Havoc in Heaven

H eaven had a monkey problem. He had robbed the Dragon King of his iron rod and crossed his name out of the ledger of the dead, and the Jade Emperor wanted him executed on the spot. But the Great White Planet — the silver old star who handles heaven's awkward errands — counseled otherwise. Killing him is trouble, he said; he is a creature born of heaven and earth and will not go quietly. Better to call him up here, hand him a title, and let a roof and a salary do what an army cannot. The Emperor liked the sound of a cheap solution. A summons went down to Flower-Fruit Mountain. The Great White Planet memorialized the throne, saying it would be best if Your Majesty extended grace and mercy and sent down an edict of pacification, summoning him up to the upper world. The Jade Emperor, hearing this, was greatly pleased and agreed, and ordered the Star to carry the edict down to bring the monkey to heaven.

Up he went, cloud-somersaulting into the star-courts in high spirits, and the Emperor's clerks looked through the open posts and found him one — Bimawen. He took it gladly. It had a fine ring. For days he worked at it with real pride, until one night, mid-feast, he asked an old hand exactly where Bimawen sat in the great ladder of heavenly rank. There is no rank, the fellow said. It is below the bottom. You shovel for the horses. The Monkey King's grin went out like a snuffed lamp. So I am a stable-boy, he said. He flipped the banquet table, drew the rod from his ear, and battered his way out of the gates of heaven and home. The Monkey King asked, this Bimawen — what grade of office is it? They said, it has no grade at all. He said, no grade — that must mean it is the very greatest? They said, not great, not great; it is only called unranked. He asked what such a post did, and they told him it was to tend the horses, and nothing more. Hearing this, the Monkey King flared up, ground his teeth, and cried, they have insulted me. On Flower-Fruit Mountain I am king, I am patriarch — how dare they trick me into minding horses. He overturned the desk, took out his rod, and fought his way out through the Southern Gate of Heaven.

Back on his mountain he did not sulk; he upgraded. Two of his demon kings had a banner sewn for the cave mouth, four gold characters across — Great Sage Equal to Heaven. Not a king now. Equal to the Emperor of the sky himself. When word reached the upper world the Jade Emperor sent down the war-machine — Heavenly King Li and his fierce boy Nezha, the child-general with the three heads and six arms. They came down hard. They went back up beaten. The monkey met Nezha's six blades with a fistful of his own hairs turned into a hundred copies of himself, and tagged the prince from behind, and the army of heaven limped home having lost to a stable-boy. Two of the commander-demons said, since the king is so mighty, why be content to be a horse-groom? Let him take the title Great Sage Equal to Heaven. The Monkey King was delighted and had a banner made and set up, with the four great characters "Great Sage Equal to Heaven," and from then on would answer to no lesser name. The Jade Emperor sent Heavenly King Li and the Third Prince Nezha to lead troops and subdue him. Nezha transformed into three heads and six arms, but the Great Sage plucked a handful of hairs, called change, and turned them into thousands of his own shape; he wounded the prince, and the heavenly host withdrew in defeat.

“He could not be cut, burned, or thundered to death. So heaven called in someone who did not need to kill him — only to win a bet.”

So heaven tried bribery a second time. Fine — Great Sage Equal to Heaven, the Star advised; give him the title he wants. Just make it hollow. Rank with no rank, an office with no salary, a grand name attached to nothing. Wukong, who only ever wanted the dignity, took the bait happily and moved into a brand-new Mansion of the Great Sage, run up for him by the Emperor's own order. He had no duties at all, which was the problem, so to keep him from idle mischief they handed him the lightest possible chore — caretaker of the immortal Peach Garden. They could not have chosen worse. The Great White Planet said again, it would be best to greatly extend grace and mercy and send down an edict of pacification, simply making him a Great Sage Equal to Heaven — only an empty title, an office with rank but no salary, and the matter would be settled. The Jade Emperor agreed, and built for him on the right of the Pantao Garden a Mansion of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. Fearing he would be idle and make trouble, they put him in charge of tending the Peach Garden.

Of course he ate the peaches. These were no orchard fruit; these were the famous immortal peaches, three and a half thousand trees of them, the rare ones ripening once in nine thousand years and granting whoever swallows one a lifespan as long as the sun. Caretaker of the Peach Garden is a job you give a fox to mind the henhouse. He dismissed his attendants, stripped to his skin, and gorged through the best of the harvest tree by tree, the nine-thousand-year fruit first, until the branches he was meant to guard hung half bare. Whenever the ripe peaches were plentiful, the Great Sage would take off his cap and robe and climb the trees to eat his fill, choosing the large ripe ones. The garden held three thousand six hundred trees — the front ones bore small flowers and small fruit, ripening every three thousand years, and eating them made a man an immortal of the Way; the middle ones ripened every six thousand years; the rear ones every nine thousand years, and to eat them was to live as long as heaven and earth, the sun and the moon. So the Great Sage ate of the ripe peaches and enjoyed himself greatly.

Then the Queen Mother's fairy maids came with their baskets to pick for the great Peach Banquet, found the trees gutted, and discovered the caretaker himself snoozing transformed two inches tall on a branch. Wukong woke, froze them where they stood with a holding spell, and got the guest list out of them. Every dignitary in the cosmos was invited — Buddhas, immortals, the lot. He was not. The Great Sage Equal to Heaven, with the grand gate and the empty title, was beneath the notice of the actual feast. Something hot and familiar rose in his chest. The seven fairies in their colored robes came to the garden with baskets to gather peaches for the Queen Mother's Pantao Banquet, but most of the ripe fruit was gone. They found the Great Sage asleep, transformed small, on a branch, and woke him. He asked whom the banquet had invited, and they named the immortals of every quarter. He asked, is there an invitation for me? They said they had not heard of one. The Great Sage, hearing this, was furious, and recited a spell that fixed the seven fairies in their places, unable to move.

He did not storm the banquet. He conned his way in. Meeting the Barefoot Immortal on the road, he sent the old fellow to the wrong hall with a smooth lie, took the immortal's shape, and strolled into the feast — to find it laid out in full glory and not one guest arrived yet. Jars of the Jade Liquor, the immortals' wine, stood waiting. He put the kitchen staff to sleep with a charm, sat down alone at the banquet of heaven, and worked through the dishes and drained the jars until he was magnificently, helplessly drunk. On the way he met the Barefoot Immortal and tricked him into going elsewhere, then changed himself into the Barefoot Immortal's form and went straight to the Jasper Pool. The banquet was set out in splendor, but no guests had yet come. He saw the fragrant wine and could not restrain himself; he made a spell that put the wine-makers and serving-men to sleep, then ate the rare delicacies and drank the fine wine, jar after jar, until he was thoroughly drunk.

Drunk and suddenly aware of what he had done, he wove off looking for somewhere to hide and stumbled instead into the workshop of Laozi, the oldest god in the sky, the alchemist himself. The Old Lord was out. On his bench sat five gourds of golden elixir — the finished pills, the distilled essence of immortality that takes ages to refine, the single most potent thing in creation. Like roasted beans, the story says. He tipped out all five gourds and ate the lot like a fistful of roasted beans, and that sobered him fast, because now there was nothing left to do but run. Reeling, he lost his way and stumbled into the Tushita Palace of the Most High Lord Lao, but the Old Lord was not in. On the alchemy bench stood five gourds of the finished Golden Elixir of Nine Transmutations. The Great Sage said, this is the immortals' great treasure; I have long wished to refine a few — what luck to find them here. He poured out all the elixir from the gourds and ate it like roasted beans. When the elixir was gone he came to himself and grew sober, and thought, this is a great disaster; if the Jade Emperor learns of it I am finished. He made off down through the Southern Gate and away.

He fled home to Flower-Fruit Mountain and threw his monkeys a party with the stolen wine, telling the tale bigger with every cup. Up in heaven the bills came due all at once — the gutted garden, the wrecked banquet, the empty elixir gourds, the impersonated immortal — and every road led to one monkey. The Jade Emperor stopped negotiating. He sent down a hundred thousand heavenly soldiers, the Four Heavenly Kings, the Twenty-Eight Lodges of the zodiac, eighteen layers of sky-nets, an army to drown a mountain. Wukong met them in the field, multiplied himself by the hundreds again, and held. But by dusk most of his people were taken, and only the four faithful generals and a knot of monkeys held the cave. The Great Sage returned to Flower-Fruit Mountain and feasted with his monkeys on the stolen immortal wine. When the Queen Mother, the wine officers, and the Most High Lord Lao all reported their losses, the Jade Emperor in great wrath sent down the Four Heavenly Kings, Heavenly King Li and Prince Nezha, the Twenty-Eight Lodges, and a hundred thousand heavenly soldiers, who set eighteen nets of heaven and earth and surrounded Flower-Fruit Mountain. The Great Sage led his demons to battle, and with his hair-doubling spell fought them off; but by evening most of his monkey host had been captured, and only his four chief generals and a few monkeys held the Water-Curtain Cave.

It took a specialist. Guanyin, watching the rout, named the one fighter who could match him — Erlang Shen, the warrior-god with the third eye in his forehead who answers heaven's call but never quite to heaven's order. Erlang came down with his six sworn brothers and a slim quick hound, and what followed was the most famous duel in the book — not swords but shapes. Wukong turned sparrow, Erlang turned hawk; Wukong dove a fish, Erlang stooped a fish-hawk; snake and crane, and on and on, two gods chasing each other up and down the ladder of living things, each change answered before it finished. Guanyin came to the council, and said that to subdue this monkey they should summon her nephew, the True Lord Erlang, who guards the river at Guankou, for he obeys commands though he does not attend court. Erlang came with his six brothers of Meishan and his fine hound. He and the Great Sage fought, then began to transform — the Great Sage changed into a sparrow, and Erlang into a hawk to strike at it; the Sage changed into a cormorant, Erlang into a sea-crane to seize it; the Sage dropped into the water as a fish, Erlang became a fish-hawk — each shape met by its hunter, neither able to shake the other off.

The shape-game ended in a draw of nerve, so heaven cheated. As Erlang pressed him, Laozi leaned over the rail of the sky and dropped his Diamond-Cutter — a plain bright bangle of refined steel — straight onto Wukong's skull. Down he went. Before he could shake it off, Erlang's lean hound darted in and sank its teeth in his leg, and he sprawled, and the six brothers piled on and bound him and ran a hook through him so he could not change shape again. They marched the Great Sage Equal to Heaven up to the Jade Emperor in chains. As they fought, the Most High Lord Lao, watching from above, threw down his Diamond-Cutter, a thing forged of refined steel, which struck the Great Sage on the head so that he stumbled and fell. Erlang's hound rushed up and bit him on the leg, and he tripped and went down. The brothers fell upon him together, bound him with ropes, and ran a hook-blade through his collarbone so that he could no longer transform, and brought him before the throne.

They tried to kill him and could not. They lashed him to the execution post and brought down the sabre — it skidded off. The axe chipped. They called the fire-gods to burn him and the thunder-gods to blast him, and he stood in the flames and the lightning entirely unbothered, because the peaches and the wine and the whole hoard of elixir had quietly turned him to something harder than anything heaven could swing. Stumped, Laozi offered to take him off their hands. Let me put him in my furnace, he said, and cook the elixir back out of him; that will finish him. They handed the monkey over and shut him in. They bound him to the Demon-Slaying Pillar and the gods hacked at him with sabre and hewed at him with axe, stabbed with spear and slashed with sword, but could not wound his body. The fire-stars set him alight and the thunder-gods struck him, yet not a hair was singed. The Most High Lord Lao said, this monkey has eaten the immortal peaches, drunk the immortal wine, and swallowed the golden elixir; the elixir is refined in his body so that it is hard as diamond and cannot be harmed. It would be best to let me take him and place him in my Eight-Trigrams Furnace, and refine him with fire to draw out the elixir; he will then turn to ash.

The furnace was no help to heaven either. Forty-nine days Laozi cooked him in the Eight-Trigrams Furnace, fire on all eight sides — except one. Wukong, no fool, had wedged himself into the corner of the wind-trigram, where there was wind instead of flame; the wind drove the smoke into his eyes and reddened them raw, and that was the whole of his suffering. When the lid came off he was not ash. He was furious, and the smoke had seared his eyes into two fiery, gold-rimmed lamps. He kicked the furnace over, sending coals and Laozi flying, pulled the rod from his ear, and went to work on heaven. After forty-nine days the furnace was opened, but the Great Sage had hidden himself in the place of the Xun trigram, where there is wind and no fire, so the fire could not reach him; only the smoke drove into his eyes and inflamed them, leaving him with what were ever after called Fiery Eyes and Golden Pupils. When the lid was lifted he leaped out, kicked over the Eight-Trigrams Furnace, took his rod from his ear, and made such havoc in heaven that the gods could not stand against him.

Now nothing in heaven could hold him. He fought his way toward the throne room itself, and the Jade Emperor, with his cosmos coming apart around him, sent west for the only authority left. The Buddha came from the Western Paradise, calm as still water, and asked the raging monkey what all this was about. Wukong told him straight — he was the strongest being alive, he could not be killed, and the throne of heaven should rotate, and it was his turn. Let the old Emperor move out and hand the sky to me. The Buddha did not argue. He proposed a bet. The Great Sage fought his way to the Hall of Miraculous Mist itself, and the situation was desperate. The Jade Emperor sent envoys to the Western Region to invite the Buddha. The Buddha came and asked the Great Sage why he dared to make such trouble. The Great Sage said, I have great powers and know seventy-two transformations and a long life that does not end; why should the Jade Emperor sit on that throne forever? Let him yield it to me. The Buddha smiled and said, you are only a monkey turned spirit; how dare you covet the throne of heaven?

Simple terms, the Buddha said, and held out his right hand, palm up, no bigger than a lotus leaf. If you can somersault clear of my palm, the throne is yours and I will make heaven move aside. If you cannot, you go back down and serve your sentence. Wukong nearly laughed. One leap of his carried a hundred and eight thousand miles; this was a hand. He hopped on, gathered himself, and shot off so fast the sky blurred — out and out until he came to five tall pink pillars holding up a green haze at the edge of the world. The end of the sky. He had won going away. The Buddha said, I will make a wager with you. If you have the power to somersault clear out of my right palm, you shall win, and I will have the Jade Emperor come to live in the west and yield heaven to you; but if you cannot get out of my palm, you must go down to the lower world and cultivate yourself for some ages more. The Great Sage thought to himself, this is folly; my somersault carries me a hundred and eight thousand li — how could I fail to clear his palm, which is less than a foot across? He sprang up, somersaulted away, and came at last to five flesh-pink pillars holding up a green vapor, and thought, this is the end of the sky.

To prove he had been there, he did what a monkey does. He plucked a hair, turned it into a brush, and wrote up the central pillar in big strokes — THE GREAT SAGE EQUAL TO HEAVEN WAS HERE. Then, for good measure, he pissed at the foot of the first pillar, somersaulted all the way home to the Buddha's palm, and demanded his throne. Take me to the Emperor, he said; I reached the end of the sky, go and look. The Buddha told him to look down instead. There on the Buddha's middle finger was a line of writing — the Great Sage was here — and a sour smell of monkey at the base of the thumb. The five pillars at the edge of the world had been five fingers. He had never left the hand. The Great Sage said, I had best leave some token, so I can argue my case with the Buddha. He plucked a hair, breathed on it, called change, and turned it into a writing-brush dipped in ink, and on the middle pillar wrote in large characters, "The Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here." Then he made water at the foot of the first pillar, somersaulted back, and stood in the Buddha's palm, saying, go now and tell the Jade Emperor to give me the heavenly palace. The Buddha scolded him, you stinking ape — you never left the palm of my hand. Look. There on the Buddha's middle finger were the words "The Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here," and from the fork of the thumb came a stink of monkey water.

He bolted — and the Buddha simply turned his hand over and pushed it out the western gate of heaven, and the five fingers came down as a mountain. Not a metaphor. A mountain, the Mountain of the Five Phases, the whole weight of the elements set on the monkey who could not be cut or burned or thundered down. The Buddha sealed it with a slip of gold paper, six syllables in his own script — om mani padme hum — pressed to the summit, and the mountain would not lift while the words held. Hungry, they would feed him iron pellets; thirsty, molten copper. And there the Great Sage Equal to Heaven was left, pinned under the sky he had tried to take, to wait out the centuries until the day of his sentence was served and one came west to deliver him. About five hundred years. The Buddha turned his hand and pushed the Great Sage out through the Western Gate of Heaven, and changed his five fingers into a mountain of the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, called the Five Phases Mountain, which pressed lightly down and held him fast. The Buddha drew out a seal-slip with six gold characters, om mani padme hum, and bade a guardian paste it on the summit of the mountain. He charged the local spirits to watch him — when he is hungry, give him iron pellets to eat; when he is thirsty, give him molten copper to drink. When the days of his calamity are fulfilled, one will come to deliver him. So the monkey lay crushed beneath the mountain, and there he would remain.

大鬧 The original Chinese · honored as an artifact

富貴功名，前緣分定，為人切莫欺心。正大光明，忠良善果彌深。些些狂妄天加譴，眼前不遇待時臨。

Opening lines, classical Chinese · Journey to the West 西遊記 · Wu Cheng'en (attrib.)