The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 1
Page 11
The sentiments finding expression in the novel, on the other hand, fall squarely within the most familiar discourse of historical Confucian teachings. They justly echo his parting address to his monastic community at the Temple of Great Blessings on the eve of his journey: “I have already made a great vow and a profound promise that, if I do not acquire the true scriptures, I shall fall into eternal perdition in Hell. Since I have received such grace and favor from the monarch, I have no alternative but to requite my country to the limit of loyalty , , . , ” (XYJ 1: 141; JW 1: 290). That remark, in turn, even more pointedly repeats a similar confession spoken by the Xuanzang of the twenty-four-scene zaju: “Honored viewers, attend to the single statement by this lowly monk: a subject must reach the limit of loyalty, much as a son must reach the limit of filial piety. There is no other means of requital than the perfection of both loyalty and filial piety , : , , , ” (Act 5, in Zaju Xiyouji, 2: 648). Words such as these may seem hackneyed and platitudinous to modern ears, but they faithfully portray the fictional Xuanzang. Built consistently on the tradition of antecedent legend, but with important innovative additions apparently supplied by the Shidetang author, Xuanzang’s characterization in the novel seems to fit preponderantly a stereotype—the traditional scholar-official or the “undiluted Confucian .”130
If the full-length novel presumes the ideology of the unity of the Three Religions (, ) for both its content and genetic context, who among the five fictive pilgrims is more appropriate than the human monk to embody fully political loyalism and filial piety, especially when all four of the other disciples imperfectly partake of human culture and lineage? The historical Xuanzang was unquestionably a hero of religion, turning his back on family and court in his youth to face appalling dangers, and without doubt a master of literary Sinitic and of scriptural styles shaped by difficult encounters with Indic languages. His biography, compiled by two disciples and touched with hagiography, duly recorded serial visitations to various states of Central Asia and India beset by encounters with gods and demons, physical perils and privations, triumphal religious proselytism, and royal hospitality in many locales. Nonetheless, could a historically impeccable version of this character have amused and entertained the multifarious sixteenth-century reading public?
The novelistic figure is timid, ethically fastidious, occasionally dogmatic, heedful of slander, and prone to partiality—like typical male leads in Ming drama and vernacular fiction—but nevertheless filial and politically loyal. Most interestingly, although this pilgrim, consistent with his vocational vow of celibacy, resists sexual temptations in all circumstances (chapters 24, 54–55, 82–83), he is also so fond of poetry that he discusses poetics with tree monster-spirits (chapter 64) and composes quatrains in a region near India (chapter 94). Perhaps in parody of filial piety blended with the religious notion of reverting to the source and origin extolled in both Daoism and Buddhism, the narrative shows him to be so attached to his mother (when he is not thinking about the emperor) that one ordeal as he nears his goal reenacts the fated marriage of his parents—the chance selection of the father by an embroidered ball his mother throws (chapters 93–95). In this episode on the Kingdom of India, where to the Tang Monk’s chauvinistic eyes the clothing, utensils, manner of speech, and behavior of the people completely resemble those of the Great Tang (XYJ, chapter 93, p. 1056), the pilgrim’s persistent invocation of maternal experience also justly invites Monkey’s teasing about his master’s “longing for the past ” (XYJ, chapter 94, p. 1062). Such a person, dwelling in the religiously syncretistic world of the full-length novel, seems a fit representative of Confucianism, at least as the vast populace imagines it.
Fit representative or not, however, the novel’s human pilgrim is no chunru or “undiluted Confucian.” Since the story is about a cleric named Xuanzang in the Tang, the pilgrim is unalterably adulterated: he has to be a Buddhist monk, a man who has taken “holy orders,” as it were, from a foreign religion and, in principle, could declare only conditional allegiance to the stipulated authority claimed by such canonical Confucian institutions as the state and the family. Even as a Buddhist monk, moreover, the fictional Xuanzang’s character is significantly at odds with what we know of the historical figure. As part I of this introduction has sketched out briefly, the real Xuanzang had entered a Pure Land monastery as a zealot in his early teens. Devoting his entire life to the study of some of the most advanced and difficult doctrines of his faith, he undertook a long, perilous pilgrimage and acquired many texts that lie at the foundations of the Buddhist tradition called Faxiang zong , or the Dharmalakṣaṇa (Characteristics of the Dharmas), also known as “The Consciousness-Only Lineage .” The translation of these texts upon his return to China and his own doctrinal writings and commentaries became lasting accomplishments. His lineage was also called Ci’en zong after the emperor installed him at the temple of the same name. The principal doctrine distinguishing this particular school of Buddhism, with its emphasis on extreme idealism, may be summed up in the assertion by one of its two ancient founders, Vasubandhu (b. ca 400 CE): “All this world is ideation only.” As elucidated by a modern scholar, “it claims that the external world is but a fabrication of our consciousness, that the external world does not exist, that the internal ideation presents an appearance as if it were an outer world. The entire external world is therefore an illusion.”131
So briefly stated, the Faxiang teachings may superficially resonate with many doctrines of other Buddhist lineages, including Chan (Zen). The tradition spent centuries struggling with such daunting issues as the role of imagination in our acquisition of knowledge, the mutual dependence of causes and conditions for certain temporal phenomena and our sensual apprehension of them, and the attainment of perfect knowledge puncturing the impermanence veiling all things.132 Nonetheless, unlike the novel’s Xuanzang, the historical monk based his entire career upon unwavering trust in the efficacy of language. Neither Xuanzang and his immediate disciples nor their foreign predecessors ever questioned the roles of mind, thought, and linguistic signs in the arduous quest for ultimate reality or truth. In sum, they did not dismiss human language as an illusory phenomenon; on the contrary, they were unreserved in their commitment to writing, including translation, as trustworthy communication. This commitment betokens also the unambiguous recognition of intellectual work enshrined in language—therefore, supremely in literacy—as a religious necessity. Such dedication to intense labor on abstruse and taxing philosophical issues may have even led to the decline of the lineage not long after the demise of Xuanzang and the circle of his immediate disciples.
The Xuanzang story complex seems to belong to a different form of Buddhism. In note 125, I mentioned that the preincarnate name bestowed on the monk in the dramatic version seems to identify him with Vairocana Buddha, and, if such a reading is correct, would immediately establish the human cleric’s linkage to Chan Buddhism. Certain formal and thematic ties can be detected several centuries earlier in the Song poetic tale. During their travel beyond the “Incense Mountain Temple ,” for example, the Monkey disciple told the priest that although they had reached “the Country of Snakes . . . , none of the snakes here are vicious, because they all possess the Buddha nature” (Shihua, p. 7; cf. CHCL, p. 1185)—a notion central to Chan doctrines.133 In chapter 2 of the poetic tale, no sooner had the monkey acolyte officially joined the pilgrimage when the chapter formally ended with a dialogue in verse, spoken by both the monkey and by the human pilgrim (Shihua, p. 2). In chapter 8 (title lacking) where the pilgrims met up with the Deep Sand God, three quatrains spoken by the god, the monkey, and the priest also ended the episode (Shihua, p. 17). Because the narrative is punctuated constantly by brief snippets of poetry, some of which are no more than crude doggerels, modern Chinese scholars tend to regard the poetic tale as a form of huaben storytelling that began in late Tang and flourished in the Song within the general history of vernacular fiction’s development. To the extent, however, that the verse segme
nts of this particular poetic tale often articulate an explicitly doctrinal or evangelistic message from one character to another, the form is remarkably similar to the Chan Platform Sūtra, the only text acknowledged historically as that tradition’s scripture. Didactic priestly instructions and professions of either ignorance or enlightenment in response to them in this text are almost always couched in verse or the gāthā.134
One of the famous protagonists dramatized in the scriptural text is the patriarch Huineng , alternately (638–713), whose conspicuous talent was his percipience despite illiteracy (Tanjing, chapter 1, p. 18; Platform Scripture, section 8, p. 39). The narrative depiction does not merely dwell on his inability to read or write; even more pointedly, it emphasizes his uncanny ability to intuit and apprehend the meaning of anything read to him. When the patriarch conversed with a nun in a later episode,
the nun said, “If you can’t even recognize words, how could you understand the meaning?” The master said, “The wondrous principles of the various Buddhas are not dependent on language , .” (Tanjing, chapter 7, p. 132)
In Huineng’s dismissive view of language, writing has worth only for accommodating human inadequacies. Accordingly,
all scriptures and writings, both the Great Vehicle and the Small Vehicle, and the twelve sections of the scripture [i.e., the total Buddhist canon] are provided for men. It is because man possesses the nature of wisdom that these were instituted. If there were no men in the world, there would naturally not be any dharmas. We know, therefore, that dharmas exist because of man and that there are all these scriptures because there are people to preach them.
The reason is that among men some are wise and others are stupid. The stupid are inferior, whereas the wise are superior. The deluded consult the wise and the wise explain the Law to the stupid and enable them to understand and to open up their minds. (Platform Scripture, section 30, p. 79)
Such a view of language underlines the fundamental paradox of Chan: exalting a goal of enlightenment (whether gradual or immediate) attainable through mental and spiritual intuition (with or without the aid of phenomena or dharma as either material or symbolic medium—in other words, an enigmatic utterance, an act like a slap or a punch, and an object like a mummified corpse or a skull),135 the tradition nonetheless depends on language—in both sermons and writings—to articulate, record, and transmit the patriarchal sayings (yulu ) and deeds.
The Monkey and His Significance in the Journey
We shall now see in greater detail how the paradoxes of Chan are directly germane to the reading of our 1592 novel. A principal part of the fictional transformation of the priest Xuanzang, as the previous section has pointed out, lies in establishing the pilgrim’s intimate relationship with the emperor prior to the journey, so that the journey becomes an imperial commission. In the novel’s crucial scene of the priest’s selection as the scripture seeker, a long poem recalls Xuanzang’s history that summarizes the controversial chapter 9 supplemented by fragments of similar content in scene 1 of the dramatic version. The narrative elaborates further:
So that very day the multitude [of officials] selected the priest Xuanzang, a man who had been a monk since childhood, who maintained a vegetarian diet, and who had received the commandments the moment he left his mother’s womb. . . . [He] had no love for glory or wealth, being dedicated wholly to the pursuit of nirvāṇa. Their investigations revealed that he had an excellent family background and the highest moral character. Not one of the thousands of classics and sūtras he had failed to master; none of the Buddhist chants and hymns was unknown to him. [When this candidate was brought into the emperor’s presence], Taizong was delighted, saying to him, “You are truly a monk of great virtue and possessing the mind of Chan.” (XYJ, chapter 12, pp. 131–32; JW 1: 276)
This eulogy of Xuanzang’s character and learning echoes an eloquent declamation in the drama XYJ by the Chan Master Danxia [Cinnabar Aura] , Abbot of Gold Mountain, who had rescued the abandoned infant from death in the river. “Since infancy I have brought in Child River Float. At seven, he could read and write; at fifteen, there was no work of scripture that he did not know. He commands comprehensive understanding of our lineage’s principle of nature and vitality. This old monk, therefore, gave him the religious name of Xuanzang. Now Xuan means the mysterious, and Zang means great [in the sense of powerful]. His name thus indicates that he can apprehend greatly the fine points of mystery” (Zaju, 2: 639–10).
The description of young Xuanzang’s erudition and intellectual prowesss validates, at least partially, Lu Xun’s charge that the authors of the novel and the drama were ignorant of Buddhist learning. The ideals of Chan are not erected upon the mastery of “a thousand classics and ten thousand canons.” Despite that eulogy of the legendary Tripitaka, neither the drama nor the novel offers us a priest who lives up to that formulaic encomium. What is more interesting is the appearance of the word Chan in both texts used to describe both Xuanzang’s rescuer and the pilgrim himself. One might argue that even before Ming times, people used the word to stand for Buddhism in a general sense, but “Master of Chan” was never indiscriminately used. Moreover, the words of the abbot giving his own interpretation of Xuanzang as a name directly suggest a correlation with Chan Buddhism as integrated with Quanzhen conceptualities, notably “inner nature” and “life” or “vitality” (xingming).
The depiction of the novelistic Xuanzang surely and constantly associates him and his entourage with Chan. Revealing examples can readily be found in both narrative content and such titular couplets as “Tripitaka does not forget his origin; / The Four Sages test the Chan Mind” (chapter 24); “The Child’s tricky transformations confuse the Chan Mind; / Ape, Horse, Spatula, and Wood Mother—all are lost” (chapter 40); “The Chan Lord, taking food, has demonic conception; / Yellow Dame brings water to dissolve perverse pregnancy” (chapter 53); “Rescuing Tuoluo, Chan Nature is secure; / Escaping defilement, the Mind of Dao is pure” (chapter 67); “Mind Monkey envies Wood Mother; / The demon lord plots to devour Chan” (chapter 85); and “Chan, reaching Jade-Flower, convenes an assembly; / Mind Monkey, Wood, and Earth take in disciples” (chapter 88). This sort of explicit labeling can be misleading, because the fictive Xuanzang also lacks virtues cherished by the Chan tradition. Throughout the lengthy journey, he is so dull of mind and impoverished in perception that he never seems able to learn from his experience of all the means and media—the cycles of captivity and release staged by gods and demons—“providentially” sent his way for his enlightenment.
We may briefly consider this central and protracted irony by starting from the story’s end, when the pilgrims succeed in reaching Buddha’s abode in India and receiving the first gift of the long-sought scriptures. The volumes thus bestowed, however, were blank. When Tripitaka discovered the truth on their homeward journey,
[he] heaved big sighs and said, “Our people in the Land of the East simply have no luck! What good is it to take back a wordless, empty volume like this? How could I possibly face the Tang emperor? The crime of mocking one’s ruler is greater than one punishable by execution!” (XYJ, chapter 98, p. 1111)
Only after Monkey’s encouragement did the five pilgrims turn back to beg Buddha once again for scriptures with words.
“The true scriptures without words (wuzi zhenjing )” often appear in other popular writings, fictional and nonfictional. The novel uses them to mock “the monks of the Land of the East as being too blind and stupid to recognize” (in the words of the Buddha Dīpaṁkara in XYJ, chapter 98, p. 1110) their true worth. This situation may also echo the Chan view of language. Within the novel’s structure, nonetheless, Tripitaka’s lament only accentuates again his foregetfulness no less than his blindness. A little earlier, he already had received an anticipatory lesson, so to speak, from his eldest and most percipient disciple Sun Wukong. The biography of the historical pilgrim has made clear that he was especially fond of reciting the name of the Bodhisattva Guanyin coupled with the tersely br
ief Heart Sūtra, the transmission of which he had received in Sichuan from a sickly man covered with sores and pus. At the time when he was crossing the Sand River on his exit from China, he found that the scripture would dispel “various vicious demons, strange apparitions, and weird beings” that not even the invocation of Guanyin’s name alone could exorcise (FSZ, chapter 1 in SZZSHB, p. 12).
Although the novel attributes instead the sūtra’s transmission to the Crow’s Nest Chan Master (the name may be another significant allusion), the narrative maintains the human monk’s attachment to the sūtra. Hence the irony of the following episode when Tripitaka again wonders out loud how much longer the journey will take.
“Master,” said Pilgrim, “could it be that you have quite forgotten again the Heart Sūtra . . . ?”
Tripitaka said, “That Prajñā-pāramitā is like a cassock or an almsbowl that accompanies my very body. Since that Crow’s Nest Chan Master taught it to me, has there been a day that I didn’t recite it? . . . I could recite the piece backward! How could I have forgotten it?”
“Master, you may be able to recite it,” said Pilgrim, “but you haven’t begged that Chan Master for its proper interpretation.”