Monkey See Pelosi — Monkey Do Gadoosh!

WU CHENG’EN (1500–1582) — JOURNEY TO THE WEST — 1994–2011

Let’s be clear first. This is a picaresque epic that tells the story of how Buddhism was brought to China from what they call India, which is, in fact, either Tibet or Nepal, which is to say high in the Himalayas. The version of Buddhism depicted in the saga is very close to the Tibetan version with strict reference to reincarnation, strict reference to dying not being death but rebirth, though the pilgrims are, at first, very human despite them being one man, one monkey, one pig, and one “fish.” By human I mean they are constantly suffering from fear, torture, violence, and fighting. They should not be afraid of dying since they will — not would, no doubt about it — be reincarnated, but true enough what will they be reincarnated into? Merit is hard to accumulate, and you may lose it for any small misdeed. I say this from the very start because it is important to understand the end. The four pilgrims, in fact, three of them only, become living Buddhas at the end because of their long trip to get the scriptures. This is not at all in keeping with Theravada Buddhism, the Buddhism of the Dhammapada. Reincarnation is not even clear in this Theravada Buddhism, and when you reach enlightenment, you do not become a living Buddha, eternal and body-free. You become pure energy and you merge into cosmic energy, back into your very source and origin since all beings are part of this cosmic energy originally, and life is the accumulation of the merit that will enable you to get rid of the material body of yours.

The story is the symbolic, even ritual, eradicating of evil in Chinese society. Evil is ever present and always dominant in this society, everywhere, and among all sorts of communities. To be able to get the scriptures and bring them back to China, the pilgrims have to accomplish nine times nine good cleansing operations of evil, which is to say eighty-one such operations. We are dealing here with the magic of numbers, not any numbers, mostly two and three. 9 is 3 multiplied by 3. 81 is 9 multiplied by 9, hence 3 multiplied by 3 multiplied by 3 multiplied by 3, hence 3…