Not wishing to shed needless karma, the Jade Emperor invited Monkey to Heaven and gave him a job. “That intolerable ape has just vandalized my filing system and made monkeys immortal. Then Yanluo Wang, the God of Death, lodged a formal protest. First the Long Wang Ocean Dragons complained of rudeness and theft. It wasn’t long before reports of Monkey’s tricks started to reach the austere ears of the Jade Emperor. Monkey was delighted with this Weapon of Mass Destruction and used it to bludgeon many a demon thereafter. It weighed 13,000 pounds but could expand to fill the Universe or shrink to the size of a needle. There he found the great Magic Wishing Staff, a huge rod of black iron which Heaven had used to flatten the bed of the Milky Way. So he whizzed off to the Dragon King Ao Guang and cajoled his way into the Treasury. Magic tricks were no good - what he needed was a weapon. Returning home to his monkey subjects, he discovered they were under siege by a fearsome monster. Which, thought Monkey, was extremely good value for money. After much haggling, Father Subodhi uttered the words of Illumination, explained the process of Cloud-Flying - and also revealed the secret of the Seventy-Two Transformations. Monkey was very pleased with this epithet, not realizing it referred to the vacuum in his head. The sage, unimpressed with his simian tricks, gave the Monkey King a new title: ‘Disciple Aware of Emptiness’. To find immortality, Monkey became the disciple of Father Subodhi, a rather dour Daoist sage. But a niggling worry began to gnaw at him - one which would change his life.
He was soon having a wonderful time as King of the Apes.
TRICKSTER MYTHOLOGY FULL
He was high-spirited, egotistical and full of mischievous pranks. One day this pregnant rock released a stone egg, and from it hatched a Stone Ape, who solemnly bowed to the Four Corners of the Earth - then jumped off to have fun. It may be a work of fiction, but it’s based on a genuine historical legend, so who knows? It’s one of China’s Four Great Novels, and we highly recommend it to anyone seeking enlightenment or entertainment.įrom the beginning of time, a certain rock on the Mountain of Fruit and Flowers had been soaking up the goodness of nature and Qi energy. Star of stage, screen and scroll, Monkey is the hero of Journey To The West (Xiyou Ji) - the amazing novel of frivolity and profundity written by Wu Cheng’en in the sixteenth century.
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