- Excerpt from Journey to the West by Buddha
Sun crawled through the narrow path inside the mountain; he looked terrified, but there was nowhere else to go but inside as an invisible force field blocked the only path out.
As he got closer to the end of the path, he could hear running water, and it made him thirsty, but he crawled forward carefully.
After he made it through the narrow path, Sun saw greenery everywhere, a lot of trees that he didn’t know, and many that he knew.
The source of the running water was a spring of water at the end of this huge enclosure that came out of the mountain straight into a tiny pool.
Sun looked around in wonder; this place was heaven for a monkey: there were so many fruits, and so many small critters played around happily. Sun wondered if they were also prisoners of this place, like him.
After looking around and making sure that there is no other way out, Sun gave up and went to the water spring to drink, he first dipped his finger inside the water stream to make sure it’s not hot, and he found it cold enough that it would be perfect to drink.
He still lowered his face carefully into the spring, and drank the water and found that the water was perfectly safe for him to drink, he indulged in drinking so much of it.
Unbeknownst to Sun, on top of the spring there was a figure of a monkey that stood on two feet like a human would; that kept becoming clearer and clearer as Sun drank more and more.
He wore a pair of shoes the color of lotus root, and a cuirass of chain mail made of yellow gold, and on his head, he wore a cap with erect Phoenix plums made of red gold, and even after Sun drank his fill from the spring, the monkey king’s phantom wasn’t all there, and wasn’t all clear, but unlike any other spirit form that Sun or Seph had run into; The Monkey King’s form was the most sophisticated, because it did not come out as a pale ghostly blue, it retained the color that it would have had in real life.
Sun was still unaware of the recent change to the enclosure, but he looked behind him carefully after he finished drinking, and then he looked in front of him again, only to see the cloud-treading shoes of the Monkey King.
He gulped slowly as his eyes traveled the length of the body of the Monkey king who stood there without his famous weapon, and once Sun looked at his face, the Monkey King winked at him cheerfully with a big smile plastered all over his face.
Sun screamed, “EEEEK!” and tried to run away.
The Monkey King spoke, “Do not run, I am here to help you.”
Sun didn’t listen and ran to hide behind a palm tree anyway, and he looked carefully from behind it at Sun Wukong.
The Monkey King pointed at himself as he said, “We are very similar, you and I; you have the gift, but it’s not all there. You understand human language, but you can’t speak like I do. You are earth born not born from the primal forces of Heaven and Earth like me; you are one of me, but not all of you is me.”
Sun pondered his words, and thought, there is no way that he was the same as that great monkey who could mimic human speech.
The Monkey King looked at Sun with pity and grandfatherly affection as he said, “I would like to help you with what keeps you awake at night.”
Sun’s eyes went wide, as nobody really knew that he had trouble sleeping as of late, because of his failure as a cultivator, his eyes watered, and he thought, that there was nothing to lose anyway, so he moved toward the floating soul sliver of the monkey king.
Once Sun was close enough, he asked him in monkey voices, “Who are you?”
The Monkey King understood the animal language of Sun, but talked in the human tongue instead. “It has been a long time since I said these words to anyone; I am the Monkey King from the Water Cavern on Flower Fruit Mountain. Unlike you, I was born from an immortal stone on top of that mountain, that broke one day after it got struck by lightning and out of the stone I came to this world, a stone monkey that transcended all limitations that would have stopped our ilk from achieving greatness.”
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Sun was in awe of what the Monkey King said, and he made a big O with his mouth before asking him a question in monkey tongue.
The Monkey King repeated the question in human language. “How did I become the Monkey King?” He got excited as he gave Sun his answer, “So, on the Flower Fruit Mountain, there lived a lot of monkeys; they were like you, they didn’t know human tongue, and one day while exploring the mountain, they came across a waterfall, when one monkey said, ‘I wonder what’s behind that waterfall!’ One of our monkey elders said. ‘We need to appoint a new king; any monkey who will brave that waterfall and find out what’s behind it, we will appoint as our king.’”
The monkey king stopped as he looked to the distance with a smile reminiscing the past, before he got back to acting the scene — he was literally acting, all with changing his voice for each monkey, and mimicking their unique movements that he remembered so fondly — and he said, “I was watching them from afar, as I felt I differed from them, and I didn’t want to scare them, but once they made this challenge.”
I jumped from behind the rocks where I had been hiding to watch them, and I said, “I’ll be your monkey king.” I then jumped into the waterfall, as I heard them wonder, “Who was that monkey?” Meanwhile, I came out the other side of the water to find a magnificent cave; it had enough space to shelter all the monkeys from the rain and storms, and it even had an old abandoned heavenly dwelling with all its equipment. I looked around in wonder before I jumped back outside and said, ‘Everyone, there is a huge cave inside, that could protect us from the elements, where we could sleep each day, there is even a heavenly dwelling in there, this will be perfect to protect the children.’”
The monkey king stopped for a second before continuing, “I saw their hesitance, so I picked up a few of the children, and jumped back inside the waterfall, and let them down inside, the kids were overjoyed after they passed through the waterfall, I jumped back outside, and that’s when the monkeys rejoiced finally, seeing as I was safe twice, after I braved the waterfall in front of their eyes. They finally started following my lead, and jumping inside the waterfall too, we helped each other carry the kids inside the mountain, and once we were all on the other side, I asked the elder who spoke earlier, ‘So? Will you make me your king now?’ He then said with a joyful voice, ‘Come forth; from now on, you are our king, you are the Monkey King of Flower Fruit Mountain.’ He then shouted to everyone, ‘Everyone, gather as much food as you can for the banquet; we need to celebrate our new king.’ After they gathered a lot of fruits and nuts and other foods, we danced to music joyfully the entire night, and by the time sunrise came, we all fell asleep blissfully. It was one of the best nights of my life.”
Sun was incredibly impressed by the tale of the monkey king’s bravery, and the happiness of a big group of monkeys, and how they honored him, and he thought that he would have totally jumped through the waterfall to the other side too, and became their monkey king, and he told the monkey king so.
The Monkey King laughed joyfully and said, “Of course, you would have. I told you, you are some of me, but not all of me, and I’ll help you become as good as me.”
Sun’s eyes became enormous as saucers as he heard those words, and couldn’t imagine all the potential of what they meant.
The Monkey King gave Sun a moment to let all this settle in and then said, “But first tell me, why do you want to cultivate?”
Sun spoke lengthily in monkey tongue while adding in acting and gestures to convey the full story.
The Monkey King said, “Aha, you would like to cultivate, to become stronger and help your human friend in his journey, because he often finds himself in trouble, and almost died in front of your eyes at one point?”
Sun nodded his head eagerly; the Monkey King thought it over, and then said, “That reminds me of my human friend, Tang Sanzang, but what is your personal reason? If you had never become friends with Seph, would you still have wanted to cultivate?”
Sun nodded in affirmation, but didn’t say his reason, so the monkey king insisted on knowing it, and then Sun talked again, and explained his reason after he thought about it for a bit.
The Monkey King said, “So, you would have still wanted to become strong even if you didn’t know Seph.” The Monkey King nodded before he continued, “A respectable reason as any.”
Sun didn’t like his reply, so he crossed his arms in front of his chest, and asked for the reason the Monkey King wanted to cultivate to begin with.
The Monkey King answered, “I wanted to learn cultivation because I wanted to become immortal, because I feared death.”
Sun got a chill down his spine for a second, as he had never thought of his own mortality before.
The Monkey King then told Sun another tale from his life. “I have been living in my cave for years, surrounded by my loving subjects. We danced, and we ate, and we laughed, and everything was good. Then one day, one of our own died, which made me very sad; as I thought of my own mortality, I didn’t want to die at all. When my elders saw how sad I was they asked me and I told them the reason truthfully, and that’s when one of my elders told me about the immortals who practice cultivation, and how it made them have the same age as the heavens, and that cultivation was the only way for me to become immortal too.”
The Monkey King smiled faintly. “That was when I rejoiced, and I ordered my people to build me a raft and fill it was all kinds of fruits and water, and they did. I said goodbye to everyone with a promise of returning after I gained immortality, after I mastered the art of cultivation. I went out into the ocean on my raft in search of the immortals; and let me tell you, it was a long and perilous journey.”