Pilgrim, unable for the moment to bear it any longer, manifested the dharma body with three heads and six arms, as he did when he wrought havoc in Heaven [K. Another mention of the havoc in Heaven. Here he has to employ all his might.], and began to strike out wildly in the air. From behind him someone shouted loudly, “Wukong is no longer Enlightened to the Void; Wuhuan is no longer Enlightened to Illusion.” Pilgrim turned his head [C. Turn around to become a buddha.]¹ [K. The text says ‘from behind him shouted loudly’ and ‘turned his head around’: each is pointedly poised against the other. Each of these sentences has its important part.], demanding, “In what state do you serve as general, that you would dare to face me?”

Raising his head, what he saw was a lotus seat, on which was sitting a Venerable One, who again called out, “Sun Wukong, even at this point are you still not awakened?”

It was then that Pilgrim put aside his staff and asked, “Who are you?”

“I am the Lord of the Void,”² said the Venerable One. “Seeing that you have been in the Unreal World for so long, I came specifically to awaken you.” [C. Pay attention.] Your real master is at this moment starving.” [K. Continues the begging of alms from the end of the first chapter. Meticulous organization. The arteries connecting the text are exceedingly subtle.]

Pilgrim had indeed made some progress on the road to enlightenment. Suddenly these past events became fuzzy. He concentrated his entire mind, refusing to turn back. [C. If he turns around, he will be in the demonic world again.] [K. He is not allowed to turn back again.] Instead, he beseeched the lord for instruction. The Lord of the Void said, “You have been in the breath of the Qing Fish and were bewitched by it.” [C. Finally explained!] [K. Pointed out.]

Pilgrim asked, “What kind of demon is this Qing Fish, that he can make worlds with their own heavens and earths?”

“When heaven and earth first separated,” said the Lord of the Void, “what was clear ascended, what was turbid descended. There was one kind of material force, half clear and half turbid, which settled in the middle: this gave birth to human beings. There was also a material force that was more clear than turbid: it settled in the Mountain of Flowers and Fruits and gave birth to Wukong. There was yet another material force that was more turbid than clear that settled in the Cave of the Lesser Moon and gave birth to the Qing Fish. The Qing Fish and Wukong were born at the same hour, on the same day, in the same month, in the same year. [K. Another six-eared macaque. However, he and the Six-Eared Macaque are two, not one.] It was just that while Wukong belonged to the Upright, the Qing Fish belonged to the deviant, and his powers were broad and great, ten times that of Wukong. His body was so huge that if he pillows his head on the Kunlun Mountains, his feet will touch the Land of the Dark. Now, the Realm of the Real is too small to contain him, so he temporarily lives in the Realm of the Illusory, calling himself the ‘World of the Green.’ ”

Pilgrim asked, “What are the Realms of the Illusory and of the Real?”

The Lord of the Void said, “There are three realms in the Cosmos: the Realm of the Nonillusory, the Realm of the Illusory, and the Realm of the Real.”³ He then recited a gāthā:

There were no springtime boys and girls;

They were the root of the Qing Fish. [C. This causes sudden awakenment!]

There was no New Son of Heaven;

It was only the potential of the Qing Fish.

There was no green bamboo broom;

It was a name of the Qing Fish.

There was no edict to the General;

It was the pattern⁴ of the Qing Fish.

There were no axes chiseling Heaven;

They were a form of the Qing Fish.

There was no King of the Lesser Moon;

It was only the spirit of the Qing Fish.

There was no Gallery of a Million Mirrors;

It was a walled fortress of the Qing Fish.⁵

There were no people in the mirrors;

They were the body of the Qing Fish.

There was no World of the Delirious;

It was only the whim of the Qing Fish.

There was no Green Pearl Tower;

It was the mind of the Qing Fish.

There was no Xiang Yu of Chu,

It was the soul of the Qing Fish.

There was no Fair Lady Yu;

It was the delusion of the Qing Fish.

There was no King Yama;

It was the realm of the Qing Fish.

There was no World of the Ancients;

It was completed by the Qing Fish.

There was no World of the Future;

It was a coagulation of the Qing Fish.

There were no accounts of the Hexagram Jie;

It was the palace of the Qing Fish.

There was no Squire Tang;

It was a manipulation of the Qing Fish.

There were no performances of song and dance;

They were the disposition of the Qing Fish.

There were no sobs of the Kingfisher Lady;

They were the exhaustion of the Qing Fish.

There was no platform for mobilizing the troops;

It was the stirring of the Qing Fish.

There was no battle fought with King Pāramitā;

It was a commotion by the Qing Fish.

There was no Qing Fish;

It was but Pilgrim’s desire. [C. The last line is even more enlightening.] [K. All the previous text is completely swept up into it—it’s still a piece of shining brocade with a white background. Not a single character in all sixteen chapters of the book!⁶ Concludes the entire book. The quality of the writing is also produced by its mirroring of the tanci ballad.]

When he had finished speaking, a gale of wild wind blew Pilgrim back to the old mountain path. Suddenly, he discovered that the sunlight on the tree peonies had not even moved. [K. Complete, meticulous.]

The story continues: The real Tang Monk, waking up from his spring slumber, saw that the boys and girls had long since gone away [K. Complete, meticulous. When he wakes up from his spring slumber, the demon of desire is gone. This is precisely the main idea of this work.], and his heart was filled with delight. Only Wukong was nowhere to be found. He woke up Wuneng and Wujing, asking, “Where is Wukong?” “I don’t know,” Wujing replied. “I don’t know,” Eight Vows⁷ replied.

Suddenly in the southeast, Mokṣa⁸ came into view, accompanying a pale-faced monk: they were riding an auspicious cloud, which lightly touched down. “Reverend Elder from the Tang, this is your new disciple. [K. Mirrors at a distance Pilgrim’s taking a new master.] The Great Sage will be back at any moment.” The Tang Monk, in great haste, prostrated himself on the ground to pay his respects.

“Considering your difficult journey to the West,” said Mokṣa, “the Bodhisattva Guanyin has given you another disciple. However, he is young and will need you, Elder, to look after him a bit. The Bodhisattva has also given him a religious name; he is called Wuqing.⁹ [K. The main theme of the sixteen chapters.] The Bodhisattva instructed that even though Wuqing is your fourth disciple, he should be ranked after Wukong and above Wuneng, making the sequence “kong qing neng jing.”¹⁰ The Tang Monk obeyed the Bodhisattva’s instruction, accepted the disciple, and saw Mokṣa off. No more about this need be said.¹¹

Actually, the Qing Fish demon had bewitched Mind-Monkey for the sole purpose of eating the Tang Monk’s flesh. To this end, on the one hand, he entangled the Great Sage, and on the other, he had changed himself into the form of the young disciple to trick the Tang Monk. [C. Makes things clear.] How could he have known that the Great Sage had been awakened by the Lord of the Void? Indeed:

No matter what schemes the evil demon resorts to,

When the Mind is upright it need never fear being bewitched.

Now for his part, Pilgrim was striding along in midair [K. Having left in midair, he returns in midair.] when he saw the young monk sitting by his master’s side, from whom a demonic aura reached one hundred thousand feet up into the sky. He immediately realized that this was a transformation of the Qing Fish Demon, so he took his staff out from his ear and, without a second thought, struck it a deadly blow. [C. It is most delightful to have the demon struck dead!] [K. Inserting his staff into his ear (after killing the children and young women in chapter 1) gave rise to so many manifestations of the Demon of Desire; taking his staff out (here), the Demon of Desire was killed. Beginning and end echo each other.] The young monk was suddenly transformed into the corpse of the Qing Fish, a red light emanating from its mouth. [K. Concludes with the color red.]

Pilgrim followed it closely with his eyes. What he saw appear in the red light was a terrace; on the terrace stood the Hegemon-King of Chu, shouting, “Come back, Fair Lady Yu!” [K. Concludes the root of desire. As it is said, the evil deeds of a previous life become obstacles and monsters in the present life.¹² This is why Buddhists regard qing as the seed of the cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra).] That beam of red light fled to the southeast and was gone.

The Tang Monk said, “Wukong, I am starving to death!” When Pilgrim heard this, he turned around, made his verbal salutation to his master, and reported to him all that had transpired, from beginning to end.

Actually, when the Tang Monk had seen no sign of Wukong, his mind was ravaged by anxiety. When Wukong did make his appearance, he killed the newly accepted disciple [K. The killing of the Qing Fish Demon forms a distant parallel to the killing of the boys and girls in springtime.]; this worked the Tang Monk into a fury. He was about to upbraid him when all of a sudden he saw his new disciple had become the corpse of the Qing Fish. He quickly realized that Pilgrim had had good intentions and that the new disciple was a demon. [K. For a long narrative with multiple episodes, one has to include this kind of guidance and support.] Then he considered that what Pilgrim had said was indeed serious, and it was only then that his anger turned to pleasure. “Thank you, my disciple,” he said, “for all your efforts.”

Eight Vows said [K. Leaving no chance for a detail wasted.], “When Wukong goes to play, that’s considered hard work, while our hard work is called play by the master.”

The Tang Monk cut Eight Vows short, asking, “Wukong, how could you have stayed several days in the World of the Green, whereas only two hours have passed here?”

Pilgrim replied, “Even when the mind is bewitched, time is not.”

“Which is longer, mind or time?” the Tang Monk asked.

“To say mind is short, that is Buddha’s perspective; to say time is short, that is the demonic view,”¹³ Pilgrim replied.

The Sand Monk said, “The demon and his transformations have all been exterminated, and the world is purified. Brother, would you go beg for alms in the village ahead as usual [K. Continues the previous text.], while the Master quiets his mind and meditates for a while before we head on to the West?”

“Just right,” said Pilgrim, and he walked away. [C. Case closed.]

After a hundred paces, he bumped into the god of the mountain and the local earth deity. [K. Complete, dense.] “You’re slow enough to come!” Pilgrim rebuked them. “The other day I was trying to find you to ask you about something. I recited the spell, but you never showed up. How could the world have such an important local deity? Stick out your foot this minute. We can talk about this more after I’ve given you a hundred strokes!”

“Great Sage, that demon Desire transported you out beyond Heaven” [K. Subtly echoes the words “a demon as big as Heaven.”], said the local deity. “With the limited power of this humble deity, how could I make it beyond Heaven to pay my respects? May the Great Sage consider my merit and commute the punishment.”

“What merit?” asked Pilgrim.

“That flower ball in the ear of Lord Zhu Eight Vows” [K. Complete, meticulous], said the local deity, “I took it out with my own hands.” [C. Echoes (previous text).]

Pilgrim then ordered the local deity to withdraw and concentrated entirely on begging for alms. He leaped up into the sky and saw a bank covered with peach trees in bloom¹⁴ [K. Another echo of the peonies.] and a thread of smoke, barely visible, that arose from the forest. At once he lowered his cloud and walked closer to have a look. Indeed, it was a good household. [K. Echoes “Not one household was visible” in chapter 2.] Pilgrim ran in to find someone to beg alms from, when he suddenly came upon a well-kept room.¹⁵

In the well-kept room there sat a teacher who had assembled several students and was explaining a text. “Which sentence was he lecturing on?” you might ask. It was “It includes everything in Heaven and Earth, so that nothing escapes from it.”¹⁶ [C. This concluding sentence is the main point of the text.]

[C. Further Adventures on the Journey to the West in its entirety is the world of the Qing Fish, but that is not revealed until the very end. The author is an accomplished writer indeed!]