The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 2 (82 page)

    
The golden-hooped rod upraised

    
Is brilliant as the golden snakes of lightning.

    
The long-shaft ed lance going out

    
Is radiant like a dragon leaving the ink-dark sea.

    
The little imps beat the drums before the door

    
As they spread in formation to help the fight.

    
Over here our Great Sage uses his might

    
To reveal, back and forth, his abilities.

    
On that side there is a lance,

    
Alert and spirited;

    
On our side there is a rod—

    
Such lofty art of combat!

    
Truly a hero has met a hero true;

    
A foe has found another worthy foe.

    
That demon king belches purple breath like lightning coils;

    
This Great Sage’s eyes flash forth rays like brocade clouds.

    
Because
a Great Tang Monk faces an ordeal,

    
They, without forbearance, strive bitterly.

Closing again and again for more than thirty times, they could not reach a decision. When that demon king saw how perfect Wukong’s style was in using his rod, how there was not even the slightest false move, he was so pleased that he shouted bravos repeatedly, saying, “Marvelous ape! Marvelous ape! Truly abilities like these are worthy to cause havoc in Heaven!” That Great Sage, too, was also pleased by the methodical way in which the demon king wielded his lance: as he parried left and right, every blow and every thrust were in perfect form. “Marvelous spirit! Marvelous spirit!” cried the Great Sage also. “Truly a demon capable of stealing elixir!” The two of them therefore fought for twenty more rounds.

Using the tip of his lance to point at the ground, the demon king shouted for the little imps to attack together. All those brazen fiends, wielding swords, scimitars, staffs, and spears, rushed forward at once and surrounded the Great Sage Sun completely. Entirely undaunted, Pilgrim only cried, “Welcome! Welcome! That’s exactly what I want!” He used his golden-hooped rod to cover his front and back, to parry blows east and west, but that gang of fiends refused to be beaten back. Growing more agitated, Pilgrim tossed his rod up into the air, shouting, “Change!” It changed immediately into iron rods by the hundreds and thousands; like flying snakes and soaring serpents, they descended onto the fiends from the air. When those monster-spirits saw this, everyone was frightened out of his wits. Covering their heads and necks, they fled toward their cave for their lives. The old demon king, however, stood still and, laughing with scorn, said, “Monkey, don’t be impertinent! Watch my trick!” He at once took out from his sleeve a white, shiny fillet and tossed it up in the air, crying, “Hit!” With a swish, all the iron rods changed back into a single rod, which was then sucked up by the fillet. The Great Sage Sun, completely empty-handed, had to use his somersault desperately in order to escape with his life. Thus

    
The demon, in victory, returned to his cave,

    
But Pilgrim, in a daze, knew not what to do.

Truly it is that

    
The Dao is one foot but demons are ten feet tall.

    
Nature reels, feelings faint—the wrong home you find.

    
Dharma-self, alas, has no proper seat:

    
His act that time stems from a faulty mind!

We do not know what is the end of all this; let’s listen to the explanation in the next chapter.

Notes

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

1
. The first two lines of this poem are built on ideographic elements of the two Chinese graphs,
ren
and
nai
, which mean patience. In addition, the graph
ren
is made of two words:
ren
, meaning a knife or sword, and
xin
, meaning the heart or mind. The second graph,
nai
, is also made of two words:
er
, meaning and/or nevertheless, and
cun
, meaning an inch. The second line of the poem thus reads, literally, “in your conduct remember the ‘nevertheless’ beside the ‘inch.’
” Since this is nonsense in English, I have translated the line with analogies.

2
. “The noblest”: literally, the “highest type of scholar (
shangshi
),” an allusion to the
Daodejing
41.

3
. “The sage loves virtue”: an allusion to
Analects
4. 11, where the line actually reads, “the princely man or gentleman thinks constantly of virtue
.”

4
. This episode relates Sun Wukong’s extended tour of the three famous paradisiacal islands of Chinese mythology that are thought to be found in the Eastern Ocean or Eastern Sea
. See entry on “Penglai” in ET 2: 788–90.