Sun Wukong Learns Discipline

A crack rang out, tearing through the night and echoing up through the nine layers of cloud. On the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, out in the great sea to the east, a rock split in two. Ever since the world began, it had soaked up the essence of heaven and earth, of the sun and the moon. Out of it rolled a stone egg, and from that egg a stone monkey was born. He bowed to the four directions and the eight quarters, then slowly learned to walk and to jump. At that very moment, two beams of dazzling golden light shot from his eyes, straight up to the palace high in the heavens. The Jade Emperor was startled. In the old folk belief, the Jade Emperor is the ruler of Heaven. He quickly sent two spirits down to earth to take a look. They came back and reported that it was only the light of a stone monkey, just born from a stone egg, and nothing to worry about. Hearing this, the Jade Emperor was at ease. He never guessed that this small stone monkey would one day stir up the whole of Heaven.

The stone monkey grew up on the mountain, running and leaping, drinking from the streams and eating fruit with the other monkeys. One hot summer, the whole troop went off together to bathe in a stream. They found a waterfall pouring down from a high cliff, and they agreed that whoever could pass through it unhurt would be made their king. The stone monkey shut his eyes, crouched low, and dashed straight through the white water. Behind the falls he found an iron bridge leading into a stone cave. It was fully furnished with tables, chairs, bowls and plates, all made of stone. The monkeys rejoiced and crowded through the falls after him. They made him their king and called him the Handsome Monkey King. About 300 years went by in peace and happiness.

Then one day, in the middle of a feast, the Handsome Monkey King suddenly burst into tears. The frightened monkeys asked him why. "I do not fear birds or wild beasts," the monkey king said. "But one day death will find me too, and I will no longer be able to stay in this place." An old monkey answered that only Buddhas, gods and immortals escape the hand of Death. Such beings, he said, usually practiced their arts in caves and on sacred mountains, out in the world of humans. The Handsome Monkey King made up his mind to set out and find the way to eternal life. He built a raft of pine wood and rowed alone across the great sea for many days, until he set foot on dry land. For nine long years he wandered far and wide. He learned to talk and walk like a human, yet he still met no one who knew the true path of the Tao. He crossed one more sea, farther to the west. A woodcutter showed him the way, and he found the cave of a Patriarch who had thirty or forty disciples studying under him. Asked his name, the monkey said he had none. He was only a monkey born from a stone. So the Patriarch gave him the name Sun Wukong.

For six or seven years, Sun Wukong swept the floors, tended the garden, and studied writing and scripture under the Patriarch. One day, hearing his master explain a deep teaching, he was so happy that he leaped into the air. The Patriarch tested him. Did he wish to learn magic arts, or scripture, or stillness of mind, or training of the body? For each one, Sun Wukong asked whether it would help him live forever, never growing old and never dying. Each time the answer was no, and each time he shook his head and refused. The Patriarch pretended to be angry. He tapped Wukong three times on the head with a stick and went inside. The older disciples scolded him for his rudeness. But Sun Wukong only smiled to himself. He understood that the three taps meant a meeting at the third watch, deep in the night, at the back door. That night, Sun Wukong came quietly at the appointed hour, and the Patriarch passed on to him alone the secret of eternal life.

Three years later, when his training was firm, the Patriarch warned him that he still had a few great dangers to survive before he was truly safe. Then he taught him the art of changing into 72 different forms. The master asked whether he could fly yet. Sun Wukong jumped up, stood on a cloud for a short stretch, and dropped back down. The Patriarch laughed and said that was only crawling on the clouds. Then he taught him the somersault cloud. With every somersault, Wukong could fly 18,000 li. The li is a traditional Chinese measure of distance.

But one day, the older disciples asked to see his transformations. Sun Wukong turned himself into a pine tree before their eyes, and they all burst out laughing. Hearing the laughter, the Patriarch came out and rebuked him. Showing off magic to amuse others, he said, meant that his heart was still not settled. Then, sadly, he told Wukong that he must leave. He gave him a stern warning never to tell anyone that he had once been his student. With tears in his eyes, Sun Wukong thanked his master, leaped onto a cloud, and flew straight home to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.

His studies were over, and now the real uproar began. Back on the mountain, Sun Wukong learned that while he was away, a fierce demon king had come and carried off many of the monkeys' children. The cave had been left silent, with none of its familiar sounds of play. In a rage, he plucked a single hair from his body and turned it into hundreds of little monkeys. They surrounded the demon king and pulled him to the ground, and Sun Wukong took away his broadsword. The rescued young monkeys poured out, chattering with joy, while Sun Wukong set fire to the demon's lair and burned it to the ground.

With a weapon in hand, Sun Wukong drilled the monkeys like soldiers. Then he decided that swords and spears of bamboo and wood would not do. So he conjured up a great wind that frightened the soldiers of a nearby city into running away, and he calmly carried off their whole armory. Still not satisfied, he went down to the underwater palace of the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea to ask for a weapon of his own. The Dragon King brought out a spear, then a trident, and Wukong found every one too light. Then the queen of the underwater palace mentioned an iron rod capped with gold at both ends. Long ago, Yu the Great had used it to measure the depth of the sea. Now it was glowing, as if to signal that its time to leave had come. Sun Wukong lifted it and complained that it was a little too heavy and a little too long. At once the rod shrank to exactly the size he wanted. It could grow or shrink at his wish, all the way down to a needle tucked behind his ear. Delighted, he asked for a suit of golden armor as well, with boots and a cap. The Dragon King had to call in his brothers to help before they could gather enough to send Wukong home content.

One afternoon, while he was napping, Sun Wukong dreamed that two strangers tied him up and led him down to the underworld. He woke in front of a city gate whose sign said plainly that this was the land of the dead. Furious, he drew his rod and smashed the chains. He brushed aside the two men escorting him and marched straight in before the Kings of the Underworld, demanding to see the Book of Life and Death. There he found his own name, with his life fixed at 324 years. He took up a brush and struck out his own name, along with the names of the whole monkey clan. From then on, the monkeys on the mountain no longer had to die of old age.

The Dragon King and the Kings of the Underworld both went up to Heaven to complain. Taibai Jinxing, the Great White Star, asked the Jade Emperor to be generous. Instead of punishing Sun Wukong, he suggested summoning him up to Heaven and giving him an official post, so that he would learn the rules and mend his ways. The Jade Emperor agreed and made him the keeper of the heavenly horses. Sun Wukong cared for the horses very well, and the herd grew sleek and fat. Then one day, at a celebration, he learned that his post was the lowest of all, with no rank whatsoever. In a towering rage, he overturned the banquet table, swung his rod to fight his way out through the gate of Heaven, and flew straight back to his mountain. Heaven's first attempt, the gentle approach, had failed.

When he got home, two demons presented him with a robe. They flattered him until he raised a banner calling himself the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. The Jade Emperor sent Heavenly King Li and his son Nezha down with an army to capture him. Nezha turned himself into a warrior with three heads and six arms and charged. Sun Wukong took exactly the same form to fight back. Then he slipped off a single hair and made it into a copy of himself to keep on fighting. His real self circled around behind and struck Nezha on the arm with his rod. Nezha staggered. He had to admit defeat, and the whole army went back to Heaven.

Taibai Jinxing offered a second plan: give Wukong the title of Great Sage Equal to Heaven for real, as an empty title with no duties attached, and build him a mansion of his own. The Jade Emperor agreed. Sun Wukong strolled all over Heaven at his leisure, easygoing and friendly with every immortal. Then one god worried that idleness would breed trouble. He asked that Wukong be put in charge of the garden of immortal peaches belonging to the Queen Mother of the West. The gardener explained that the garden had three rows of peach trees. The first row ripened once every 3,000 years. The middle row ripened once every 6,000 years, and the last row once every 9,000 years. Whoever ate their ripe fruit would live forever and never grow old. Every time Sun Wukong visited the garden, he secretly climbed up and stuffed himself with the ripest peaches. Heaven's second attempt had failed as well.

Then came the day of the Queen Mother's great peach banquet, with every god and immortal invited. Several fairy maidens came to the garden to pick peaches, but they searched and searched without finding Sun Wukong. He had turned himself into a caterpillar and was asleep on a peach branch. When he woke and heard that he had not been invited, he angrily cast a spell that held the fairy maidens fast where they stood. He disguised himself as a god whose face everyone knew and slipped into the banquet hall before any guests arrived. Seeing the fine wine laid out, he cast a spell to make the servants drowsy, then ate and drank his fill. Wandering on, he strayed by mistake into the elixir room of Taishang Laojun, the Supreme Old Lord. There he found five gourds of immortal pills waiting, and he ate every last one. Knowing he had caused enormous trouble, he hurried off with several more jars of immortal wine and flew home to share them with the monkeys.

The scandal spread all over Heaven. The fairy maidens had been held fast by a spell, the banquet lay in ruins, and the immortal pills were gone. A god had been impersonated, and the Great Sage Equal to Heaven had vanished without a trace. Furious, the Jade Emperor sent the entire heavenly army to surround the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. Once again Sun Wukong plucked out his hairs and turned them into thousands of other Sun Wukongs. Rods in hand, they fought the whole army of Heaven to a standstill from morning until night. The third attempt, with all of Heaven's armed might, still could not subdue him.

Then help came from Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion. She recommended Erlang Shen, a god who was a great master of transformation. The two circled each other for a long time with no winner. Then they began to outdo each other with transformations. One became a sparrow, and the other a hawk. One became a fish, and the other a bird that hunts fish. One became a water snake, and the other an eagle. They chased each other across the sky and over the seas. When there was nowhere left to run, Sun Wukong turned himself into a small roadside shrine. His mouth became the gate, and his teeth became the doors. Only his tail he could not hide, so he stood it straight up behind the shrine as a flagpole. When Erlang Shen saw a flagpole rising behind a shrine, he burst out laughing. He knew at once that it was the monkey's tail, and Sun Wukong, startled, ran for it.

At that very moment, Taishang Laojun threw his diamond circlet down from high above. It struck Sun Wukong on the head and made him stagger. Then the hunting dog of Erlang Shen bit his leg, and he fell and was tied up tight. They took him to the place of execution. They tried swords, and axes, and thunder and lightning, yet nothing so much as scratched him. He had eaten the immortal peaches, drunk the immortal wine and swallowed the immortal pills, and now nothing could harm him. So Laojun put him into the Eight Trigrams Furnace and kept the fire burning for 49 days, to melt him down to ash. Sun Wukong tucked himself into the corner of the furnace that bore the sign of the wind, so he came to no harm. Only the smoke stung his eyes. When the 49 days were over, the lid had barely been lifted before he burst out. He kicked over the furnace and threw all of Heaven into chaos, and no one could stop him. In the end, the Jade Emperor had to send for the Buddha to help.

The Buddha offered a challenge. If Sun Wukong could jump out of the palm of his hand, the throne of the Jade Emperor would be handed over to him. Sun Wukong told himself that the hand was tiny. A single somersault carried him 18,000 li, so there was nothing to fear. He accepted at once. He jumped onto the palm of the Buddha and somersaulted more times than he could count. At last he saw five tall pillars soaring into the sky. Thinking he had reached the end of the world, he wrote his name on the middle pillar as proof, then went back to claim his prize. But when the Buddha opened his hand, there was the monkey's own name, still written on the middle finger. Sun Wukong froze and looked for a way to escape. But the hand of the Buddha had already become a great mountain of five elements: earth, water, fire, wood and metal. It came down gently and held him fast inside. A paper charm was even pasted on to seal it.

Sun Wukong lay still beneath Five Elements Mountain for hundreds of years. There was no one left to tease and no magic left to show off. There was only the mountain, the blue sky above, and himself. In that long silence, the strength he once had was slowly tempered into something else. It was the one thing that all his years of study had never fully taught him: knowing when to stop.

This story comes from an old Chinese novel called Journey to the West, written several hundred years ago. It is usually credited to Wu Cheng'en. In the novel, a gentle monk named Tang Sanzang is sent west to bring back the Buddhist scriptures. The author drew his inspiration from a real monk named Xuanzang. That monk once crossed deserts and snowy mountains alone, all the way to India. His real journey had no Sun Wukong beside him at all. In the novel, when Tang Sanzang passed Five Elements Mountain on his pilgrimage, Sun Wukong was freed from the mountain that had held him so long. He asked to become a disciple, and from then on he was called Xingzhe, the Pilgrim.

Guanyin, who had helped to set him free, gave Tang Sanzang a golden ring known as the golden headband, and a magic chant to go with it. Tang Sanzang placed the ring on the head of Sun Wukong. At once it fitted snugly, and it could never be taken off again. Whenever Sun Wukong turned mischievous, Tang Sanzang only had to recite the chant softly. The ring would tighten just a little, enough to give him a headache that brought him back to his senses, and he would stop what he was doing at once.

On a red, dusty road stretching away to the west, a gentle monk walks with slow steps. Close behind him comes a stone monkey who once turned the palace of Heaven upside down, the golden ring glinting on his head in the sun. The iron rod that once held off the whole army of Heaven has shrunk to the size of a needle, and it rests quietly behind his ear. The extraordinary strength of the old days is still there in those hands. And in the eyes that shot golden light up to the heavens on the day he was born, the spark of mischief has not quite gone out.