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“I too am a hereditary robber king, and have ruled a mountain for many years, but I've never heard of you gentlemen.”

“Since you don't know our names, I'll tell them to you: Eye-seeing Happiness, Ear-hearing Anger, Nose-smelling Love, Tongue-tasting Thought, Mind-born Desire, and Body-based Sorrow.” Sun Wukong laughed at them. “You're just a bunch of small-time crooks. You can't see that I'm your lord and master although I'm a monk, and you have the effrontery to get in our way. Bring out all the jewels you've stolen, and the seven of us can share them out equally. I'll let you off with that.”

This made the bandits happy, angry, loving, thoughtful, desirous, and sorrowful respectively, and they all charged him, yelling, “You've got a nerve, monk. You've got nothing to put in the kitty, but you want to share our stuff.” Waving their spears and swords they rushed him, hacking wildly at his face. Seventy or eighty blows crashed down on him, but he simply stood in the middle of them, ignoring everything.

“What a monk!” the bandits said. “He's a real tough nut.”

“I think we've seen enough of that,” said Brother Monkey with a smile. “Your hands must be tired after all that bashing. Now it's my turn to bring out my needle for a bit of fun.”

“This monk must have been an acupuncturist,” said the bandits. “There's nothing wrong with us. Why is he talking about needles?”

Taking the embroidery needle from his ear, Brother Monkey shook it in the wind, at which it became an iron cudgel as thick as a ricebowl. With this in his hand he said, “Stick around while I try my cudgel out.” The terrified bandits tried to flee in all directions, but Monkey raced after them, caught them all up, and killed every one of them. Then he stripped the clothes off them, took their money, and went back with his face wreathed in smiles.

“Let's go, master; I've wiped those bandits out,” he said.

“Even though they were highwaymen, you're really asking for trouble,” Sanzang replied. “Even if they had been arrested and handed over to the authorities, they wouldn't have been sentenced to death. You may know a few tricks, but it would be better if you'd simply driven them away. Why did you have to kill them all? Even taking a man's life by accident is enough to stop someone from becoming a monk. A person who enters the religious life

Spares the ants when he sweeps the floor,

Covers the lamps to save the moth.

What business did you have to slaughter the lot of them, without caring which of them were the guilty and which were innocent? You haven't a shred of compassion or goodness in you. This time it happened in the wilds, where nobody will be able to trace the crime. Say someone offended you in a city and you turned murderous there. Say you killed and wounded people when you went berserk with that club of yours. I myself would be involved even though I'm quite innocent.”

“But if I hadn't killed them, they'd have killed you, master,” protested Sun Wukong.

“I am a man of religion, and I would rather die than commit murder,” said Sanzang. “If I'd died, there'd only have been me dead, but you killed six of them, which was an absolute outrage. If the case were taken to court, you couldn't talk your way out of this even if the judge were your own father.”

“To tell you the truth, master, I don't know how many people I killed when I was the monster who ruled the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit,” said Sun Wukong, “but if I'd acted your way I'd never have become the Great Sage Equaling Heaven.”

“It was precisely because you acted with such tyrannical cruelty among mortals and committed the most desperate crimes against Heaven that you got into trouble five hundred years ago,” retorted Sanzang. “But now you have entered the faith, you'll never reach the Western Heaven and never become a monk if you don't give up your taste for murder. You're too evil, too evil.”

Monkey, who had never let himself be put upon, flared up at Sanzang's endless nagging.

“If you say that I'll never become a monk and won't ever reach the Western Heaven, then stop going on at me like that. I'm going back.”

Before Sanzang could reply, Monkey leapt up in a fury, shouting, “I'm off.” Sanzang looked up quickly, but he was already out of sight. All that could be heard was a whistling sound coming from the East. Left on his own, the Priest nodded and sighed to himself with great sadness and indignation.

“The incorrigible wretch,” he reflected. “Fancy disappearing and going back home like that just because I gave him a bit of a telling-off. So that's that. I must be fated to have no disciples or followers. I couldn't find him now even if I wanted to, and he wouldn't answer if I called him. I must be on my way.” So he had to strive with all his might to reach the West, looking after himself with nobody to help.

Sanzang had no choice but to gather up the luggage and tie it on the horse. He did not ride now. Instead, holding his monastic staff in one hand and leading the horse by the reins with the other, he made his lonely way to the West. Before he had been travelling for long he saw an old woman on the mountain path in front of him. She was holding an embroidered robe, and a patterned hat was resting upon it. As she came towards him he hurriedly pulled the horse to the side of the path to make room for her to pass.

“Where are you from, venerable monk,” the old woman asked, “travelling all alone and by yourself?”

“I have been sent by the great King of the East to go to the West to visit the Buddha and ask him for the True Scriptures,” he replied.

“The Buddha of the West lives in the Great Thunder Monastery in the land of India, thirty-six thousand miles away from here. You'll never get there, just you and your horse, without a companion or disciple.”

“I did have a disciple, but his nature was so evil that he would not accept a little reproof I administered to him and disappeared into the blue,” said Sanzang.

“I have here an embroidered tunic and a hat inset with golden patterns that used to be my son's,” the woman said, “but he died after being a monk for only three days. I've just been to his monastery to mourn him and say farewell to his master, and I was taking this tunic and this hat home to remember the boy by. But as you have a disciple, venerable monk, I'll give them to you.”

“Thank you very much for your great generosity, but as my disciple has already gone, I couldn't accept them.”

“Where has he gone?”

“All I heard was a whistling sound as he went back to the East.”

“My home isn't far to the East from here,” she said, “so I expect he's gone there. I've also got a spell called True Words to Calm the Mind, or the Band-tightening Spell. You must learn it in secret, and be sure to keep it to yourself. Never leak it to anyone. I'll go and catch up with him and send him back to you, and you can give him that tunic and hat to wear. If he's disobedient again, all you have to do is recite the spell quietly. That will stop him committing any more murders or running away again.”

Sanzang bowed low to thank her, at which she changed into a beam of golden light and returned to the East. He realized in his heart that it must have been the Bodhisattva Guanyin who had given him the spell, so he took a pinch of earth as if he were burning incense and bowed in worship to the East most reverently. Then he put the tunic and hat in his pack, sat down beside the path, and recited the True Words to Calm the Mind over and over again until he knew them thoroughly, and had committed them to his memory.

Let us turn to Sun Wukong, who after leaving his master went straight back to the Eastern Ocean on his somersault cloud. Putting his cloud away, he parted the waters and went straight to the undersea palace of crystal. His approach had alarmed the dragon king, who came out to welcome him and took him into the palace, where they sat down.