“The Monkey and the Monk”: An Allegory of Buddhist Teachings Kagoni Meja 12th Grade

The Monkey is an abridged translation of Journey to the West, a Chinese sixteenth-century novel by Wu Chengen, a poet and novelist who lived during the Ming dynasty. This novel is amongst the Four Great Classical Novels of the Chinese literature. The vernacular novel developed during the Ming dynasty for the masses with primary education and writers consequently developed novels into mature form during this era. The dominant beliefs of the Ming dynasty merged the different types of Chinese folk religion and the three philosophical teachings, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Delving into the chapters of the novel, The Monkey is an allegory of Buddhist education that subtly emphasizes enlightenment of the Chinese society, purifying an individual’s heart, and cultivating the general good of everyone, which are all tenets of the Buddhist community. Throughout the story, the differences between the conflicting dominant beliefs are subtly depicted, for instance when Monkey says, “There are some sorts of Taoists that are family men; but who ever heard of a Buddhist priest calmly talking about his 'wife'?”

At the outset, Buddha seeks a pilgrim to travel to India with the hope of retrieving sacred scriptures that would help the...