng-en - Journey to the West (vol. 1)

A Taoist robe that sparkled with color hung from his body,

And light gleamed from the silken sash round his waist.

On his head he wore a turban with the sign of the stars of the Dipper,

And the grass sandals on his feet had climbed all the magical mountains.

He was refining his True Being, shuffling off his shell,

And when he had finished he would reach unbounded bliss.

His understanding had broken through to the origins,

And his master knew that he was free from mistakes.

Avoiding fame and enjoying the present he had won long life

And did not care about the passing of time.

He had been along the crooked portico, climbed to the precious hall,

And three times received the peaches of Heaven.

Clouds of incense appeared to rise from behind the emerald screen;

This young Immortal was Dongfang Shuo himself.

“So you're here, you young thief,” said Monkey with a smile when he saw him. “There are no peaches for you to steal here in the Lord Emperor's palace.”

Dongfang Shuo greeted him respectfully and replied, “What have you come for, you old thief? My master doesn't keep any pills of immortality here for you to pinch.”

“Stop talking nonsense, Manqian,” the Lord Emperor shouted, “and bring some tea.” Manqian was Dongfang Shuo's Taoist name. He hurried inside and brought out two cups of tea.

When the two of them had drunk it, Monkey said, “I came here to ask you to do something for me. I wonder if you'd be prepared to.”

“What is it?” the Lord Emperor asked. “Do tell me.”

“I have been escorting the Tang Priest on his journey to the West,” Monkey replied, “and our route took us via the Wuzhuang Temple on the Mountain of Infinite Longevity. The youths there were so ill-mannered that I lost my temper and knocked their manfruit tree over. We've been held up for a while as a result, and the Tang Priest cannot get away, which is why I have come to ask you, sir, to give me a formula that will cure it. I do hope that you will be good enough to agree.”

“You thoughtless ape,” the Lord Emperor replied, “you make trouble wherever you go. Master Zhen Yuan of the Wuzhunang Temple has the sacred title Conjoint Lord of the Age, and he is the Patriarch of the Immortals of the Earth. Why ever did you clash with him? That manfruit tree of his is Grass-returning Cinnabar. It was criminal enough of you to steal some of the fruit, and knocking the tree over makes it impossible for him ever to make it up with you.”

“True,” said Monkey. “When we escaped he caught up with us and swept us into his sleeve as if we were so many sweat-rags, which made me furious. However, he had to let me go and look for a formula that would cure it, which is why I've come to ask your help.”

“I have a nine-phased returning pill of the Great Monad, but it can only bring animate objects back to life, not trees. Trees are lives compounded of the Wood and Earth elements and nurtured by Heaven and Earth. If it were an ordinary mortal tree I could bring it back to life, but the Mountain of Infinite Longevity is the blessed land of a former heaven, the Wuzhuang Temple is the Cave Paradise of the Western Continent of Cattle-gift, and the manfruit tree is the life-root from the time when Heaven and Earth were separated. How could it possibly be revived? I have no formula, none at all.”

“In that case I must take my leave,” replied Monkey, and when the Lord Emperor tried to detain him with a cup of jade nectar he said, “This is too urgent to allow me to stay.” He rode his cloud back to the island of Yingzhou, another wonderful place, as this poem shows:

Trees of pearls glowed with a purple haze;

The Yingzhou palaces led straight to the heavens.

Blue hills, green rivers, and the beauty of exquisite flowers;

Jade mountains as hard as iron.

Pheasants called at the sunrise over the sea,

Long-lived phoenixes breathe in the red clouds.

People, do not look so hard at the scenery in your jar:

Beyond the world of phenomena is an eternal spring.

On reaching Yingzhou he saw a number of white-haired Immortals with the faces of children playing chess and drinking under a pearl tree at the foot of a cinnabar cliff. They were laughing and singing. As the poem says, there were

Light-filled auspicious clouds,

Perfume floating in a blessed haze.

Brilliant phoenixes singing at the mouth of a cave,

Black cranes dancing on a mountain top.

Pale green lotus-root and peaches helped their wine down,

Pears and fiery red dates gave them a thousand years of life.

Neither of them had ever heard an imperial edict,

But each was entered on the list of Immortals.

They drifted and floated with the waves,

Free and easy in unsullied elegance.

The passage of the days could not affect them;

Their freedom was guaranteed by Heaven and Earth.

Black apes come in pairs,

Looking most charming as they present fruit;

White deer, bowing two by two,

Thoughtfully offer flowers.

These old men were certainly living a free and happy life. “How about letting me play with you?” Monkey shouted at the top of his voice, and when the Immortals saw him they hurried over to welcome him. There is a poem to prove it that goes:

When the magic root of the manfruit tree was broken;

The Great Sage visited the Immortals in search of a cure.

Winding their way through the vermilion mist, the Nine Ancients

Came out of the precious forest to greet him.

Monkey, who knew the Nine Ancients, said with a smile, “You nine brothers seem to be doing very nicely.”

“If you had stayed on straight and narrow in the old days, Great sage,” they replied, “and not wrecked the Heavenly Palace you would be doing even better that we are. Now we hear that you have reformed and are going West to visit the Buddha. How did you manage the time off to come here?” Monkey told them how he was searching for a formula to cure the tree.

“What a terrible thing to do,” they exclaimed in horror, “what a terrible thing. We honestly have no cure at all.”

“In that case I must take my leave of you.”

The Nine Ancients tried to detain him with jasper wine and jade lotus-root, but Monkey refused to sit down, and stayed on his feet while he drank only one cup of wine and ate only one piece of lotus-root. Then he hurried away from Yingzhou and back to the Great Eastern Ocean. When he saw that Potaraka was not far away, he brought his cloud down to land on the Potara Crag, where he saw the Bodhisattva Guanyin expounding the scriptures and preaching the Buddha's Law to all the great gods of heaven, Moksa, and the dragon maiden in the Purple Bamboo Grove. A poem about it goes:

Thick the mists round the lofty city of the sea's mistress,

And no end to the greater marvels to be seen.

The Shaolin Temple really has the true flavor,

With the scent of flowers and fruit and the trees all red.

The Bodhisattva saw Monkey arrive and ordered the Great Guardian God of the Mountain to go and welcome him. The god emerged from the bamboo grove and shouted, “Where are you going, Monkey?”

“You bear monster,” Monkey shouted back, “how dare you address me as 'Monkey'? If I hadn't spared your life that time you'd have been just a demon's corpse on the Black Wind Mountain. Now you've joined the Bodhisattva, accepted enlightenment, and come to live on this blessed island where you hear the Law being taught all the time. Shouldn't you address me as 'sir?'”

It was indeed thanks to Monkey that the black bear had been enlightened and was now guarding the Bodhisattva's Potaraka as one of the great gods of heaven, so all he could do was to force a smile and say, “The ancients said, Great Sage, that a gentleman does not bear grudges. Why should you care about what you're called? Anyhow, the Bodhisattva has sent me to welcome you.” Monkey then became grave and serious as he went into the Purple Bamboo Grove with the Great God and did obeisance to the Bodhisattva.