The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 2 (104 page)

7
. Bitter sea of the Southern Ocean:
. There is no intrinsic reason why the Southern Ocean, however defined geographically, also should be named the bitter sea. The narrator in the novel, however, seems eager to represent most instances of river or ocean crossing as also an allegorical enactment of the Buddhist teaching on the traversal of
sa
ṁ
sāra
, the endless rounds of existence, to reach “the other shore,
bi’an
or
nirvā
ṇ
a
.” See, for example, the end of chapter 22 in JW 1, chapters 49–50 in JW 2, and chapter 98 in JW 4.

8
. Dharmakāya of Chan:
dingshen Chan
or the Dharmakāya of meditation, one of the five attributes of the “spiritual body (
pañca-dharmakāya
) of Tathāgata, the Buddha. The form of the meditation indicates his quiescent or tranquil nature and his transcendence of all false ideas. As in previous poetic eulogies, the poem here celebrates Guanyin’s spiritual attainment as compared with that of the Buddha himself.

9
. See JW 1, chapter 17.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

1
. Fifty three bows: an allusion to the story of how Child Sudhana, after having heard the discourse of Mañjuśrī, obeys his instruction to gain enlightenment by visiting fifty-three wise ones. See the Taipei’s modern edition of the
Huayan jing ru fajie pin
, 1: 117 ff.

2
. See JW 1, chapter 19.

3
. Six Robbers: see JW 1, chapter 14.

4
. The work of Double Three or Three times Three: see JW 1, chapter 15, n. 16.

5
. For a sketch of this weapon, see Zhou, plate 63.

6
. The narrative is alluding to events in JW 1, chapter 10.

7
. Three-cornered club: it is actually called the
jian
, classified by Zhou, plate 63, also as a whip or a crop. Since a whip usually implies something pliant, and this weapon is clearly something hard and firm, I have translated it as a club (actually, a swordlike cudgel with a handle in Zhou’s illustration). The illustration in the 1592 edition confirms the accuracy of Zhou’s sketch. See 1592, 500: 1096.

8
.
Zhang
: a large, yellow fish described as having horns and able to fly.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

1
. Their goal: literally, purple path, the one so named in the imperial capital. The metaphor makes clear that the success of the pilgrimage has both religious and political significance.

2
. Triple yang: a metaphor for the first month of the lunar calendar, it is so named because of its correlation with the
qian
(2) trigram of three unbroken lines found in the
Classic of Change
. As every unbroken line symbolizes the
yang,
the entire symbol is thus named triple
yang
.

3
. Cloud-headed boots: a reference to the patterned embroidery on their boots, the tops of which are made of silk.

4
. Three Pure Ones: see JW 1, chapter 5, n. 1.

5
. This is another lyric written to the tune of “Moon Over West River.”

6
. Raise dust:
yangchen
, a reference to the ability of immortals of (literally) “kicking up dust” in the midst of a body of water—that is, transforming water into land. The phrase alludes to a story in the
Shenxian zhuan
when the goddess Magu
told another immortal, Wang Yuan
(styled Fangping
), that she had witnessed the Eastern Sea
transformed into “mulberry fields” three times. “
‘When I was journeying to Penglai recently,’ she said, ‘I noticed that the water had receded by more than half. Could it be that the ocean is turning into land again?’ With laughter, Wang replied, ‘After all, the Sages had declared that dust would fly up (
yangchen
) in the ocean.’
” See
Liexian quanzhuan
(fasc. ed. Taipei, 1974),
j
3, 25b; Campany, pp. 259–68.
This
tale provides the basic source for the idiom,
canghai bian sangtian
(the blue sea has changed into mulberry fields, and vice versa), which may have been first used as a metaphor for the natural change caused by time (Needham in SCC, 3 [1970]: 599–600). In the context of the novel’s poem, however, the phrase refers to the Daoists’ magic powers of transformation, whether literal or symbolic, through ritual dancing.