The True and False Monkey King

I t started, as these things do, with Wukong doing his job too well. A pack of road-bandits jumped the pilgrims, and the Monkey King killed them, the way he always killed things that came at his master with knives — efficiently, and without losing sleep over it. Sanzang was horrified. Men are men, he said, names or no names, and a follower of the Buddha does not leave a heap of them in the road. He chanted the headband spell until the monkey rolled in the dust clutching his skull, and then he said the words that had hung over the whole partnership since the Mountain of Two Frontiers — go back, I do not want you anymore. So the strongest creature alive got down on his knees and begged, and was sent away anyway. As they traveled, robbers fell upon them, and the Great Sage struck them down. But Sanzang, grieved that he had killed men so lightly, recited the headband spell to punish him, and said, I do not want you to follow me any longer; go back. Wukong, in pain, knelt and pleaded to stay, but the master would not relent, and bade him go quickly before the true words were chanted again.

He did not go home. He went over Sanzang's head — straight to Guanyin on her island, to lay out the injustice. He wept, which a monkey who broke heaven does not do lightly, and made his case — five hundred years pinned under a rock, and now he risks his neck dragging this man toward the Buddha and gets the headband for thanks. The bodhisattva heard him out and did not take his side. You should not have killed them, she said. But she did not send him off either. Wait here with me, she told him. Your master will need you again before long, and sooner than he thinks. Wukong rose into the air and went to the Bodhisattva Guanyin at Potalaka Mountain, where he poured out his grievance with tears, telling how he had labored to protect the master only to be repaid with the headband and dismissal. The Bodhisattva said his killing of the men had indeed been wrong, but bade him stay; the master, she said, would soon have need of him again.

While Wukong sat fuming on the island, the rest of the band was having a worse day. Sanzang got thirsty, sent Pigsy off for water, and was left dozing by the road with only Sandy. Then Wukong came back — or someone wearing him did. The same gold-banded cap, the same fierce stone eyes. The monk, still sore, refused to take him back, and that was a mistake, because this Wukong did not kneel. He swung the iron rod once, laid Sanzang flat in the dirt, snatched up both luggage bundles and the travel-rescript, and was gone on a cloud before Sandy could draw a breath. Sanzang, parched, sent Bajie to fetch water and was left resting by the road. Then Wukong appeared, holding a porcelain cup of water — but when the master, still angry, scolded him and would not receive him back, the monkey grew furious, raised his iron rod, struck Sanzang to the ground, seized the two blue bundles of luggage and the travel-rescript, and made off on a cloud.

“The eye of mercy could not tell them apart. Nor could the mirror that exposes every demon, nor the beast in hell that hears all things. Only one being in the cosmos knew which monkey was the monkey.”

The plan, it turned out, was nothing so small as robbery. The thief flew the goods home to Flower-Fruit Mountain, to the old Water-Curtain Cave, and there he sat down and copied the travel-rescript out in his own hand. Then he did the unthinkable — he plucked his own hairs and conjured up a whole counterfeit pilgrimage — a false Tang Sanzang, a false Pigsy, a false Sandy — meaning to march this fake band west himself, fetch the scriptures, and pocket all the glory and merit for the Monkey King alone. No master to scold him. No headband. His own holy quest, with himself as the only one who mattered. The false Wukong carried the bundles to the Water-Curtain Cave of Flower-Fruit Mountain, where he copied out the travel-rescript word for word. Then he plucked his hairs and changed them into a false Tang monk, a false Bajie, and a false Sandy, meaning to go to the Western Heaven himself to fetch the scriptures, and so claim the whole merit as his own.

Sandy went to get the luggage back, and climbed Flower-Fruit Mountain to find Wukong holding court over a counterfeit of their own road — a fake monk on a fake horse, a fake Pigsy, and worst of all a fake Sandy standing where he should be standing. Sandy lost his temper, which Sandy almost never does, and brought his staff down on the head of the thing wearing his face. It dropped and turned back into what it was, a monkey, a plain conjured monkey, one of the cave's. So at least one of them could be killed. But the false Wukong only laughed, unbothered, and Sandy, badly outmatched, fled north to the island to find Guanyin — and walked in to find the real Wukong already sitting there at her side. Sandy went to Flower-Fruit Mountain to demand the luggage, and there found the false Wukong with a false Sanzang, a false Bajie, and a false Sandy in his very image. Enraged, Sandy struck down the false Sandy with his staff — and it turned out to be a monkey-spirit. But he could not prevail against the false Wukong, and fled to Potalaka to tell the Bodhisattva, where he found the true Wukong already seated beside her.

Sandy saw two Wukongs and went for his weapon. The real one talked him down — look, fight the other one, not me — and the two monkeys squared off, and that is where the trouble truly began. They were not similar. They were identical. The same face, the same gold cap, the same fiery eyes, the same iron rod that grew and shrank to order, the same seventy-two transformations, the same cloud that crossed a hundred thousand li. Hair for hair, word for word, blow for blow. They rose into the air locked together, two Great Sages trading strikes no one else could follow, and from the ground there was simply no telling which was the monkey and which was the thing pretending to be him. Sandy, seeing two identical Wukongs, could not tell which was true. The real Great Sage bade him stand aside and went to fight the false one. The two were exactly alike — the same rod, the same look, the same powers — and they grappled together rising into the sky, blow answering blow, so that no onlooker could distinguish the true from the false.

They took the duel to the one being who could surely settle it — Guanyin herself, the eye of mercy that sees through every disguise. She fixed her gaze on the pair of them and tried the headband spell, reasoning the true Wukong would clutch his head — and both monkeys dropped clutching their heads, both howling, in perfect time. She could not do it. The bodhisattva who had hauled the real one out from under a mountain, who knew his face better than anyone alive, looked at the two of them and admitted she could not say which was hers. The two came before the Bodhisattva, who tried to tell them apart, even reciting the headband spell — but both Wukongs fell clutching their heads and crying out together, alike in their pain, and even she could not distinguish the true from the false.

So up to heaven they went, both monkeys, to stand before the Jade Emperor and the one tool built for exactly this — the demon-revealing mirror, which strips any disguise and shows a creature's true shape. They held it up to the pair of them. In the glass, two Monkey Kings, identical, side by side, not a hair's difference between the reflections. The mirror that had never been fooled was fooled. Heaven, which had once mustered a hundred thousand soldiers and the stars themselves against this monkey, now could not so much as tell you how many of him there were. The two Wukongs fought their way up to the Hall of Miraculous Mist, where the gods turned upon them the demon-revealing mirror, which shows all false forms in their true shape. But in the mirror appeared two Wukongs, their caps, clothes, and bodies without the slightest difference, and the heavenly court could not tell which was which.

When heaven failed, they tried hell. Down to the courts of the Underworld the two monkeys went, to the Ten Kings of the dead, who pulled out the ledgers — but the Monkey King had long ago struck his own name from the Book of Death, so the books were no help. There was, though, one last hope — Diting, the strange beast who crouches by the throne of the Underworld's lord and can hear, with one ear to the ground, the truth of anything in the cosmos. They set the two monkeys before it. Diting listened, and lowered its head, and knew. It knew exactly which monkey was the monkey. And it said nothing. The two went down to the Underworld, where the Ten Kings searched the registers of the dead but found no answer, for Wukong's name had been struck from the books long before. Then they brought out Diting, the beast that lies beneath the throne of Kshitigarbha and knows the truth of all things by listening. Diting lay down, listened, and learned which was true and which false — but would not say.

Why won't you tell us, the Kings demanded — and Diting gave the answer that is the heart of the whole impasse. The false one's powers are exactly equal to the Great Sage's, it said. If I name him here, he will turn on this court in a fury, and the powers of the Underworld are not enough to hold him. I would only bring havoc down on the realm of the dead. There is one place, Diting said, where this can be settled and nowhere else. Take them to the Buddha in the Western Paradise. Only there will the false be made to show. The Underworld lords asked why it would not speak, and Diting said, the false one's powers are in no way less than the Great Sage's; the spirits of this dark realm have too little strength to seize him, and were I to name him to his face, I fear he would rage and throw the Underworld into chaos. This case, it said, cannot be settled here — only before the Buddha of the Western Heaven can the true and false be told apart.

So to the Western Paradise at last, the two monkeys still trading blows the whole way, all the way into the great assembly where the Buddha sat preaching to his ranked saints. The Buddha smiled — he had been expecting them. Before either monkey could speak, he addressed his listeners and named the thing the whole cosmos had failed to name. There are creatures, he said, that fall outside every order of the world, neither god nor demon nor beast, and among them are four spirit-monkeys that no register lists. One of them stands here now, wearing the Great Sage's face. He is the Six-Eared Macaque — and there is no power he cannot hear, no truth he cannot know, no shape he cannot become. That is why your mirror saw two, and your hell-beast held its tongue. The two Wukongs battled all the way to the Thunderclap Monastery of the Western Heaven, into the assembly where the Buddha sat expounding the law. The Buddha said to his host, within the round of heaven there are five kinds of immortals and five kinds of creatures, but this one is none of them. There are also four monkeys not counted among the ten classes — the intelligent stone monkey, the red-rumped horse-monkey, the long-armed ape, and the six-eared macaque. This last, he said, hears all sounds, perceives all reason, knows past and future, and understands all things.

The macaque heard himself named and knew the game was up. The one creature in the cosmos who could expose him had just done it in front of the whole assembly, and against the Buddha there was no fighting and no fooling. He did the only thing left — he shrank himself to a bee and shot up toward the rafters to escape. The Buddha did not even rise. He lifted his golden alms-bowl and tossed it, an easy underhand arc, and it came down over the fleeing bee and trapped it clean. When the saints lifted the bowl there it crouched in its true form at last — the six-eared macaque, the second monkey, the lie made small. When the Buddha said, the false Wukong is the six-eared macaque, the macaque's hair stood on end with terror, and knowing he could not escape, he changed himself in a flash into a bee and flew upward. The Buddha threw his golden alms-bowl into the air, and it came down squarely over the bee and pinned it. The assembly did not know it at first, but when the Buddha bade them lift the bowl, there indeed was the six-eared macaque revealed in its true shape.

And then Wukong, who had been wronged and doubted and unable for once to prove he was himself, did what Wukong does. Before anyone could stop him, before the Buddha could counsel mercy, he pulled the iron rod from his ear and brought it down on the trapped macaque's skull in a single blow, and that was the end of the six-eared macaque, root and branch, the last of his kind in the world. The Buddha sighed at the violence of it but did not undo it. The double was gone. The two minds were one again — which is only to say there was one monkey left, and he was the right one. The Great Sage, unable to restrain his anger, raised his iron rod and with one blow to the head killed the six-eared macaque, so that from that day this kind was utterly cut off from the world. The Buddha said, alas, and lamented it, but the deed was done.

That left the matter of the master. Wukong, even reunited and vindicated, still smarted — he half wanted to quit the whole thing and stay in the west under the Buddha's roof. The Buddha would not have it — go finish your work, he said, and your reward is waiting at the end of it. And Guanyin came forward to seal the peace, carrying the monkey back to the road herself and setting things straight with Sanzang — the one who struck you was the false monkey, the macaque, not your disciple; take Wukong back, for without him you will never reach the Western Heaven. So the monk took him back, and the band of four was four again, whole and single-minded, and turned their faces once more to the road — toward a wall of mountains in the west that, the locals warned, burned. Wukong wished to remain in the west, but the Buddha bade him return and complete the pilgrimage, promising him the true reward at its end. Then Guanyin carried him back on a cloud to Sanzang, and said, the one who beat you on that day was the false Wukong, the six-eared macaque; you must now take Wukong back, for without him you cannot reach the Western Heaven. Sanzang received him again, and master and disciples, of one mind once more, took up the luggage and the horse and went on together toward the west.

真假 The original Chinese · honored as an artifact

人有二心生禍災，天涯海角致疑猜。欲思寶馬三公位，又憶金鑾一品臺。南征北討無休歇，東擋西除未定哉。禪門須學無心訣，靜養嬰兒結聖胎。

Opening lines, classical Chinese · Journey to the West 西遊記 · Wu Cheng'en (attrib.)