“I am the Venerable Sakyamuni from the Western Land of Perfect Bliss,” replied the Buddha with a smile. “I have heard of your wild and boorish behavior, and of your repeated rebellions against Heaven, and I would like to know where you were born, when you found the Way, and why you have been so ferocious.”
“I am,” the Great Sage said,
“A miracle-working Immortal born of Heaven and Earth,
An old ape from the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.
My home is in the Water Curtain Cave,
I sought friends and teachers, and became aware of the Great Mystery.
“I have practiced many a method for obtaining eternal life,
Infinite are the transformations I have learned.
That is why I found the mortal world too cramped,
And decided to live in the Jade Heaven.
“None can reign forever in the Hall of Miraculous Mist;
Kings throughout history have had to pass on their power.
The strong should be honoured-he should give way to me:
This is the only reason I wage my heroic fight.”
The Buddha laughed mockingly.
“You wretch! You are only a monkey spirit and you have the effrontery to want to grab the throne of the Jade Emperor. He has trained himself since childhood, and suffered hardship for one thousand, seven hundred and fifty kalpas. Each kalpa is 129,600 years, so you can work out for yourself how long it has taken him to be able to enjoy this great and infinite Way. But you are a beast who has only just become a man for the first time. How dare you talk so big? You're not human, not even human! I'll shorten your life-span. Accept my teaching at once and stop talking such nonsense! Otherwise you'll be in for trouble and your life will very shortly be over; and that will be so much the worse for your original form too.”
“Although he has trained himself for a long time, ever since he was a child, he still has no right to occupy this place for ever,” the Great Sage said. “As the saying goes, 'Emperors are made by turn; next year it may be me.' If he can be persuaded to move out and make Heaven over to me, that'll be fine. But if he doesn't abdicate in my favour I'll most certainly make things hot for him, and he'll never know peace and quiet again.”
“What have you got, besides immortality and the ability to transform yourself, that gives you the nerve to try to seize the Heavenly Palace?” the Buddha asked.
“I can do many tricks indeed,” the Great Sage replied. “I can perform seventy-two transformations, and I can preserve my youth for ten thousand kalpas. I can ride a somersault cloud that takes me thirty-six thousand miles at a single jump. So why shouldn't I sit on the throne of Heaven?”
“I'll have a wager with you then,” said the Buddha. “If you're clever enough to get out of my right hand with a single somersault, you will be the winner, and there will be no more need for weapons or fighting: I shall invite the Jade Emperor to come and live in the West and abdicate the Heavenly Palace to you. But if you can't get out of the palm of my hand you will have to go down to the world below as a devil and train yourself for several more kalpas before coming to argue about it again.”
When he heard this offer the Great Sage smiled to himself and thought, “This Buddha is a complete idiot. I can cover thirty-six thousand miles with a somersault, so how could I fail to jump out of the palm of his hand, which is less than a foot across?”
With this in his mind he asked eagerly, “Do you guarantee that yourself?”
“Yes, yes,” the Buddha replied, and he stretched out his right hand, which seemed to be about the size of a lotus leaf. Putting away his As-You-Will cudgel, the Great Sage summoned up all his divine powers, jumped into the palm of the Buddha's hand, and said, “I'm off.” Watch him as he goes like a streak of light and disappears completely. The Buddha, who was watching him with his wise eyes, saw the Monkey King whirling forward like a windmill and not stopping until he saw five flesh-pink pillars topped by dark vapours.
“This is the end of the road,” he said, “so now I'll go back. The Buddha will be witness, and the Hall of Miraculous Mist will be mine.” Then he thought again, “Wait a moment. I'll leave my mark here to prove my case when I talk to the Buddha.” He pulled out a hair, breathed on it with his magic breath, and shouted “Change.” It turned into a writing brush dipped in ink, and with it he wrote THE GREAT SAGE EQUALING HEAVEN WAS HERE in big letters on the middle pillar. When that was done he put the hair back on, and, not standing on his dignity, made a pool of monkey piss at the foot of the pillar. Then he turned his somersault round and went back to where he had started from.
“I went, and now I'm back. Tell the Jade Emperor to hand the Heavenly Palace over to me,” he said, standing in the Buddha's palm.
“I've got you, you piss-spirit of a monkey,” roared the Buddha at him. “You never left the palm of my hand.”
“You're wrong there,” the Great Sage replied. “I went to the farthest point of Heaven, where I saw five flesh-pink pillars topped by dark vapours. I left my mark there: do you dare come and see it with me?”
“There's no need to go. Just look down.” The Great Sage looked down with his fire eyes with golden pupils to see the words “The Great Sage Equaling Heaven Was Here” written on the middle finger of the Buddha's right hand. The stink of monkey-piss rose from the fold at the bottom of the finger.
“What a thing to happen,” exclaimed the Great Sage in astonishment. “I wrote this on one of the pillars supporting the sky, so how can it be on his finger now? He must have used divination to know what I was going to do. I don't believe it. I refuse to believe it! I'll go there and come back again.”
The dear Great Sage hurriedly braced himself to jump, but the Buddha turned his hand over and pushed the Monkey King out through the Western Gate of Heaven. He turned his five fingers into a mountain chain belonging to the elements Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth, renamed them the Five Elements Mountain, and gently held him down.
All the thunder gods and the disciples Ananda and Kasyapa put their hands together to praise the Buddha: “Wonderful, wonderful,
An egg learned to be a man,
Cultivated his conduct, and achieved the Way.
Heaven had been undisturbed for the thousand kalpas,
Until one day the spirits and gods were scattered.
“The rebel against Heaven, wanting high position,
Insulted Immortals, stole the pills, and destroyed morality.
Today his terrible sins are being punished,
Who knows when he will be able to rise again?”
When he had eliminated the monkey fiend the Buddha told Ananda and Kasyapa to return with him to the Western paradise. At that moment Tian Peng and Tian You hurried out of the Hall of Miraculous Mist to say, “We beg the Tathagata to wait a moment as the Jade Emperor's chariot is coming.”
The Buddha turned round and looked up, and an instant later he saw an eight-splendour imperial chariot and a nine-shining jeweled canopy appear to the sound of strange and exquisite music, and the chanting of countless sacred verses. Precious flowers were scattered and incense was burned.
The Jade Emperor went straight up to the Buddha and said, “We are deeply indebted to the great Buddha's powers for wiping out the demon, and we hope that the Tathagata will spend a day here so that we may invite all the Immortals to a feast of thanksgiving.”
The Buddha did not dare refuse, so putting his hands together he replied, “This old monk only came here in obedience to Your Celestial Majesty's command. What magic powers can I pretend to? This was all due to the wonderful good fortune of Your Celestial Majesty and the other gods. How could I possibly allow you to thank me?”