Journey to the West-016
Chapter 1 18 Journey to the West
He let the years go tumbling by.
When this boy had come out he shouted, “Who’s making that row out here?”
The Monkey King scampered down the tree, went up to him, and said with a bow, “Immortal child, I am adisciple who has come to ask about the Way and study under the Immortal. The last thing I’d do would be tomake a row here?” The boy laughed.
“So you’ve come to ask about the Way, have you?”
“Yes,” the Monkey King replied.
“Our master has just got up,” the boy said, “and has now mounted the dais to expound the Way. Before he hadstarted to explain about origins he told me to open the door. He said, ‘There is someone outside who wants tocultivate his conduct. Go and welcome him.’ I suppose he must have meant you.”
“Yes, he meant me,” the Monkey King said with a smile.
“Come with me,” the boy said.
The Monkey King straightened his clothes and followed the boy deep into the depths of the cave. He sawmajestic pavilions and towers of red jade, pearl palaces and gateways of cowry, and countless rooms ofsilence and secluded cells leading all the way to a jasper dais. He saw the Patriarch Subhuti sitting on the daisand thirty?six minor Immortals standing below it.
A golden Immortal of great enlightenment, free from filth,
Subhuti,2moons gold, the marvel of the Western World.
Neither dying nor born, he practices the triple meditation,
His spirit and soul entirely benevolent.
In empty detachment he follows the changes;
Having found his true nature he lets it run free.
As eternal as Heaven, and majestic in body,2moons power leveling,
The great teacher of the Law is enlightened through aeons.
As soon as the Handsome Monkey King saw him he bowed low and knocked his head on the ground beforehim many times, saying, “Master, master, your disciple pays his deepest respects.”