The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 2 (8 page)

Citations from all Standard Histories, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Kaiming edition of
Ershiwushi
(9 vols., 1934; rpr. Taipei, 1959). Citations of text with traditional or simplified characters follow format of publications consulted.

TWENTY-
SIX

Amid the Three Islands Sun Wukong seeks a cure;

With sweet dew Guanshiyin revives a tree.

    
Hold fast in life the “sword” above the “heart.”
¹

    
Recall the “long” beside the “suffering.”

    
The proverb says the sword’s the law of life,

    
But think thrice to check both anger and pride.

    
“The noblest”
²
is peaceful—it’s taught long ago;

    
“The sage loves virtue”
³
—a truth for all times.

    
The strong man will meet someone stronger still:

    
Come to naught at last he surely will!

We were telling you about the Zhenyuan Great Immortal, who grabbed Pilgrim and said, “I know your abilities, and I have heard of your reputation. But you have been most deceitful and unscrupulous this time. You may indulge in all sorts of wizardry, but you can’t escape from my hands. I’ll argue with you all the way to the Western Heaven to see that Buddhist Patriarch of yours, but you won’t get away from having to restore to me the Ginseng Fruit Tree. So stop playing with your magic!” “Dear Sir!” said Pilgrim, laughing. “How petty you are! If you want the tree revived, there’s no problem. If you had said so in the first place, we would have been spared this conflict.” “No conflict!” said the Great Immortal. “You think I would let you get away with what you have done?” “Untie my master,” said Pilgrim, “and I’ll give you back a living tree. How’s that?” “If you really possess the power,” said the Great Immortal, “to make the tree alive again, I’ll go through the proper ceremony of ‘Eight Bows’ with you and become your bond-brother.” “Relax!” said Pilgrim. “Let them go, and you can be certain that old Monkey will give you back a living tree.”

The Great Immortal reckoned that they could not escape; he therefore gave the order to free Tripitaka, Eight Rules, and Sha Monk. “Master,” said Sha Monk, “I wonder what sort of tricks Elder Brother is up to this time.”

“What sort of tricks?” asked Eight Rules. “This is called the trick of ‘Pulling Wool Right over Your Eyes.’ The tree is dead! You think it could be cured and revived? He’s just putting out some empty formula for show. On the pretext of going to find medicine to cure the tree, he will flee and take to the road all by himself. You think he has any care for us?” “He won’t dare leave us behind,” said Tripitaka. “Let’s ask him where he is going to find the cure.”

He
then called out, “Wukong, how did you manage to deceive the Immortal Master and have us freed?” “Old Monkey is speaking the truth, only the truth,” said Pilgrim. “What do you mean by deceiving him?” Tripitaka asked. “Where will you go to find the cure?”

Pilgrim replied, “According to an old proverb, ‘The cure comes from the seas.’ I want to go now to the Great Eastern Ocean and make a complete tour of the Three Islands and the Ten Islets. I want to visit all the Immortals and Aged Sages to ask for a method of revivification that will revive the tree for him.” “How long do you need to be away before returning?” said Tripitaka. “Only three days.” “All right,” said Tripitaka. “As you said, I’ll give you three days. If you return by that time, everything will be fine. If you don’t come back after three days, I’ll begin reciting that ‘Old-Time Sūtra’!” “I hear you! I hear you!” said Pilgrim.

Look how he quickly straightened his tiger-skin kilt. As he walked out the door, he said to the Great Immortal, “You need not worry, sir. I leave now, but I’ll be back very soon. But you must take good care of my master; see that he lacks none of the three meals and the six teas of the day. If my master’s clothes become soiled or wrinkled, wash and starch them. Should he want anything, old Monkey will settle the account with you when he returns. I’ll finish puncturing all the pans for you! If my master’s face pales even a little, I won’t take him back; and if he becomes a trifle thin, I’ll not leave this place.” “Go, go,” said the Great Immortal. “I’ll see to it that he doesn’t starve!”

Dear Monkey King! He mounted his cloud somersault quickly and left the Abbey of Five Villages, heading straight for the Great Eastern Ocean. Moving through the air like lightning and meteor, he soon arrived at the immortal region of Penglai.
⁴
He lowered his cloud and took a careful look below: it was a lovely place indeed, for which we have a testimonial poem. The poem says:

    
A great land divine, the sages’ domain,

    
These Penglai islands calm the winds and waves.

    
Jasper towers’ cool the heavens with their shades;

    
Tall arches’ bright reflections float on the sea.

    
Mists of five colors veil the jade-green sky;

    
High on the gold turtle stars and moon shine.

    
The Queen of the West would this place frequent

    
For Three Immortals with peaches as present.

Before he had finished looking at this divine scenery, Pilgrim was already entering Penglai. As he walked, he saw three old men playing encirclement chess in the shade of some pine trees outside the White-Cloud Cave. The one watching the game was the Star of Longevity, while the two
playing
were the Star of Blessing and the Star of Wealth. Pilgrim approached them, crying, “Old brothers, receive my bow!” When the Three Stars saw him, they pushed away the chess board and returned his salutation. “Great Sage, why did you come here?” they asked. “I came especially to have some fun with all of you,” said Pilgrim. “I heard that the Great Sage, who forsook Daoism to follow Buddhism,” said the Star of Longevity, “had won back his freedom to protect the Tang Monk on his journey to seek scriptures in the Western Heaven. He must be traveling over rugged roads every day. Where would he find time to have fun with us?” Pilgrim said, “To tell all of you the truth, old Monkey has run into a little obstacle halfway on the journey to the West. That’s why I came to request some assistance, but I don’t know whether you are willing to help me or not.” “At what place?” asked the Star of Blessing. “What sort of obstacle? Tell us plainly so that we may decide.” “We were stopped while passing the Abbey of Five Villages at the Long Life Mountain.” “The Abbey of Five Villages is the divine residence of the Zhenyuan Great Immortal,” said one of the three old men, who were astonished. “Could it be that you stole and ate his ginseng fruits?” “So I stole and ate them,” said Pilgrim with a laugh. “How much could they be worth?”

“You ape!” said one of the three old men. “You
are
dumb! A man who takes one whiff of that fruit will live to be three hundred and sixty years old; he eats one and he’ll last forty-seven thousand years. That’s why it bears the name of ‘The Long-Life Grass of Reverted Cinnabar.’ The level of cultivation in Dao of that Great Immortal far surpasses ours! With such a thing in his possession, he can easily have the same age as Heaven, whereas we still have to nourish our spermal essence, cultivate our breaths, fortify our spirits, harmonize the tiger and the dragon, catch the
kan
to fill up the
li
—in short, we have to spend a lot of time and effort just to attain immortality. How could you say, ‘How much could they be worth?’ Throughout the whole world, that’s the only kind of spiritual root there is.” “Spiritual root! Spiritual root!” said Pilgrim. “I have already uprooted it!”

“What do you mean by ‘uprooted it’?” asked the three old men, greatly alarmed. Pilgrim said, “When we went to the Abbey the other day, the Great Immortal was not home, and only two lads received my master. They served him two ginseng fruits, but my master did not realize that they were fruits. Thinking that they were infants not yet three days old, he absolutely refused to eat them. The lads took them away and ate them without bothering even to share them with us. So, old Monkey went and stole three of the fruits for us three brothers to eat, but those two lads, without any sense of propriety, kept on calling us thieves. Old Monkey got mad and gave the tree a blow with his rod. When it fell to the ground, the fruits on it disappeared, the branches snapped, the leaves dropped, and it died with all its roots exposed. The lads tried to imprison us, but old Monkey broke their lock and
left
. Early next morning, their master came back and gave chase; we had a few rough exchanges with him which led eventually to a fight. In a flash, he flipped open that sleeve of his and bagged all of us. We were bound and shackled, interrogated and whipped for a whole day, but we managed to escape again that night. He caught up with us once more and took us captive. Mind you, there was not an inch of steel on him! He had only that yak’s tail to parry our blows, but none of the three weapons of us brothers could even touch him. And so he gave us more of the same treatment, wrapping my master and my two younger brothers in cloth coated with varnish but putting me in a pan of boiling oil. I then showed him my special talent for escape, but not before I had punctured his pan. When he saw that he could not hold me captive, he became somewhat intimidated, and that was when I sweet-talked him into freeing my master and my brothers with the promise that I would revive his tree for him. That’s how we came to a temporary truce. When I remembered the saying, ‘The cure comes from the seas,’ I decided to pay you three old Brothers a visit in this lovely place. If you have any formula to cure the tree, please pass it on to me at once so that I can rescue the Tang Monk from his ordeal.”

When the Three Stars heard these words, they became distressed also. One of them said, “Monkey, you’re completely ignorant of people! That Master Zhenyuan is the patriarch of earthbound immortals, while we belong to the lineage of divine immortals. You may have some sort of position in Heaven, but you are only an irregular number in the Great Monad clan, and you have yet to attain an authentic rank. How could you possibly expect to escape from him? If you had killed some beast or bird, some insect or scaly creature, all you would need is one grain of my millet-elixir and it would be revived. The ginseng fruit, however, is the very root of all divine trees. How could it be healed? There’s no cure for it!” When Pilgrim heard that there was no cure available, his brow became completely furrowed.

“Great Sage,” said the Star of Blessing, “though there is no cure here, there may be one in another place. Why are you so dejected?” Pilgrim said, “Of course, I don’t mind going to another place to seek a cure. It would have been a small matter indeed, even if I had to journey to the edge of the seas or make a complete tour of the thirty-six Heavens. But that Elder Tang of mine, who is neither tolerant nor magnanimous, has given me a limit of three days. If I don’t return with something after three days, he’ll start re citing the Tight-Fillet Spell.” “Good! Good! Good!” said the Three Stars, laughing. “Had it not been for this little means of control, you would be crawling all over Heaven again!” Then the Star of Longevity said, “Relax, Great Sage. Don’t worry. Though that Great Immortal is our senior, he does know us. As we have not visited him for a long time, and as it is for the sake of the Great Sage, we three shall go and call on him right now. We’ll express
your
concern to the Tang Monk and tell him not to recite the Tight-Fillet Spell. Three days, four days—what’s the difference? We won’t leave them until you come back with the cure.” “Thank you! Thank you!” said Pilgrim. “Please get on with your journey, old Brothers. I’m off.” So the Great Sage took leave of them, and we shall say no more of that.

We tell you now about the Stars, who mounted the auspicious luminosity and went straight to the Abbey of Five Villages. The crowd at the Abbey was milling about when suddenly the cries of cranes could be heard in the sky to announce the arrival of the three elders. You could see

    
A sky lit up by sheens of auspicious light,

    
As sweet, unending fragrance filled the air.

    
Colored mist—a thousand strands—veiled the feathered gowns;

    
Fleecy clouds in petals held up the Immortals’ feet