Summary Of Monkey By Wu Ch Eng En

In Monkey, by Wu Ch’eng En, the tale of Monkey and his journey deep into the Buddhist heartland of India illustrates how Monkey paves his own path in a constant quest toward self-enlightenment. Though Monkey tricks his way in and out of many stressful situations and his deviant, mischievous personality makes him like no other Western hero seen. Many people can surely relate to this situation as they go through their own lives. Not everyone makes the most morally or ethically sound decisions one hundred percent of the time, but nonetheless they are still searching, deep down, for answers to the hard questions. For Monkey and his companion Tripitaka, the answers to these questions were contained in the Buddhist scriptures they both so eagerly

For example, the Emperor is summoned to the Underworld, however, once he is there, he begs the First Judge to be let back into the natural world, and the Judge eventually obliges him (Wu, pg. 106). Reincarnation maintains that the human soul repeatedly manifests itself in various forms repeatedly until spiritual enlightenment has been achieved, and Monkey was largely concerned with finding a way to cheat the reincarnation process even as an immortal as he wishes to maintain his power for as long as he can. This thirst for immortality is what causing Monkey to aimlessly wanders into Lao-Tzu’s laboratory, who is busy packing immortality elixir pills, which Monkey steals and eats as many pills as he can possibly find (Wu, pg. 57). Lao Tzu is a sage, known to be the father of Taoism, where people wish to continue living in a state of non-being and return to Tao if they pass away. Achieving physical immorality for Monkey was not enough though, which is why he was seeking enlightenment, immortality of the soul - not just immortality of the body. Although Monkey’s motives were initially blurred with bad intentions, this is a major turning point in the novel where he starts to evolve into one of the most important Buddhist heroes within the story. To achieve enlightenment per Bodhisattva, the one who convinced him to bring the Buddhist holy scriptures to the people of China, so that Monkey can attain salvation and be allowed back into heaven, Monkey must first accompany the Buddhist monk, Tripitaka on a journey. Though Tripitaka has many human flaws, he exhibits the idea of imperfection being alright, and that learning is a life-long process. Therefore, with Monkey not wanting to die or change lives originally, he is illustrating that both Taoism and Buddhism pursue the idea of reincarnation/ enlightenment and immortality except in different