Sun Wukong Looks for the Formula in the Three Islands
Guanyin Revives the Tree with a Spring of Sweet Water
As the poem goes,
When living in the world you must be forbearing;
Patience is essential when training oneself.
Although it’s often said that violence is good business,
Think before you act, and never bully or be angry.
True gentlemen who never strive are famed for ever;
The virtue-loving sages are renowned to this day.
Strong men always meet stronger than themselves,
And end up as failures who are in the wrong.
The Great Immortal Zhen Yuan held Monkey in his hand and said, “I’ve heard about your powers and your fame, but this time you have gone too far. Even if you manage to remove yourself, you won’t escape my clutches. You and I shall argue it out as far as the Western Heaven, and even if you see that Buddha of yours, you’ll still have to give me back my manfruit tree first. Don’t try any of your magic now.”
“What a small-minded bloke you are, sir,” Monkey replied with a laugh. “If you want your tree brought back to life, there’s no problem. If you’d told me earlier we could have been spared all this quarrelling.”
“If you hadn’t made trouble I’d have forgiven you,” said the Great Immortal.
“Would you agree to release my master if I gave you back the tree alive?” Monkey asked.
“If your magic is strong enough to revive the tree,” the Great Immortal replied, “I shall bow to you eight times and take you as my brother.”
“That’s easy then,” said Monkey. “Release them and I guarantee to give you back your tree alive.”
Trusting him not to escape, the Great Immortal ordered that Sanzang, Pig and Friar Sand be set free. “Master,” said Friar Sand, “I wonder what sort of trick Monkey is up to.”
“I’ll tell you what sort of trick,” retorted Pig. “A pleading for favour trick. The tree’s dead and can’t possibly be revived. Finding a cure for the tree is an excuse for going off by himself without giving a damn for you or me.”
“He wouldn’t dare abandon us,” said Sanzang. “Let’s ask him where he’s going to find a doctor for it. Monkey,” he continued, “why did you fool the Immortal elder into untying us?”
“Every word I said was true,” Monkey replied. “I wasn’t leading him on.”
“Where will you go to find a cure?”
“There’s an old saying that ‘cures come from over the sea’. I’ll go to the Eastern Sea and travel round the Three Islands and Ten Continents visiting the venerable Immortals and sages to find a formula for bringing the dead back to life. I promise that I’ll cure that tree.”
“When will you come back?”
“I’ll only need three days.”
“In that case I’ll give you three days. If you are back within that time, that will be all right, but if you are late I shall recite that spell.”
“I’ll do as you say,” said Monkey.
He immediately straightened up his tiger-skin kilt, went out through the door, and said to the Great Immortal, “Don’t worry, sir, I’ll soon be back. Mind you look after my master well. Give him tea three times a day and six meals, and don’t leave any out. If you do, I’ll settle that score when I come back, and I’ll start by holing the bottoms of all your pans. If his clothes get dirty, wash them for him. I won’t stand for it if he looks sallow, and if he loses weight you’ll never see the back of me.”
“Go away, go away,” the Great Immortal replied. “I certainly won’t let him go hungry.”
The splendid Monkey King left the Wuzhuang Temple with a bound of his somersault cloud and headed for the Eastern Sea. He went through the air as fast as a flash of lightning or a shooting star, and he was soon in the blessed land of Penglai. As he landed his cloud he looked around him and saw that it was indeed a wonderful place. A poem about it goes:
A great and sacred land where the Immortal sages
Still the waves as they come and go.
The shade of the jasper throne cools the heart of the sky;
The radiance of the great gate-pillars shimmers high above the sea.
Hidden in the coloured mists are flutes of jade;
The moon and the stars shine on the golden leviathan.
The Queen Mother of the Western Pool often comes here
To give her peaches to the Three Immortals.
Gazing at the enchanted land that spread out before him, Brother Monkey entered Penglai. As he was walking along, he noticed three old men sitting round a chess table under the shade of a pine tree outside a cloud-wreathed cave. The one watching the game was the Star of Longevity, and the players were the Star of Blessings and the Star of Office.
“Greetings, respected younger brothers,” Monkey called to them, and when they saw him they swept the pieces away, returned his salutation, and said, “Why have you come here, Great Sage?”
“To see you,” he replied.
“I’ve heard,” said the Star of Longevity, “that you have given up the Way for the sake of the Buddha, and have thrown aside your life to protect the Tang Priest on his journey to fetch the scriptures from the Western Heaven. How can you spare the time from your endless crossings of waters and mountains just to see us?”
“To tell you the truth,” said Monkey, “I was on my way to the West until a spot of bother held us up. I wonder if you could do me a small favour.”
“Where did this happen?” asked the Star of Blessings, “what has been holding you up? Please tell us and we’ll deal with it.”
“We’ve been held up because we went via the Wuzhuang Temple on the Mountain of Infinite Longevity,” said Monkey.
“But the Wuzhuang Temple is the palace of the Great Immortal Zhen Yuan,” exclaimed the three Immortals with alarm, “don’t say that you’ve stolen some of his manfruit!”
“What if I had stolen and eaten some?” asked Monkey with a grin.
“You ignorant ape,” the three Immortals replied. “A mere whiff of that fruit makes a man live to be three hundred and sixty, and anyone who eats one will live forty-seven thousand years. They are called ‘Grass-returning Cinnabar of Ten Thousand Longevities,’ and our Way hasn’t a patch on them. Manfruit makes you as immortal as Heaven with the greatest of ease, while it takes us goodness knows how long to nourish our essence, refine the spirit, preserve our soul, harmonize water and fire, capture the kan to fill out the li. How can you possibly ask whether it would matter? There is no other miraculous tree like it on earth.”
“Miraculous tree,” scoffed Monkey, “miraculous tree! I’ve put an end to that miraculous tree.”
“What? Put an end to it?” the three Immortals asked, struck with horror.
“When I was in his temple the other day,” Monkey said, “the Great Immortal wasn’t at home. There were only a couple of boys who received my master and gave him two manfruits. My master didn’t know what they were and said that they were newborn babies; he refused to eat them. The boys took them away and ate them themselves instead of offering them to the rest of us, so I went and pinched three, one for each of us disciples. Those disrespectful boys swore and cursed at us no end, which made me so angry that I knocked their tree over with a single blow. All the fruit disappeared, the leaves fell, the roots came out, and the branches were smashed up. The tree was dead. To our surprise the two boys locked us in, but I opened the lock and we escaped. When the Great Immortal came home the next day, he came after us and found us. Our conversation didn’t go too smoothly and we started to fight him, but he dodged us, spread his sleeve out, and caught us all up in it. After being tied up then flogged and interrogated for a day, we escaped again, but he caught up with us and captured us again. Although he had not an inch of steel on him, he fought us off with his whisk, and even with our three weapons we couldn’t touch him. He caught us the same way as before. He had my master and two brothers wrapped up in bandages and lacquered, and was going to throw me into a cauldron of oil, but I used a trick to take my body away and escape, smashing that pan of his. Now that he has realized he can’t catch me and keep me he’s getting a bit scared of me, and I had a good talk with him. I told him that if he released my master and my brothers I’d guarantee to cure the tree and bring it back to life, which would satisfy both parties. As it occurred to me that ‘cures come from over the sea,’ I came here specially to visit you three brothers of mine. If you have any cures that will bring a tree back to life, please tell me one so that I can get the Tang Priest out of trouble as quickly as possible.”
“You ape,” the Three Stars said gloomily when they heard this. “You don’t know who you’re up against. That Master Zhen Yuan is the Patriarch of the Immortals of the earth, and we are the chiefs of the divine Immortals. Although you have become a heavenly Immortal, you are still only one of the irregulars of the Great Monad, not one of the elite. You’ll never be able to escape his clutches. If you’d killed some animal, bird, insect or reptile, Great Sage, we could have given you some pills made from sticky millet to bring it back to life, but that manfruit tree is a magic one and can’t possibly be revived. There’s no cure, none at all.” When he heard that there was no cure, Monkey’s brows locked in a frown, and his forehead was creased in a thousand wrinkles.
“Great Sage,” said the Star of Blessing, “even though we have no cure here, there may be one somewhere else. Why be so worried?”
“If there were anywhere else for me to go,” Monkey replied, “it would be easy. It wouldn’t even matter if I had to go to the furthest corner of the ocean, or to the cliff at the end of the sky, or if I had to penetrate the Thirty-sixth Heaven. But the trouble is that the Tang Patriarch is very strict and has given me a time-limit of three days. If I’m not back in three days he’ll recite the Band-tightening Spell.”
“Splendid, splendid,” laughed the three stars. “If you weren’t restricted by that spell you’d go up to Heaven again.”
“Calm down, Great Sage,” said the Star of Longevity, “there’s no need to worry. Although that Great Immortal is senior to us he is a friend of ours, and as we haven’t visited him for a long time and would like to do you a favour we’ll go and see him. We’ll explain things for you and tell that Tang monk not to recite the Band-tightening Spell. We won’t go away until you come back, however long you take, even if it’s a lot longer that three to five days.”
“Thank you very much,” said Monkey. “May I ask you to set out now as I’m off?” With that he took his leave.
The Three Stars went off on beams of auspicious light to the Wuzhuang Temple, where all present heard cranes calling in the sky as the three of them arrived.
The void was bathed in blessed glow,
The Milky Way heavy with fragrance.
A thousand wisps of coloured mist enveloped the feather-clad ones;
A single cloud supported the immortal feet.
Green and red phoenixes circled and soared,
As the aroma in their sleeves wafted over the earth.
These dragons leant on their staffs and smiled,
And jade-white beards waved before their chests.
Their youthful faces were untroubled by sorrow,
Their majestic bodies were rich with blessing.
They carried star-chips to count their age,
And at their waists hung gourds and talismans.
Their life is infinitely long,
And they live on the Ten Continents and Three Islands.
They often come to bring blessings to mortals,
Spreading good things a hundred-fold among humans.
The glory and blessings of the universe
Come now as happiness unlimited.
As these three elders visit the Great Immortal on auspicious light,
There is no end to good fortune and peace.
“Master,” the immortal youths rushed to report when they saw them, “the Three Stars from the sea are here.” The Great Immortal Zhen Yuan, who was talking with the Tang Priest, came down the steps to welcome them when he heard this.
When Pig saw the Star of Longevity he went up and tugged at his clothes. “I haven’t seen you for ages, you meat-headed old fellow,” he said with a grin. “You’re getting very free and easy, turning up without a hat.” With these words he thrust his own clerical hat on the star’s head, clapped his hands, and roared with laughter. “Great, great. You’ve been ‘capped and promoted’ all right.” Flinging the hat down, the Star of Longevity cursed him for a disrespectful moron.
“I’m no moron,” said Pig, but you’re all slaves.”
“You’re most certainly a moron,” the Star of Blessing replied, “so how dare you call us slaves?”
“If you aren’t slaves then,” Pig retorted, “why do people always ask you to ‘bring us long life,’ ‘bring us blessings,’ and ‘bring us a good job?’”
Sanzang shouted at Pig to go away, then quickly tidied himself up and bowed to the Three Stars. The Three Stars greeted the Great Immortal as befitted members of a younger generation, after which they all sat down. “We have not seen your illustrious countenance for a long time,” the Star of Office said, “which shows our great lack of respect. The reason we come to see you now is because the Great Sage Monkey has made trouble in your immortal temple.”
“Has Monkey been to Penglai?” the Great Immortal asked.
“Yes,” replied the Star of Longevity. “He came to our place to ask for a formula to restore the elixir tree that he killed. As we have no cure for it, he has had to go elsewhere in search of it. We are afraid that if he exceeds the three-day time-limit the holy priest has imposed, the Band-tightening Spell may be said. We have come in the first place to pay our respects and in the second to ask for an extension of the limit.”
“I won’t recite it, I promise,” answered Sanzang as soon as he heard this.
As they were talking Pig came rushing in again to grab hold of the Star of Blessing and demand some fruit from him. He started to feel in the star’s sleeves and rummage round his waist, pulling his clothes apart as he searched everywhere.
“What sort of behavior is that?” asked Sanzang with a smile.
“I’m not misbehaving,” said Pig. “This is what’s meant by the saying, ‘blessings wherever you look.’” Sanzang shouted at him to go away again. The idiot withdrew slowly, glaring at the Star of Blessing with unwavering hatred in his eyes.
“I wasn’t angry with you, you moron,” said the star, “so why do you hate me so?”
“I don’t hate you,” said Pig. “This is what they call ‘turning the head and seeing blessing.’” As the idiot was going out he saw a young boy came in with four tea ladles, looking for bowls in the abbot’s cell in which to put fruit and serve tea. Pig seized one of the ladles, ran to the main hall of the temple, snatched up a hand-bell, and started striking it wildly. He was enjoying himself enormously when the Great Immortal said, “This monk gets more and more disrespectful.”
“I’m not being disrespectful,” Pig replied. “I’m ‘ringing in happiness for the four seasons.’”
While Pig was having his jokes and making trouble, Monkey had bounded away from Penglai by auspicious cloud and come to the magic mountain Fangzhang. This was a really wonderful place. As the poem goes,
The towering Fangzhang is another heaven,
Where gods and Immortals meet in the Palace of the Great Unity.
The purple throne illuminates the road to the Three Pure Ones,
The scent of flowers and trees drifts among the clouds.
Many a golden phoenix comes to rejoice around its flowery portals;
What makes the fields of magical mushrooms glisten like jade?
Pale peaches and purple plums are newly ripened,
Ready to give even longer life to the Immortals.
But as Monkey brought his cloud down he was in no mood to enjoy the view. As he was walking along he smelt a fragrance in the wind, heard the cry of the black stork, and saw an Immortal:
The sky was filled with radiant light,
As multicolored clouds shone and glowed.
Red phoenixes looked brighter than the flowers in their beaks;
Sweetly sang green ones as they danced in flight.
His blessings were as great as the Eastern Sea, his age that of a mountain;
Yet his face was a child’s and his body was strong.
In a bottle he kept his pills of eternal youth,
And a charm for everlasting life hung from his waist.
He had often sent blessings down to mankind,
Several times saving mortals from difficulties.
He once gave longer life to Emperor Wu,
And always went to the Peach Banquets at the Jade Pool.
He taught all monks to cast off worldly fates;
His explanations of the great Way were clear as lightning.
He had crossed the seas to pay his respects,
And had seen the Buddha on the Vulture Peak.
His title was Lord Emperor of Eastern Glory,
The highest-ranked Immortal of the mists and clouds.
When Brother Monkey saw him he hailed him with the words, “I salute you, Lord Emperor.” The Lord Emperor hastened to return his greeting and say, “I should have welcomed you properly, Great Sage. May I ask you home for some tea?” He led Monkey by the hand to his palace of cowrie-shells, where there was no end of jasper pools and jade towers. They were sitting waiting for their tea when a boy appeared from behind
an emerald screen. This is how he looked:
A Taoist robe that sparkled with color hung from his body,
And light gleamed from the silken sash round his waist.
On his head he wore a turban with the sign of the stars of the Dipper,
And the grass sandals on his feet had climbed all the magical mountains.
He was refining his True Being, shuffling off his shell,
And when he had finished he would reach unbounded bliss.
His understanding had broken through to the origins,
And his master knew that he was free from mistakes.
Avoiding fame and enjoying the present he had won long life
And did not care about the passing of time.
He had been along the crooked portico, climbed to the precious hall,
And three times received the peaches of Heaven.
Clouds of incense appeared to rise from behind the emerald screen;
This young Immortal was Dongfang Shuo himself.
“So you’re here, you young thief,” said Monkey with a smile when he saw him. “There are no peaches for you to steal here in the Lord Emperor’s palace.”
Dongfang Shuo greeted him respectfully and replied, “What have you come for, you old thief? My master doesn’t keep any pills of immortality here for you to pinch.”
“Stop talking nonsense, Manqian,” the Lord Emperor shouted, “and bring some tea.” Manqian was Dongfang Shuo’s Taoist name. He hurried inside and brought out two cups of tea.
When the two of them had drunk it, Monkey said, “I came here to ask you to do something for me. I wonder if you’d be prepared to.”
“What is it?” the Lord Emperor asked. “Do tell me.”
“I have been escorting the Tang Priest on his journey to the West,” Monkey replied, “and our route took us via the Wuzhuang Temple on the Mountain of Infinite Longevity. The youths there were so ill-mannered that I lost my temper and knocked their manfruit tree over. We’ve been held up for a while as a result, and the Tang Priest cannot get away, which is why I have come to ask you, sir, to give me a formula that will cure it. I do hope that you will be good enough to agree.”
“You thoughtless ape,” the Lord Emperor replied, “you make trouble wherever you go. Master Zhen Yuan of the Wuzhunang Temple has the sacred title Conjoint Lord of the Age, and he is the Patriarch of the Immortals of the Earth. Why ever did you clash with him? That manfruit tree of his is Grass-returning Cinnabar. It was criminal enough of you to steal some of the fruit, and knocking the tree over makes it impossible for him ever to make it up with you.”
“True,” said Monkey. “When we escaped he caught up with us and swept us into his sleeve as if we were so many sweat-rags, which made me furious. However, he had to let me go and look for a formula that would cure it, which is why I’ve come to ask your help.”
“I have a nine-phased returning pill of the Great Monad, but it can only bring animate objects back to life, not trees. Trees are lives compounded of the Wood and Earth elements and nurtured by Heaven and Earth. If it were an ordinary mortal tree I could bring it back to life, but the Mountain of Infinite Longevity is the blessed land of a former heaven, the Wuzhuang Temple is the Cave Paradise of the Western Continent of Cattle-gift, and the manfruit tree is the life-root from the time when Heaven and Earth were separated. How could it possibly be revived? I have no formula, none at all.”
“In that case I must take my leave,” replied Monkey, and when the Lord Emperor tried to detain him with a cup of jade nectar he said, “This is too urgent to allow me to stay.” He rode his cloud back to the island of Yingzhou, another wonderful place, as this poem shows:
Trees of pearls glowed with a purple haze;
The Yingzhou palaces led straight to the heavens.
Blue hills, green rivers, and the beauty of exquisite flowers;
Jade mountains as hard as iron.
Pheasants called at the sunrise over the sea,
Long-lived phoenixes breathe in the red clouds.
People, do not look so hard at the scenery in your jar:
Beyond the world of phenomena is an eternal spring.
On reaching Yingzhou he saw a number of white-haired Immortals with the faces of children playing chess and drinking under a pearl tree at the foot of a cinnabar cliff. They were laughing and singing. As the poem says, there were
Light-filled auspicious clouds,
Perfume floating in a blessed haze.
Brilliant phoenixes singing at the mouth of a cave,
Black cranes dancing on a mountain top.
Pale green lotus-root and peaches helped their wine down,
Pears and fiery red dates gave them a thousand years of life.
Neither of them had ever heard an imperial edict,
But each was entered on the list of Immortals.
They drifted and floated with the waves,
Free and easy in unsullied elegance.
The passage of the days could not affect them;
Their freedom was guaranteed by Heaven and Earth.
Black apes come in pairs,
Looking most charming as they present fruit;
White deer, bowing two by two,
Thoughtfully offer flowers.
These old men were certainly living a free and happy life. “How about letting me play with you?” Monkey shouted at the top of his voice, and when the Immortals saw him they hurried over to welcome him. There is a poem to prove it that goes:
When the magic root of the manfruit tree was broken;
The Great Sage visited the Immortals in search of a cure.
Winding their way through the vermilion mist, the Nine Ancients
Came out of the precious forest to greet him.
Monkey, who knew the Nine Ancients, said with a smile, “You nine brothers seem to be doing very nicely.”
“If you had stayed on straight and narrow in the old days, Great sage,” they replied, “and not wrecked the Heavenly Palace you would be doing even better that we are. Now we hear that you have reformed and are going West to visit the Buddha. How did you manage the time off to come here?” Monkey told them how he was searching for a formula to cure the tree.
“What a terrible thing to do,” they exclaimed in horror, “what a terrible thing. We honestly have no cure at all.”
“In that case I must take my leave of you.”
The Nine Ancients tried to detain him with jasper wine and jade lotus-root, but Monkey refused to sit down, and stayed on his feet while he drank only one cup of wine and ate only one piece of lotus-root. Then he hurried away from Yingzhou and back to the Great Eastern Ocean. When he saw that Potaraka was not far away, he brought his cloud down to land on the Potara Crag, where he saw the Bodhisattva Guanyin expounding the scriptures and preaching the Buddha’s Law to all the great gods of heaven, Moksa, and the dragon maiden in the Purple Bamboo Grove. A poem about it goes:
Thick the mists round the lofty city of the sea’s mistress,
And no end to the greater marvels to be seen.
The Shaolin Temple really has the true flavor,
With the scent of flowers and fruit and the trees all red.
The Bodhisattva saw Monkey arrive and ordered the Great Guardian God of the Mountain to go and welcome him. The god emerged from the bamboo grove and shouted, “Where are you going, Monkey?”
“You bear monster,” Monkey shouted back, “how dare you address me as ‘Monkey’? If I hadn’t spared your life that time you’d have been just a demon’s corpse on the Black Wind Mountain. Now you’ve joined the Bodhisattva, accepted enlightenment, and come to live on this blessed island where you hear the Law being taught all the time. Shouldn’t you address me as ‘sir?’”
It was indeed thanks to Monkey that the black bear had been enlightened and was now guarding the Bodhisattva’s Potaraka as one of the great gods of heaven, so all he could do was to force a smile and say, “The ancients said, Great Sage, that a gentleman does not bear grudges. Why should you care about what you’re called? Anyhow, the Bodhisattva has sent me to welcome you.” Monkey then became grave and serious as he went into the Purple Bamboo Grove with the Great God and did obeisance to the Bodhisattva.
“How far has the Tang Priest got, Monkey?” she asked.
“He has reached the Mountain of Infinite Longevity in the Western Continent of Cattle-gift,” Monkey replied.
“Have you met the Great Immortal Zhen Yuan who lives in the Wuzhuang Temple on that mountain?” she asked.
“As your disciple didn’t meet the Great Immortal Zhen Yuan when I was in the Wuzhuang Temple,” replied Monkey, bowing down to the ground, “I destroyed his manfruit tree and offended him. As a result my master is in a very difficult position and can make no progress.”
“You wretched ape,” said the Bodhisattva angrily now that she knew about it, “you have no conscience at all. That manfruit tree of his is the life-root from the time when Heaven and Earth were separated, and Master Zhen Yuan is the Patriarch of the Earth’s Immortals, which means even I have to show him a certain respect. Why ever did you harm his tree?”
Monkey bowed once more and said, “I really didn’t know. He was away that day and there were only two immortal youths to look after us. When Pig heard that they had this fruit he wanted to try one, so I stole three for him and we had one each. They swore at us no end when they found out, so I lost my temper and knocked the tree over. When he came back the next day he chased us and caught us all up in his sleeve. We were tied up and flogged for a whole day. We got away that night but he caught up with us and put us in his sleeve again. All our escape attempts failed, so I promised him I’d put the tree right. I’ve been searching for a formula all over the seas and been to all three islands of Immortals, but the gods and Immortals are all useless, which is why I decided to come and worship you, Bodhisattva, and tell you all about it. I beg you in your mercy to grant me a formula so that I can save the Tang Priest and have him on his way West again as soon as possible.
“Why didn’t you come and see me earlier instead of searching the islands for it?” the Bodhisattva asked.
“I’m in luck,” thought Monkey with delight when he heard this, “I’m in luck. The Bodhisattva must have a formula.” He went up to her and pleaded for it again.
“The ‘sweet dew’ in this pure vase of mine,” she said, “is an excellent cure for magic trees and plants.”
“Has it ever been tried out?” Monkey asked.
“Yes,” she said. “How?” he asked.
“Some years ago Lord Lao Zi beat me at gambling,” she replied, “and took my willow sprig away with him. He put it in his elixir-refining furnace and burnt it to a cinder before sending it back to me. I put it back in the vase, and a day and a night later it was as green and leafy as ever.”
“I’m really in luck,” said Monkey, “really in luck. If it can bring a cinder back to life, something that has only been pushed over should be easy.” The Bodhisattva instructed her subjects to look after the grove as she was going away for a while. Then she took up her vase, and her white parrot went in front singing while Monkey followed behind. As the poem goes,
The jade-haired golden one is hard to describe to mortals;
She truly is a compassionate deliverer.
Although in aeons past she had known the spotless Buddha,
Now she had acquired a human form.
After several lives in the sea of suffering she had purified the waves,
And in her heart there was no speck of dust.
The sweet dew that had long undergone the miraculous Law
Was bound to give the magic tree eternal life.
The Great Immortal and the Three Stars were still in lofty conversation when they saw Monkey bring his cloud down and heard him shout, “The Bodhisattva’s here. Come and welcome her at once.” The Three Stars and Master Zheng Yuan hurried out with Sanzang and his disciples to greet her. On bringing her cloud to a stop, she first talked with Master Zhen Yuan and then greeted the Three Stars, after which she climbed to her seat. Monkey then led the Tang Priest, Pig, and Friar Sand out to do obeisance before the steps, and all the Immortals in the temple came to bow to her as well.
“There’s no need to dither about, Great Immortal,” said Monkey. “Get an incense table ready at once and ask the Bodhisattva to cure that whatever-it-is tree of yours.” The Great Immortal Zhen Yuan bowed to the Bodhisattva and thanked her:
“How could I be so bold as to trouble the Bodhisattva with my affairs?”
“The Tang Priest is my disciple, and Monkey has offended you, so it is only right that I should make up for the loss of your priceless tree.”
“In that case there is no need for you to refuse,” said the Three Stars. “May we invite you, Bodhisattva, to come into our orchard and take a look?”
The Great Sage had an incense table set up and the orchard swept, then he asked the Bodhisattva to lead the way. The Three Stars followed behind. Sanzang, his disciples, and all the Immortals of the temple went into the orchard to look, and they saw the tree lying on the ground with the earth torn open, its roots laid bare, its leaves fallen and its branches withered. “Put your hand out, Monkey,” said the Bodhisattva, and Brother Monkey stretched out his left hand. The Bodhisattva dipped her willow spray into the sweet dew in her vase, then used it to write a spell to revive the dead on the palm of Monkey’s hand. She told him to place it on the roots of the tree until he saw water coming out. Monkey clenched his fist and tucked it under the roots; before long a spring of clear water began to form a pool.
“That water must not be sullied by vessels made of any of the Five Elements, so you will have to scoop it out with a jade ladle. If you prop the tree up and pour the water on it from the very top, its bark and trunk will knit together, its leaves will sprout again, the branches will be green once more, and the fruit will reappear.”
“Fetch a jade ladle this moment, young Taoists,” said Monkey. “We poor monks have no jade ladle in our destitute temple. We only have jade tea-bowls and wine-cups. Would they do?”
“As long as they are jade and can scoop out water they will do,” the Bodhisattva replied. “Bring them out and try.” The Great Immortal then told some boys to fetch the twenty or thirty teabowls and the forty or fifty wine-cups and ladle the clear water out from under the roots. Monkey, Pig and Friar Sand put their shoulders under the tree, raised it upright, and banked it up with earth. Then they presented the sweet spring water cup by cup to the Bodhisattva, who sprinkled it lightly on the tree with her spray of willow and recited an incantation. When a little later the water had all been sprinkled on the tree the leaves really did become as dense and green as ever, and there were twenty-three manfruits growing there.
Pure Wind and Bright Moon, the two immortal boys, said, “When the fruit disappeared the other day there were only twenty-two of them; so why is there an extra one now that it has come back to life?”
”‘Time shows the truth about a man,’” Monkey replied. “I only stole three that day. The other one fell on the ground, and the local deity told me that this treasure always entered earth when it touched it. Pig accused me of taking it as a bit of extra for myself and blackened my reputation, but at long last the truth has come out.”
“The reason why I did not use vessels made from the Five Elements was because I knew that this kind of fruit is allergic to them,” said the Bodhisattva. The Great Immortal, now extremely happy, had the golden rod fetched at once and knocked down ten of the fruits. He invited the Bodhisattva and the Three Stars to come to the main hall of the temple to take part a Manfruit Feast to thank them for their labors. All the junior Immortals arranged tables, chairs, and cinnabar bowls, The Bodhisattva was asked to take the seat of honour with the Three Stars on her left, the Tang Priest on her right, and Master Zhen Yuan facing her as the host. They ate one fruit each, and there are some lines about it:
In the ancient earthly paradise on the Mountain of Infinite Longevity
The manfruit ripens once in nine thousand years.
When the magic roots were bared and the branches dead,
The sweet dew brought leaves and fruit back to life.
The happy meeting of the Three Stars was predestined;
It was fated that the four monks would encounter one another.
Now that they have eaten the manfruit at this feast,
They will all enjoy everlasting youth.
The Bodhisattva and the Three Stars ate one each, as did the Tang Priest, who realized at last that this was an Immortal’s treasure, and Monkey, Pig and Friar Sand. Master Zhen Yuan had one to keep them company and the Immortals of the temple divided the last one between them. Monkey thanked the Bodhisattva, who went back to Potaraka, and saw the Three Stars off on their journey home to the island of Penglai.
Master Zhen Yuan set out some non-alcoholic wine and made Monkey his sworn brother. This was a case of “if you don’t fight you can’t make friends,” and their two households were now united. That night Sanzang and his disciples went to bed feeling very happy. That venerable priest had now
Been lucky enough to eat the Grass-returning Cinnabar,
Gaining long life, and resistance to fiends and monsters.
Listen to the next installment to hear how they took their leave the next day.