Monkey King

"Will you keep your promise?"Wu-k'ung asked."Yes,of course,"replied Buddha.Buddha opened his right hand;it was the size of a lotus leaf.Wu-k'ung put his staff in his ear and leaped onto Buddha's palm,saying confidently,"Here I go!"

He somersaulted again and again until he came to pive pink columns which reached to the sky.A cloud of smoke hovered over the columns."I must have reached the end of the universe.The Heavenly Palace will be mine when I return,"thought Wu-k'ung.

"Before I go,I must leave some marks to show Buddha how far I have come,"he thought.At that he pulled out a hair and turned it into a pen.On the center column he wrote,"The Greatest Sage has been here."

After that,he urinated on the first column and then somersaulted back to the starting place.he shouted,"Now that I have come back from the end of the universe,please turn the Heavenly Palace over to me."

Buddha scolded,"You little stinker.You haven't jumped out of my palm.Look down."When Wu-k'ung lowered his head,he found that on the middle finger of Buddha was the line of words which he had just written.And from the fingers came the powerful smell of monkey urine.

Wu-k'ung was shocked."What happened?I must try again!"He was just about to jump when Buddha turned his palm over and pushed Wu-k'ung out of the gate of West Heaven.

Buddha's five fingers now turned into five mountains of gold,wood,water,fire and earth,which together were called the "Five-Element Mountain."Where the mountains met the Earth Wu-k'ung was held prisoner.

Buddha bid farewell to the Jade Emperor and stepped outside the gates of West Heaven.He called the god of Earth and other gods to guard the monkey and told them to give Wu-k'ung pills of iron to eat and juice of copper to drink.Buddha explained that when Wu-k'ung had suffered enough,someone would come along to rescue him.

Wu-k'ung was sealed in the mountain of five hundred years.It was not until Master San Tsang of the T'ang Dynasty passed by on his way to the Westen Paradise that Wu-k'ung was rescured.The Master accepted Wu-k'ung as his disciple and took him along to the Western Paradise.

Wu-k'ung asked his Master to stand far from the mountains so he could jump clear.San Tsang was surprised at the great sound as Wu-k'ung burst from the mountain.The Master San Tsang gave Wu-k'ung a new name--Hsing Che.Together,Hsing Che and Master San Tsang started toward the Western Paradise on their new adventure,the Pilgrimage for the Buddhist Scriptures.