A STUDY GUIDE TO MONKEY
Background
Monkey sometimes confuses Western readers because it's so different in form
and substance from the major western epics or mythical and religious stories,
such as those of the Homeric poems or the Bible. They're tragic. Monkey, by contrast, is comic. Western tales have mostly noble human
characters, usually princes. By
contrast, Monkey has few human characters. Moreover the main human
character, the monk Hsuan Tsang (also called Tripitika), is the very opposite
of a prince. He’s a saint who has taken
a vow renouncing both riches and power.
Moreover, to be frank, he’s a fool.
Western stories that feature evil monsters take these monsters
seriously, even when (as is the case in the Odyssey, medieval tales of
dragons, or modern myths like the Lord of the Rings cycle)
there’s some doubt that they’re real.
But the "scary" monsters in Monkey are clearly meant to
be laughed at, even when they brag about having eaten large numbers of human
beings.
To make it more approachable for the Western
reader, the text of Monkey can be understood as an eastern equivalent of
either (a) a European fairytale or (b) a modern animal cartoon from, say,
Looney Tunes. (I happen to think Bugs Bunny is quite reminiscent of the title
character of Monkey, and Pigsy has more than a little in common with Porky Pig
too.)
It may seem strange to think of Bugs Bunny
and Porky Pig as the heroes of a classical epic. But Monkey is an epic
because it has a more serious purpose than Looney Tunes do, despite its comic
animal characters and grotesque situations. Monkey is an allegory for
every man's spiritual journey from birth through life to death. The purpose of
the story is to show how we attain wisdom through pursuit of a purpose in life,
thus becoming ready for death and for an afterlife as spiritual rather than
material beings. But how can such a high
purpose be served by a story that seems as if it’s not meant to be taken
seriously? The answer lies not in
Chinese history or culture, but in Eastern religion and cosmology. (“Cosmology” is the theory of the origin and
structure of the universe; theory of nature).
Why can’t it be explained by Chinese
history? If the comic nature of this
classic fable were influenced by Chinese history, we’d expect ancient and
medieval Chinese society to have been happier and more benevolent than its
Western counterparts. In fact the
opposite is the case, as we can see by making a simple contrast between two
great architectural achievements, the Egyptian pyramids (especially the Great
Pyramid at
Largely due to the influence of the Bible,
our vision of the building of the pyramids is that it involved the cruel
exploitation of foreign slave labor. But
archaeologists now know this was not the case.
Pyramid workers were mainly Egyptian nationals intensely proud of their
work. They were valued professionals who
lived and died in towns adjacent to the structures they built, often as members
of a family of master craftsmen spanning several generations. Recently unearthed graves show that they
received top-flight medical care far more sophisticated than we imagined, and
on a par with anything the pharaoh could have expected. And they were buried with care and
distinction.
In striking contrast, Chinese workers on the
Great Wall truly were slave labor. They
worked under conditions so nightmarish that they can barely be imagined. To be conscripted into labor on the Great
Wall was a death sentence; moreover, it was understood that the death would
follow torture. The cruel indignities
suffered by the laborers are best portrayed by a Chinese folktale of a woman
who traveled to find her husband there, but could not find him. The tears she shed over the Wall were
answered by the Wall itself. “I am your
husband,” the Wall said. “My body is his
body.” This was literally true; the
bodies of the workers actually became part of the foundation and mortar of the
wall.
If the high jinks and joyous high spirits of
Monkey can’t be explained by the realities of ancient and medieval
Chinese life, what does explain them?
The answer is surprisingly simple.
The Western traditions, whether monotheistic or pagan, taught and still teach
that every human soul lives only once.
The Eastern traditions teach that the human soul lives many lifetimes;
therefore, no single death is ever final.
This is a doctrine called reincarnation, the idea
that the soul is given a new body over and over and over again until it learns
the spiritual lessons necessary to shed its material existence and live on as a
pure spirit of light and enlightenment.
In other words, in the Western tradition every sin, crime, or mistake is
like a wrong answer on a single final exam the soul must not fail. No one mistake is damning, yet it can’t be
taken lightly, either. In the Eastern
tradition, no matter what you do you get a second chance—and a third, fourth,
and fifteenth, ad infinitum (almost—some traditions suggest there are limits to
the number of times you can do this).
You can do almost anything, even eat people, and still not be “evil” in
the grand scheme of things. In the story
of Monkey, two demons who later become saints do actually confess to the
sin of eating people. They apologize and
hope it won’t be held against them, appealing to their betters in the way you
or I might appeal to our betters to forgive us for belching in public or eating
fried chicken with our fingers. They are
forgiven and they do reform—twice, in fact, which suggests that minor relapses
into past sins like cannibalism are also to be expected.
Make of the paradox what you will, you also
cannot and should not take Eastern cosmology lightly. The various Eastern religious philosophies
are worldviews of extraordinary sophistication.
The best of them equip followers with a philosophical foundation that
makes it possible to meet the worst life has to offer with serenity, strength
of character, and great emotional resilience.
Otherwise, I guess, the Great Wall could never have been built.
The specific religious foundation that forms
the background of the narrative of Monkey is called Taoism. It consists of a slim volume of paradoxical
religious teachings in poetic form, something like lyrical riddles. The original proponent of Taoism
was a philosopher who called himself Lao-tzu. I’m telling you his name now because you’ll
meet him—or rather his angelic spirit in heaven--as a character in the story
you’re about to read. He appears in this
edition in the story told on pages 60-65.
I think you’ll find him surprisingly stupid and grumpy for a great
philosopher-saint. That too is part of
the labyrinth of paradoxes the story invites you to consider. (I’ll have more to say about Taoism
later. I prefer to let you guess at the
teachings from the story itself before I try to articulate what they are, in
part because they aren’t that easy to pin down.)
Plot
Part One: The Origins, Rise, and
Fall of the Hero Monkey
1:
Stone Monkey King
Page one offers a creation story with some
loose parallels to modern Darwinian evolutionary theory. At any rate, a stone (the earth?) is
fertilized by the seeds of heaven and earth and the essences of the sun and the
moon (chemicals from the stars?). This results
in an embryo (early life form?) that gradually opens in time to reveal a stone
egg (primordial animal?) which is exposed to the elements (environmental
stresses?). In time the Thingamabobbie,
whatever it is, is transformed into a stone monkey (sapient primate life?). This stone monkey is an extraordinary
creature of boundless energy and “steely eyes” that shoot “golden light.” It immediately attracts the attention of the
divine forces of intelligence, called
Thousand-League-Eye and Wind-Knowing-Ears. This scene reminds me of Joseph Campbell’s
description of humanity in the Bill Moyer’s interview: “We are the eyes of the
earth. What else?” If
Immediately we encounter a godlike figure
called the Jade Emperor, to whom all forces report (top of page 2). Unperturbed, he responds blandly that sooner
or later star stuff can create just about anything. Monkey and his friends cavort in a
garden-of-Eden like world in which all animals are friends, and they find a
rainbow and a marvelous waterfall that conceals the entrance to a cave, where
the primates live. In the cave is a
beautiful stone house, which the monkeys, being monkeys, ransack and destroy. Monkey then demands to be crowned king of his
own kind as a reward for being brave enough to walk through the waterfall in
pursuit of a road to heaven. He outlaws
the word “stone” and takes the name “Handsome Monkey King” (page 5).
On page 6, we encounter a scene that should
remind us a lot of what happens near the beginning of Gilgamesh. Monkey King is troubled by the reality of
death, and not even the prospect of endless reincarnations can encourage
him. In fact it all seems rather a bore,
as life at the palace did to Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Near the bottom of page 6, a gibbon explains
to Monkey that he must seek spiritual wisdom to become free from the dominion
of Yama, King of Death, and the wheel of reincarnation. This, he is told, is the only way to achieve
immortality.
On pages 7-12, we see Monkey going to the
continent of Jampudvipa to pursue the wisdom of a Taoist human sage, or
Patriarch, called Subodhi (pictured on page 11). On page 9 we first hear Monkey called “a
seeker on the Way” by a boy who is essentially Subhodi’s butler. The word Tao loosely translates
to “Way,” and from this point on, you’ll be puzzling over the question of
precisely what path Monkey is seeking—and whether or not he finds it. At the conclusion of this chapter (page 12),
Monkey takes a spiritual name, Aware-of-Vacuity. As a vacuum is an empty space, vacuity is
emptiness. This seems a paradoxical name
for a creature who will soon turn out to be a cosmic Dennis the Menace; that
is, one of the busiest, nosiest, most annoying, and least peaceful creatures in
heaven or on earth. How can a creature
be aware of emptiness when he constantly surrounds himself with noise, action,
and stimulation?
2:
The Search for Immortality
Although he has come to learn deep
philosophy, he spends several years doing nothing but household chores. When he finally understands something Subhodi
says he jumps up and down and dances around the courtyard—which, it turns out,
is considered the least appropriate reaction possible to the attainment of
spiritual wisdom. (Apparently wisdom
should make you aware of the futility of action and therefore sedate.) It turns out that neither Monkey nor Subhodi
can quite remember who he is or how long he’s been here. No matter—Subhodi finally asks Money what he
has come to learn, and Monkey answers that, like Gilgamesh seeking wisdom from
Utnapishtim, he has come to learn the secret of immortality. Subhodi responds by outlining for Monkey the
different spiritual paths to enlightenment (pages 14-16). Every time he describes one, Monkey asks if
it’s the way to immortality, and Subhodi responds by saying something like
“Ridiculous!” or “Of course not!” Monkey
gets fed up and says, “Skip it!” Subhodi
responds by cursing him and beating him over the head with a stick. This may remind you of some of your own worst
public school teachers, but you have to admit, it doesn’t sound very much like
the behavior of an exalted saint.
However, far from being discouraged, Monkey
is delighted. Although his logic may
seem like the logic of a mental patient, Monkey interprets all of Subhodi’s
hostile gestures as a coded message designed to invite him to Subhodi’s
apartment late that night for a private lesson (pages 16-19). When he turns up at exactly the right place
and time, Subhodi, who had in fact been sending just such a message, praises
him for his genius. Subhodi recites a
mysterious poem about the Way with cryptic lines like “Keep the Way and the Way
will keep you” (pages 18-19). This, he
tells Monkey, is the secret of long life.
Monkey seems to get it, although we aren’t quire sure what in the heck
we’ve heard.
Three years later, Subhodi calls on Monkey
in class to ask him what he has learned.
Monkey mistakenly believes he has learned the path to immortality, but
Subhodi corrects him. The problem hinges
on some sort of lesson or lessons about three great calamities (pages
19-20). Monkey might learn to avoid
these in a few hundred more years of study, he’s told, if he didn’t have the
wrong shape of body (top of page 21).
However, this problem can be overcome if he learns a secret formula that
will allow him to transform his body into seventy-two different shapes, while
simultaneously endowing him with a few other physical talents, like the ability
to fly at jet speed through the heavens.
(Monkey will call this “cloud hopping,” and as you may suspect, later
when he becomes a hero it will often come in handy--as will the
transformations.) The cloud hopping skill
is finally learned on page 22.
On page 23, an incident transpires that
results in Monkey being cast out of the monastery and severing his ties with
his first teacher, Subhodi. Some of
Subhodi’s other students dare Monkey to use his transformation power to turn
himself into a pine tree. He does so and
they cheer, but when Subhodi realizes why they’re cheering, he casts Monkey off
as unworthy to be his disciple (page 25), arguing that Monkey has turned the
achievements of spiritual discipline into a stupid magic trick. Monkey returns at last (after a few hundred
years) to his subjects in the cave on Fruit and
Note on what to notice so far: While this may seem to be a perplexing story,
note that at least one clear pattern has begun to emerge. The tellers of this tale seem doggedly determined
to defeat our expectations, whatever these may be. Just when we think we know how a holy man
will act, he does the opposite of what we expect. Just when we think we know who’s wise and
who’s not, the stupid turn out to be wise and the wise turn out to be
stupid. Just when we think we know who’s
in good with the teacher and who’s out, the Winners lose and the Loser
wins. This pattern will continue, and
will prove to be one of the few constants throughout the story. So in the end we’ll have to ask what it
means.
There’s another pattern worth
mentioning—one that seems related somehow.
We continually hear absurd instructions designed to tell us how to
perform absurd tasks. Get used to this. You will only hear more of the same,
especially in the first part of the story (up to chapter 10, which begins on
page 85). Moreover, absurd battles will
be fought against absurd foes, with what’s at stake in the event of victory
left completely unclear. Through it all,
Monkey will emerge more and more as the very persona of Rebellion, a vain,
arrogant yet somehow endearing pest—someone who in the end almost gets the
better of God himself. Who is he? And what can the story of his career really
be about?
3:
Demon King of Havoc
This is the first chapter in which Monkey
acts in his new capacity as a super-hero.
Flying home on a cloud to his subjects on Fruit and
Wait a minute. Does it sound to you like they’re talking
about Monkey himself? Do the math. Monkey is also an arbitrary king who imposed
himself on them from without. Monkey
causes havoc wherever he goes. And,
exactly as it is with the demon king, they have no idea where Monkey’s been
living; he just flies in from nowhere on a cloud. Could the impending battle be a metaphor for
Monkey’s conflict with himself?
If so, Monkey himself is unaware of the
implications. Next we hear that “Monkey
became furious” and asked, “ ‘Who is this lawless monster?’ “ Remember these words. An eerie parallel occurs in the Book 9 of the
Odyssey, the book we’re reading next.
The hero Odysseus will say much the same thing of a Cyclops; that is a
one-eyed giant, named Polyphemos. The
accusation is exactly the same—“you’re lawless”—and it’s repeated several
times. There too the hero who calls a
demon “lawless” will be a man who has himself just broken the laws of the land
where he formerly lived. There too the
smart reader will ask if we aren’t seeing an external allegory for the hero’s
own internal conflict with himself. But
I digress.
When Monkey shows up at the
The Demon King seems to regard Monkey as a
joke because he’s only four feet tall and carries no weapons. But Monkey’s small size is an advantage
because it increases his agility. Given his
transformational powers (here called “the technique of Body Outside the Body”),
he soon has the demon’s head spinning.
He finishes the battle by setting fire to the
4:
Monkey’s Iron Cudgel
At the beginning of this chapter, we see two
more of Monkey’s endearing comedic traits, his failure to notice the obvious
and his absurd greed. Supposedly an
apostle of peace, Monkey nonetheless devotes all his time to conducting war
games. Yet it takes him days to notice
that he’s the only one with a weapon (the sword he stole from the Demon of
Havoc). When he finally does notice
this, he learns from one of his followers that a king with a great army lives
two hundred miles away, over a mountain range and an inland sea. Monkey goes to this kingdom, creates a
hurricane as a diversion, and then goes into the armory like a kid in a toy
store, asking, “ ‘How many of these can I possibly carry by myself?’ “ But there’s no problem. He simply multiplies himself again to carry
out all the weapons.
Now that everyone else has a weapon, the
problem is that Monkey’s weapon isn’t good enough for him. One of his subjects explains to him that he
probably deserves better than an earthly weapon and--provided he can travel
through water—he can get such a weapon from the
Because he’s so grandiose here, Monkey
begins to remind me of real leaders from
Yet ironically, here also Monkey is most
like Everyman, the ordinary spiritual pilgrim taking the journey to
self-awareness that all of us must take.
He embarks on an episode quest-within-a-quest that seems like vintage
Joseph Campbell. Remember
The Dragon King immediately senses that
Monkey is trouble. People who tout their
resumes before they say hello usually are.
Originally he intends to put Monkey off with some trinket if he can, as
Utnapishtim intended to dismiss Gilgamesh.
But just as Utnapishtim’s wife warns him not to send Gilgamesh home
empty-handed, Ao-kuang’s wife recommends that he give Money a weapon made from a
magic piece of iron that once anchored the Milky Way in place and subdued the
primordial flood (pages 36-7). Monkey
has to be taken to the piece of magic iron because no one can lift it to bring
it to him. It’s a little too big for
Monkey also, but he controls it with language. Whatever he says it should be,
it becomes. Needless to say, no one else
can reshape the magic iron piece this way, just as no one else has ever made it
glow with a rosy glow. This is how Ao-kuang’s
wife knows it’s meant for Monkey.
By the way, what’s the significance of a
hero’s weapon? All the best epic heroes
seem to have a magic weapon that only they can use. Gilgamesh has a magic axe that reminds him of
Enkidu. Odysseus, our next hero, will
have a magic bow so large that no other warrior can even string it. Akhilleus, the hero of the Iliad, had
a gigantic golden shield shaped like a mandala and covered with images of all
that was sacred to the Greek culture and way of life. King Arthur had Excalibur, a sword only he
could pull from a magic stone—and this sword had to be thrown back to the Lady
of the
So what’s a cudgel, and what sort of warrior
would carry that instead of Excalibur, or the Great Shield of Hephaestos? A cudgel is a club—perhaps man’s most
primitive weapon. But no matter. Whatever it is, it comes from the Water, so
it comes to Monkey from within himself.
Moreover, it’s no ordinary club.
Monkey is able to reduce it to the size of a needle and stick it behind
his ear. (Talk about your concealed
weapon!) Why is this fitting? In other words, what’s interesting about the
image of a warrior concealing his secret weapon behind his ear? (Hint:
Is Monkey a good listener?)
Monkey also manages to coerce a uniform out
of one of the Dragon King’s brothers, who conclude that only by complaining to
Heaven can they get rid of Monkey. But
as it will turn out, Heaven doesn’t know quite what to do with him either.
5:
A Messenger from Heaven
Ao-kuang the Dragon King complains about
Monkey’s extortion of the iron cudgel and warrior robes before the Jade
Emperor, who dwells in the
When Monkey does come to realize how humble
his rank is, he leaves in a huff. But
perhaps he shouldn’t have been so offended.
Horses are a powerful symbolic animal.
There are winged horses, like Pegasus, and half-human horses (the
Centaurs). Horses are among the most
intelligent, useful, and important of animals, and Monkey clearly has a
powerful and benevolent effect on the horses of the Jade Emperor.
Nevertheless, Monkey returns to Fruit and
6:
In the
It’s not exactly clear why, but for some
reason Heaven decides to declare war on Monkey for leaving. (Maybe it’s impolite to go without being
excused. Or maybe Monkey has been
trouble before, so they assume he’ll be trouble again as soon as he gets back
to Earth.) However, if we expect the
mighty legions of Heaven to be impressive, the names of the officers should
temper our expectations. The legions of
Heaven are to be led by a god named Mighty-Mighty and a general named
Fish-Belly General. They seem confident
enough of success, even when they find Monkey’s cave guarded by legions of
predatory animals loyal to Monkey for reasons that aren’t exactly clear--except
that they have something to do with his being a wonderful groomer.
For the first time on page 49, Monkey refers
to himself as the Great Sage Equal of Heaven, a title the Jade Emperor himself
will eventually be forced to recognize.
Monkey exhausts General Mighty-Mighty, who (according to Monkey) “does
not possess real magic.” Heaven then
sends a more formidable opponent, Prince Natha, who has transformational powers
like Monkey’s. Each of them turns into
something between an octopus and a cyclone, each wielding different magical
weapons in every one of his thousand arms.
Nevertheless Monkey gains the advantage, forcing Prince Natha to report
his new title (Great Sage Equal of Heaven) to the Jade Emperor himself.
7:
Immortality Peaches and Golden Elixirs
Here we see that the Jade Emperor is a
weaker ruler than we’d thought, bluffing and posturing when faced with a
genuine rival like Monkey. Golden Star,
the female spirit who is the Planet Venus, has to gently coax him to back away
from threatening Monkey. Her approach is
the yielding approach that Lao-tzu himself would have advocated—at least before
he went to Heaven and got too big for his britches. If all Monkey wants is a title, she says,
then give it to him. It’s not a real
job, there’s no salary and no one he gets to boss around. Tell him “Okay, you’re the Great Sage Equal
of Heaven” and bring him up here where we can keep an eye on him. So that’s what they do. Moreover, reading at the top of page 54, we
can see the wisdom of the Planet Venus’s approach. Giving Monkey a title and a place of honor in
their world also gives them the right to lecture him on his behavior, something
they wouldn’t dare do at this point if they weren’t granting that
concession. Moreover, since the whole
thing is a pretense and they’re making up his duties and privileges as they go
along, they can engineer his environment in a way that naturally creates
expectations of better behavior. This
they do, for example, when they make him the Minister of Peace and Quiet.
This approach works for a while. But Monkey’s a creature with an active mind,
and he can’t be happy long with nothing to do.
To keep him from running about Heaven distracting everyone with his idle
chatter, they give him a real job. They
make him the keeper of the
8:
Monkey Goes Too Far
Lao-tzu and the Barefoot Immortal go to the
Jade Emperor with their complaints. The
Jade Emperor mounts a major offensive against Monkey in response, summoning an
army that consists of constellations, planets, stars, gods, deities, divine
rivers, guardians of the four (or five) quarters of the Earth, and what have
you. The Nine Planets challenge Monkey
first, but Monkey is so unperturbed by them that he won’t even stop drinking
his heavenly wine to go look. When he
finally does take them on, he beats them back in short order. Helpless with rage, they curse and shout at
him, telling him that he has “added sin upon sin,” to which Monkey replies by
saying, “It’s all true. What are you
going to do about it?” (page 65).
It’s hard to know what to make of this scene
or the ones that follow. What stands out
about them is the distinctive pairing of lofty images and titles with behavior
that reminds us of a kindergarten playground.
This incongruous combination of glorious heavenly beauty and childish
antics is so—well, odd—that we have trouble envisioning what’s supposed to be
happening. Or at least I do. For example, who are the Nine Planets? What do they look like? Should I see them as ordinary human generals
robed in billowing silk robes colored like the pastel atmospheres of Jupiter,
Saturn, or Uranus? Or should I see them
as cartoon characters, Pak-man balls on broomstick legs shaking white-gloved
fists under Monkey’s nose?
Whichever way I look at it, the entire
conflict is trivialized for me even as I’m being told how important it is. This contradiction is so striking that the
paradox it creates must be the point of the story. In other words, it’s probably not important
to remember who did what to whom, in what order, or when. It’s more important to remember the
underlying impression we get that nothing is permanent or important and nature
doesn’t know what it’s doing. Then
again, Monkey doesn’t know what he’s doing, either.
Nevertheless, there are some features of the
story of Monkey’s conquest that may have symbolic importance. It may matter that the Jade Emperor’s nephew,
Erh-lang, is part human (like Gilgamesh).
It may matter that Monkey and his pursuer change into so many odd forms,
especially the identical giants (page 70) and the fish and the cormorant (page
71), transformations that are funny, though it’s hard to say why. It may matter that they hope to catch Monkey
by trapping him in a mirror (appealing to his vanity?). It may also matter that this trick doesn’t
work because despite his vanity, Monkey’s too flexible and able to change. It may matter that one of Monkey’s evasions
is to turn his body into a shrine (page 72), and that this doesn’t fool
Erh-lang because despite all his transformational powers, Monkey’s unable to
get rid of his tale. (As clever as he is
and as holy as he looks, there are some things about his animal nature that he
just can’t hide.)
It may also matter that Monkey’s final trick
is to go into Ehr-lang’s temple disguised as Ehr-lang himself, but this doesn’t work because the
real Ehr-lang has stationed his troops back at Monkey’s cave.
9:
In the Buddha’s Palm
In case you didn’t think there was any power
that could overcome Monkey’s cleverness, you’re about to learn the
characteristics of the power that can.
To be sure Monkey’s not easily defeated, even by forty-nine days in
Lao-tzu’s alchemical crucible (though this is where he gets the fiery red eyes
he’s known for ever afterwards). Even
after everything Lao-tzu can throw at him, he escapes and goes on a rampage all
over Heaven. This forces the Jade
Emperor to play the ultimate card. He
asks for the Buddha’s help.
Who is the Buddha and what lesson does he
teach? The Buddha is the divine soul of
the saintliest man who ever lived. And
the lesson he teaches has something to do with perspective. Monkey is clever indeed, but the one thing he
can’t do is see himself in perspective.
He has no idea how big or how small he is, how old or how young he is,
when seen in terms of the Universe itself—Nature—at large.
This is the message of Buddha’s first
chastisement of Monkey on page 79.
Monkey thinks he’s immortal because he won’t grow old for ten thousand
kalpas (page 80). But Buddha has already
said that the Jade Emperor has not only been living but “perfecting himself”
(living a consciously saintly life) for 1,750 kalpas. (A kalpa is 129,000 years.) The effect is something like what you might
feel if you bragged about being able to travel seven hundred thousand miles
away from earth, only to be told that the nearest star was seven light years
away.
This is also the message conveyed by
Monkey’s ignorance of the size of Buddha’s palm. Buddha makes Monkey a wager. He’ll give Monkey the Jade Emperor’s throne
if Monkey can jump off his palm. Monkey
laughs, thinking that Buddha is just a big man, an ordinary giant whose palm is
just a big hand. But Buddha isn’t one
man from one world. He’s all men from
all worlds. And his palm is not just a
giant hand. It’s the world. To leave Buddha’s palm would be to leave the
world, and even Monkey can’t do that.
Part Two: The Journey to the West
Chapters 10-15: The Pilgrims Unite
The second part of the story has a simple
premise. In the beginning, the saints in heaven decide that the "greedy
and lustful, treacherous and murderous" people of the Southern Continent
are in need of the spiritual wisdom possessed by the people of the Western
Continent (page 85). The Bodhisattva Kuan-yin, a female disciple of the Buddha,
volunteers to go looking for a man holy enough to go to the Western Continent
to bring back the holy scriptures the Southern people need. Kuan-yin finally
finds such a man, Hsuan-tsang, in chapter 11 (pages 96-100).
But before she finds this holy man, she
meets three monsters, two of whom try to stop her journey. (Actually they at
first try to eat her!) One, named
Unfortunately when Hsuan-tsang later comes
back the same way, only Monkey recognizes him as the pilgrim he had earlier
promised Kuan-yin he’d guide and protect (chapter 12, page 106). As for Pigsy and Sandy, they’ve forgotten
their earlier promise to Kuan-yin and at first fail to recognize Hsuan-tsang as
the holy man they promised to protect.
(Pigsy on pages 128-132 and Sandy on pages 133-137 and pages 140-142.)
But in the end they too live up to their end of the agreement.
The story you're reading is mostly about
what happens along the road as the sand monster, the pig, the monkey, and the
monk Hsuan-tsang (also called Tripitika, after the scriptures he's seeking)
make that journey together. But according to Joseph Campbell, their journey is
also an allegory for the growth of spiritual wisdom that every man experiences
in his lifetime. The spiritual wisdom
we gain has something to do with the maturation of the human personality, too,
which is why the four pilgrims have to travel together. Each one represents a facet of the human
personality. In learning to get along
with each other, they also learn how any one man can achieve balance within his
own personality. (More on this in a
minute.)
In class we said that the four travelers have
adventures that teach all of them (or at any rate Hsuan-tsang) lessons. Moreover, we said that the adventures all
have common features, so that somewhat the same lessons are being learned over
and over again. Most of the lessons have
to do with demons and monsters or wizards and witches, often in disguise, as
was the case with the children’s storybook we read, Monkey and the White
Bone Demon. From this story,
Hsuan-tsang learned not to be too hasty in judging people, especially when the
need arises to discriminate between the Very Good and the Very Evil. (The Very Evil is talented at impersonating
goodness and utterly without scruple in doing so, so that if you go through
life simply following your desire to do good, you’ll probably make a hash of every
situation you touch.)
The episodes in David Kherdian’s translation
of the second half of the story probably share certain similarities with Monkey
and the White Bone Demon.
Moreover, these lessons start before chapter 16, when all the travelers
are finally united and traveling together.
In fact the first one Kherdian gives us occurs to Hsuan-tsang when he’s
traveling alone with his human attendants, just before he meets Monkey. This is the story of the cannibal ogres
(pages 103-105).
The brief story begins with nothing less
than the ascent of the
The obvious answer is that the human
attendants must die to make way for the divine ones who will take their
place. But why? In other words, why can’t Tripitika have both
kinds of attendants? Here’s one
answer: Maybe the situation is a test to
make sure Tripitika won’t turn back once he’s alone (except for the helpful
crane who’s flying him out of there much as the eagles flew Gandalf our of dire
straits at least twice).
Okay.
Maybe that explains why the human attendants have to vanish. But that still doesn’t tell us why the story
dwells with such relish on the details:
“As all present roundly agreed, he [the Demon King of the ogres] gave
the order for Tripitika’s attendants to be carved up at once. The heads, hearts, and livers were presented
to the guests, the limbs to the hosts, and the remaining flesh and bones were
distributed among the ogres. The
munching and crunching of bones reminded Tripitika of the sound a tiger makes
when devouring a lamb. The scene was so
hideous and frightening that Tripitika’s soul nearly left his body” (page 104).
I’ll let you puzzle over the details, but
once again I feel compelled to warn you to watch out for Book 9 of the Odyssey. We’ve already mentioned this chapter of Homer’s
story once, when we talked about Monkey’s confrontation with the Demon King of
Havoc (chapter 3). Here’s another
parallel with the same scene of the Odyssey. Odysseus very nearly despairs watching and
listening to the Cyclops chowing down on his crew.
There’s another interesting adventure that
takes place just after Triptika meets Monkey but before he’s met Pigsy and
Sandy. This is the back-to-back saga of
the conquest of the tiger (Monkey wears his tiger-skin apron in all the
pictures in Monkey and the White Bone Demon ) followed by the
defeat of the robbers. (See pages 110-115.
The story of the robbers is reprised on page 118, when Monkey
temporarily abandons the quest out of anger at Tripitika’s naivete). The story of the robbers has particularly
close parallels to the white bone demon episode. Or so it seems to me.
Also not to be missed: chapter 13, “The Cap of Discipline.” This is the chapter that raises the
interesting question, “What does the dithering, helpless monk Hsuan-tsang have that
the brilliant strategist Monkey lacks?”
And I’m not referring only to the cap itself, but to some quality of
character the cap must represent.
From this point on in our text, the
travelers will be facing all their adventures together. So whatever allegory there is here should
become clearer. On an earlier handout,
I suggested that this allegory can be better understood by asking and answering
a few simple questions about the story.
Some of them we’ve tackled already.
But as you read the story, you should keep considering these questions:
The first three questions can be answered
together. How many travellers go to bring the Tripitika back from
Answers: Literally there are four
travellers--the monk Hsuan Tsang (or Tripitika) and his three helpers, Monkey,
Pigsy, and Sandy. But Joseph Campbell would point out that the four characters
are so interdependent that they're effectively inseparable. First of all, none
of the travellers could have made it alone. Monkey would have become
side-tracked by his games and personal quarrels with the demons, not to mention
by his desire to prove his cleverness. Pigsy would have become side-tracked by
his sensual appetites.
The answer is simple. Although he's
theoretically the leader of the expedition, Hsuan Tsang is in fact the weakest
and least intelligent of the travelers. The reason is that he's too good
and saintly. Above all he's too trusting. He doesn't know how to tell good from
evil because he always assumes the best of people and situations, even when he
shouldn't. And when he's confronted by a clear evil, like the wild tigers, he
doesn't know what to do and collapses in tears crying, "Save me! Save
me!" He's named for the scriptures of wisdom and eternal life, but just as
these scriptures can't get to the people by themselves, so Hsuan Tsang's
goodness is ineffectual without the guidance and protection of
"helpers" who know sin when they see it.
These "helpers" represent
faculties of every man's mind that help each of us preserve our integrity and
lead a good life. They're not actually separate creatures, but separate parts
of Hsuan Tsang's own mind that he needs to connect with. This is proven at the
conclusion of the journey, when the four travellers step into the bottomless
boat of the ferryman to cross the last turbulent river before the Buddha's
temple (page 2199). They look into the river to watch their bodies float past.
But they see only one body--Tripitika's.
Therefore, if we examine what faculty each
of these helpers represents, we'll have the key to the wisdom message of Monkey.
That faculty is inherent in the name of each animal creature.
What's our "Monkey"? Our
"Monkey" is the human intelligence that makes primates so different
from every other type of animal. But that intelligence is ungoverned by any
sense of purpose; it's cleverness for its own sake. We can see this if we think
of the old proverb "Monkey see monkey do," which describes the
attitude of the clever who can imitate whatever they see others do, but who
don't know how to choose what to do and what not to do for themselves.
What's our "Pigsy"? Our Pigsy is
our physical strength and health as well as our instinctive urges. (These
aren't always bad things!)
What's our "
JOURNEY TO THE WEST is the real Chinese name
of MONKEY. The Western Continent is literally
We don't need to read the Tripitika because
one of the characters has taken the name Tripitika. So if we want to understand
the Tripitika, we should just look at his character. The Bodhisattva Kuan-yin
saw in him the qualities necessary to retrieve the scriptures because he has
the character of a man who has already read them. Tripitika is a man with the
mind of a child; that is, his mind is empty of many of the things that
preoccupy the minds of most adults. He's empty of suspicion. He's empty of
ambition and personal vanity (well, almost). He's empty of greed, lust, or
other desires. His overwhelming emptiness allows him to read the world from the
vantage point of a child, without preconceived notions of the meanings of
things.
As we'll see when we get to question # 8,
the text of JOURNEY TO THE WEST is closely associated with a famous Chinese classical
philosopher who taught that a man should try to be all of those things,
Lao-tzu. (See pages 60-65, Part One.)
So much for the first three questions. That
brings us to question # 4:
Monkey, Pigsy, and
In fact, it's a
mark of Hsuan-Tsang's stupidity that he doesn't grasp something Monkey learns
more easily: There are no good or bad men. There are no good or bad
intelligences and no good or bad appetites or instincts, either. Any man or
instinct can be bent to a good purpose or to a bad purpose. And anything bent
to a good purpose is good.
Joseph Campbell
says that all bodies of water represent the Unconscious, and we'll take him at
his word. But clearly not all bodies of water are alike, or have all the same
properties. So what makes these rivers special?
We're told that
these rivers are so wide that you can't see the other side, and that they're
churning and roiling. The first river (pages 87-90) contains
The second river
(pages 192-194) presents the travellers with a more complex predicament. It's
not nearly as wide as the first river; nevertheless it's just as impassable,
partly because of the speed of the rapids. To cross the river, the travellers
must pass more than one test. The first is a test of faith: they doubt that
they've found the right way, and they can't go any further until, by
discussion, they overcome this doubt. The second is a test of balance. On page 192,
we’re told that the three travellers are meant to cross a “bridge of one
log”. (Another translation describes the
bridge as being the width of the palm of your hand.) The New Testament has a parallel saying about
the road to heaven; that it's like the eye of a needle. Only Monkey has the necessary balance, but
unless he can cross with the others, the crossing has no merit and he won't
gain entrance to heaven.
The solution to
their problem arrives unbidden, a gift from out of nowhere. It's an unlikely
gift--a bottomless boat. Thinking that the illusion of bottomlessness is
another test of faith, Hsuan-Tsang tries to put his feet down anyway and is
nearly flushed into the whirlpool, presumably proving that faith isn't
everything. Without even faith to help him, clinging to the boat in terror,
Hsuan-Tsang sees his body float away. Then he's congratulated on successfully
completing his death.
So what do the two
rivers represent? I'm sure there's more than one reasonable interpretation.
Here's my theory. They represent the unconscious fear of death, which inhibits
human action. That fear may be the one thing that usually blocks a man's search
for truth, wisdom, and goodness. This scene is also reminiscent of a STAR WARS
scene that was featured in the first Bill Moyers' interview of Joseph Campbell.
It's the scene where Luke Skywalker says to his father Darth Vader, "I'll
never join the Dark Side!" while trying to hold his balance on a narrow
bridge across a vast cylindrical abyss that leads to the energy source of the
Death Star. A similar freakishly narrow
bridge is depicted in the Mines of Moria in “Fellowship of the Ring.” This is in fact the bridge on which Gandalf
the Gray meets his death.
We can also check the writings of Lao Tzu to
see if Tripitika becomes wiser and holier by making his spiritual
pilgrimage in the company of the three animal spirits sent to him by Kuan-yin.
What are the lessons he learns? Are they similar to the lessons possibly taught
by Lao Tzu's poetry?
And again, we can also ask what Monkey,
Pigsy, and Sandy learn along the way to the West, at least in the episodes
we've read. What lessons do they learn? And are these lessons possibly the same
as those Lao Tzu was trying to teach?
Chapters 16-20: The Parable of the Iron Fan
Issue Number One: The Needs of a Traveler.
We’re all travelers on the road of life, and
we’re all constrained by what anyone needs to complete any journey. On page 143, this epic offers us a theory of
what those needs are and how they can best be met. The first piece of advice is “Don’t go alone,
whether your friends walk beside or inside you”. If you’re with others, this means
understanding what you can’t do without them and what they can’t do without
you—and acting accordingly. If you’re by
yourself, you must carry the views of others inside you. That is, you must be ever mindful of points
of view other than your own. You have
to accommodate them somehow.
Not only that, but there are diversity
requirements. (Consider it poetic
affirmative action.) Each of the
travelers represents a worldview--a stance toward life--that has to be part of
the overall picture. Someone must play
the part of the animal nature that carries a man toward his humanity (in this
case, the white horse). And someone
(Sandy) must tend this animal spirit.
Someone (Monkey) must be the bodyguard.
Someone (Pigsy) must carry the luggage.
And someone (Tripitika) must interpret and follow the map.
On page 143, we also hear what the main
problem with traveling is. Everyone must
simultaneously do three things: (1) Improve his own skills, which he can only do
by recognizing what each of the other companions needs him for, (2) Learn the
limits of his skills, which he can only do by recognizing what he needs each of
the others for, and (3) Overcome his sense of who he is—that is, his desire to
be a hero in his own right—which he can only do by seeing himself not as an
individual, but as a part of a larger whole.
Moreover, Tripitika has a 4th task. In addition to mastering his own changes, he
has to supervise the changes in everyone else, which is no small task for the
least practical member of the group.
Moreover, at every step of the way they
encounter real dangers requiring immediate responses. Imagine a football team (or worse, a board of
executives) leading an expedition up
The time has come to talk of the
obstacles—the specific barriers to enlightenment. What do they represent? What of the spirits? The ghosts, witches, demons, monsters,
goblins, and orcs who stand in the way?
Who are they? And what of the
places? What of the river of death that
every epic has? What of
The final obstacle our pilgrims encounter is
first experienced by them as unseasonable heat in autumn (page 145), which sets
up the parable of the iron fan. In
chapter 16 we learn that a flaming mountain permanently bars the Way to the
West. The heat from this mountain has
destroyed the seasons and therefore destroyed all growing things. It’s only possible to live in this region
because of a deity called the Immortal Iron Fan who dwells on another distant
mountain called Mount Emerald Cloud.
Every ten years the people of this region make a journey to this
mountain with animal and plant sacrifices.
They beg the Immortal Iron Fan to swish his giant palm leaf fan three
times. The first swish puts out the fire
of
In chapter 17, we’re immediately plunged
into a cosmic game of mistaken identity.
We learn that the one demon Monkey was seeking, Immortal Iron Fan, is
actually a married pair of demons, Princess Iron Fan (also called Princess
Rakshashi) and her husband, the Bull Demon King. The Bull Demon King is off on some kind of
“business trip”. Rakshashi is home, but
it turns out that she knows who Monkey is and has no desire to help him. She agrees to do so only if he will let her
try her best to chop off his head. If
she fails to kill him, she says, she’ll let him borrow the fan. (This story is strangely reminiscent of the
story of Gawain and the Green Knight, as Joseph Campbell tells it to Bill
Moyers.)
Monkey survives the ordeal, but Rakshashi
reneges on her promise. Unable to defeat
Monkey in battle, she fans him away to a distant mountain with the palm leaf
fan. It appears all is lost for the
travelers, since they can’t get past the
When Monkey returns to Rakshashi, she’s
terrified to learn that the palm leaf fan no longer affects him. Although she tries to hide from Monkey in her
cave, Monkey just changes himself into a gnat, dives into her coffee, and
allows her to swallow him. Once inside
her he changes into a miniature form of himself and battles her from
within. In this way he forces her to
loan him the fan, but this is only the beginning of his troubles, for when he
tries to use the fan he discovers (page 157) that it no longer works. Instead of putting out the fire, it seems to
replenish it, creating a monstrous roaring inferno.
Monkey now knows that Rakshashi gave him a
fake fan or maybe even a cursed one, but in any case not the one he was
seeking. But he doesn’t know why the
fire’s getting worse. That explanation
comes from a hawk-beaked demon, the local god of
On this mountain, he’s met by a beautiful
girl who turns out to be the Bull Demon King’s mistress. Monkey at first seeks to evade the demon
king’s guard by pretending he has been sent by Rakshashi rather than revealing
his identity. Since he encounters the
Other Woman rather than the demon himself, his ploy has the opposite
effect. But Monkey doesn’t fool the Bull
Demon King, who realizes that because she’s an immortal saint on the One Path,
his wife lives an austere life with no servants. Therefore, she could not have sent Monkey to
them. He has to be an impostor seeking
them out for his own reasons.
Once he finds out who Monkey is, the Bull
Demon King promises to make Rakshashi give Monkey the real palm leaf fan, but
only if he can survive three rounds with the demon in battle. After 104 rounds with no clear winner, the
Bull Demon King refuses to honor his promise, but calls a halt so that he can
attend a banquet given by his friend the dragon spirit of the Craggy Rock
Mountain Emerald Lagoon. Monkey crashes
this banquet by transforming himself into a crab and scuttling in, but the
dragon orders his arrest. On page 168,
Monkey shows his resourcefulness and imagination by fabricating a story and
title for himself as the Sidewise-Scuttling Knight in Armor and begging for the
dragon’s mercy. By this means he saves
his life but is still cast out of the banquet.
Once on the outside, he decides to change himself into the Bull Demon
King, steal the demon’s horse, and go to Rakshashi himself in disguise.
Monkey is too smart to make up the kind of story
many of us might make up—one in which, posing as the Bull Demon King, he says,
“Give the palm leaf fan to my old friend Monkey.” He knows Rakshashi won’t fall for that. So he warns her about Monkey instead. She grows weepy about being left alone to
fight off demons like Monkey by herself; then she makes dinner, served with
plenty of wine. Things get a little
cozy; the two of them get a little drunk; and finally Monkey coaxes her to show
him where she hid the true fan. To
Monkey’s surprise and ours, it’s in her mouth.
Monkey has to ask her how to enlarge the
fan, and if she weren’t drunk, this would make her suspicious. Now, however, she thoughtlessly “reminds” him
of how to do the trick. He slips the fan
into his own mouth, changes back to his true form, and mocks her for kissing
him and trying to seduce him, reveling in her humiliation. In these scenes, Monkey shows behavioral
traits that are a lot like those of Odysseus when he deals with the witches on his
journey—in particular Circe. The extravagant
lies and phony identities Monkey invents for himself when in the company of
strangers are also a lot like those of Odysseus.
But then Monkey does something foolish: He recites the magic formula immediately
instead of waiting until he gets back to his friends. Then it dawns on him that he doesn’t know how
to shrink the fan back to a size he can conceal or carry. So he has to fly back to his friends while
clutching a twelve-foot fan to his breast, and then walk, dragging it over his
shoulder.
Meanwhile (at the beginning of chapter 19),
the Bull Demon King sobers up and realizes what has happened. He dashes back to the
At the beginning of chapter 20, Monkey,
Pigsy, the
It’s difficult to think what to make of all
the transformations, except to suggest that they hint at a simple truth—as we
go through life we keep seeing our enemies differently, transforming ourselves
to battle our latest assumption about their true powers and who they truly
are.
In any case, the Bull Demon King can no
longer retreat to Princess Jade Countenance’s cave, so he goes back to the
On page 186, the story describes Monkey’s
ritual completion of his final act as Tripitika’s guard, the waving of the fan
to clear away the last obstacle. When
the fan is waved the first time, the fires of the
Treating the story as a parable is difficult
for several reasons: the plot is so
complex, there are so many minor characters with significant names, the
relationships among the characters are confusing and inconsistent, and there
are so many transformations. One way to
address the problem is to ask whether this confusion is what the story is
about. Another way to address the
problem is to break the story apart into scenes and explain what we can figure
out so far about specific scenes, treating individual scenes as parables in
their own right. We just did that in
discussing the ritual waving of the fan on page 186. Whatever else it does, it recapitulates the
story of creation. That’s unlikely to be
a coincidence.
There’s another puzzling scene that at first
glance overwhelms us with its apparent difficulty, but at second glance may not
be quite as difficult to interpret as it looks.
That’s the transformations of Monkey and Bull Demon on pages
180-181. Think of this as a strategic
game--like rock, paper, scissors--and chart it.
Bull
Monkey
To swan, one.
To vulture, one.
To golden eagle, two. To
black phoenix, two.
To white crane, three. To
scarlet phoenix, three.
To musk deer, four.
To tiger, four.
To spotted leopard, five. To
golden-eyed lion, five.
To bear, six.
To serpent-trunked elephant, six.
To Giant Self, seven.
To Giant Self, seven.
So what do we know? Each goes through seven transformations. Each completes the battle as himself, only
larger than life. Moreover, Monkey’s
alternate selves are consistently darker in character—more intelligent, more violent
and sinister, and more powerful. There’s
a vulture, who feeds on the dead. There
are two phoenixes. The phoenix is a
mythical symbol of reincarnation, as anyone who has read or seen Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets knows.
Moreover, black and scarlet are
both colors of death, the first associated with funerals and the second
with large quantities of blood. Monkey
also opens the cat sequence, being the first to resort to this upscaling of the
violence. Monkey’s final transformation
before reverting to himself is not only a large and dangerous animal, but by
far the most intelligent animal on either transformation list. On the other hand, contrary to expectations,
many of Bull Demon’s transformations are peaceful, quiet, serene, and
tranquil. His first choice of an
alternate spirit is a swan, the very symbol of grace and tranquility. And the white crane is a powerful symbol of
the soul released from the body at death.
Here I don’t mean to give you an
interpretation. I just want to suggest
that the text is rich with symbolism if you want to look. How you interpret it is up to you.
Nevertheless, before we close the
discussion, we may also gain some insights by trying to connect some of the
points we’ve made so far. We said that:
·
Two scenes in
this parable hearken back to scenes earlier in the text, when Monkey was
becoming who he is. On page 160, we
learn that Monkey’s destruction of Lao-tzu’s crucible, which occurred on page
77, is the force that created the
·
The scene on
page 143 is interesting because it explains the main thing the journey has
shown the travelers—that the different members of a team, or the different
facets of a single personality, must subordinate themselves to one another and
work together in order to achieve the particular type of understanding the
eastern traditions call “enlightenment.”
·
The scene on
pages 180-181 is interesting because it shows that the right way to battle
either a human enemy or a “demon” within yourself is not necessarily with
aggression, but with right understanding of the situation. Escape may be better than attack—or not. To hide may be better than to threaten—or
not. You may need to leap, dodge, pounce,
fly, soar, glide, dive, or even fall in a ditch and play dead. The animal transformations in this scene
represent different adaptations to a threat in the environment. An enlightened being is one who understands
the true nature of each of these adaptations, so that at any moment he can
assume any possible stance toward the world.
·
The scene on
page 187 is interesting because it shows not only that every end is a new
beginning, but perhaps something even more—that every end is an act of
creation. This suggests that the person
facing an ending of some kind has the power to determine not only that
something will happen next, but to some extent what it will be.
This still leaves
us with many questions. Here are two:
1. Why is adultery the Bull Demon’s sin? What does this have to do with the nature of
the “evil” he represents? Why is it the
last obstacle Monkey must overcome?
(It’s a strange one for a guy who never married or even had a romantic
interest.)
2. Why is the last demon a bull? We’ve already noted that ancient myths are
obsessed with the bull as a symbol. We
discussed why—that he’s the wildest of all the tame animals. Why is Monkey’s last enemy a bull, then?
3. What significance can we find in the names of the
demons Monkey faces—or the names of the deities who come to his aid? For example, what’s the difference between a
jade mistress and an iron wife?
There may be no meaningful answer to these
questions. And there may be others we
might want to ask.