Revolutionaries are Sun Wukong Monkey Kings

Enter the monkey.

Valentine by JMH, Watercolor

 Gung hay fat choy! I am wishing you great happiness and prosperity. Last year was the Ram year which was kind of like being bumped into over and over again by a goat. I felt it with SB277, I felt it with those strange shootings. Could this year be more playful please, can we do more swinging from trees and eating fruit? Because I am ready for a fun and prosperous barrel full of monkeys kind of year.  But it's a Red Fire Monkey yea , so I guess it's burning stuff down, swinging from trees and eating fruit, . Perhaps there will be revolutionaries smashing things with magic sticks? Monkeys are us, right.

Monkey by EP, pencil on paper

Sun Wukong was the Monkey King made famous in Journey to the West. Written in the 16th century by Wu Cheng, it is considered one of the four great novels of Classic Chinese literature. The text describes a journey to reach Vulture Peak and obtain the true scriptures from Buddha. The travelers are a Monk, a Monkey, a Pig and a character called Sanzang, which means the Heart, sometimes a whole pile of hearts. The heart keeps getting captured by demons and desire. The Pig is the instinctive core of a human, pleasure seeking pain avoiding sensual beast, it goes with you everywhere, hungry for food, sex, and distractions and can be quite a drag on the way to vulture peak. The Monkey is also known as Monkey mind or Mind ape. Like other esoteric texts, there is a surface meaning and a deeper meaning to Journey to the West. It reads like an 1950's comic book adventure but is also about attaining enlightenment. Mao liked the comic book aspects of the Monkey King story. The Red Guard aspired to be like the Monkey King, and liked to smash things. The worse the mess the better. They aspired to be like a destructive monkey kings:

"Revolutionaries are Monkey Kings, their golden rods are powerful, their supernatural powers far-reaching and their magic omnipotent, for they possess Mao Tsetung’s great invincible thought. We wield our golden rods, display our supernatural powers and use our magic to turn the old world upside down, smash it to pieces, pulverize it, create chaos and make a tremendous mess, the bigger mess the better!"

Red Guard Manifesto
Tsinghua University
Peking, June 24, 1966
Do revolutions based on smashing things actually work? Using the People's Revolution and the French Revolution as examples, aren't these kind of revolutions merely ways of putting other cliques in power, smashing the old order, and beheading enemies? Perhaps a new revolutionary spirit is called for based not on the comic book Monkey King, but for a new kind of monkey?

"To the ape's immortal body is matched a human mind: That the mind is an ape is deeply meaningful." (Journey to the West) 

Chairman Mao wrote this poem about the Monkey King. 

            "A thunderstorm burst over the earth,
So a devil rose from a heap of white bones.
The deluded monk was not beyond the light,
But the malignant demon must wreak havoc.

The Golden Monkey wrathfully swung his massive cudgel
And the jade-like firmament was cleared of dust.
Today, a miasmal mist once more rising,
We hail Sun Wukong, the wonder-worker."

An alternate translation of the poem appeared in the New York Times in 1964, in an article by Ian Stuart called Lines by China's Poet Laureate:

"Ever since a thunderstorm developed on the great earth,

There has been born from the heap of white bones a ghost.

The ignorant Monk may be enlightened,

But the ghost of a devil must cause disaster.

The Gold Monkey wields his mighty club;

The world is cleaned of dust over 10,000 li.

Today the Monkey King is being hailed Only because the evil clouds reappear."

I like comparing the two translations because it  gives me a little idea about how the Chinese language operates

This version sounds less about Journey to the West, and more like oblique talk about the world political scene. This is what a Chinese Critic said Mao's poem written in 1961 meant:

 "In the story the White Bone Ghost tricks and cap­tures the Monk by turning himself into a young girl and then an old woman. The Monk is rescued by the Monkey King."

The critic's interpretation: “In this story the White Bone Ghost trans­formed itself into human beings to trap people. Is it not U.S. imperialism of today in its painted skin of peace? Do not those who have highly praised the wisdom and policy for peace of the U.S. President resemble the Monk in the story ? What force does the Monkey represent? Is it not too apparent?”

With this lead, the critic's readers should have had no difficulty in castng the U.S. as the White Bone Ghost, the Soviet Union as the Monk and Com­munist China as the Monkey King:

The critic said Kuo Mo‐jo, a leading literary figure in Communist China, had written a poem aimed at “criticiz­ing the modern Monk and exposing the modern Monk.” Chairman Mao's poem, the critic added, aims principally at “exposing” and “pointing the spear­head” at the modern White Bone Ghost, the “modern monster.”

Mr. Kuo's poem said “the Monk should be chopped into 1,000 pieces,” according to the critic, but Mao said it “may be enlightened.” On the other hand, there is “no question of enlight­enment by education” for the U.S." I guess we'll see about that. For some reason the American People loom large as heroes in my mind, though it seems as though we've been taught for years to hate ourselves.

A British critic once luke warmly praised Mao's poetry by saying they were "not as bad as Hitler's paintings." Hitler's paintings as I have seen, show very good technique, but are almost like architectural drawings, as they depict a world of orderly houses sans people. Mao on the other hand used to write poetry, while his Red Guard slaughtered millions of people who represented the Four Olds, old customs, thoughts which were essentially Chinese culturally ideas and ways that developed over hundreds of years of Chinese History. The Four Olds, were never clearly defined, making it easier to fight against them. They were first mentioned in an Editorial in the People's Daily Newspaper called "Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons" , which is what the Monkey King would do. Perhaps he had a different idea of what constitutes a demon, leaders often do.  

Monkeys are us right

The word:

monkey (n.)

is from the 1520s, likely from an unrecorded Middle Low German *moneke or Middle Dutch *monnekijn, a colloquial word for "monkey," originally a diminutive of some Romanic word, compare French monne (16c.); Middle Italian monnicchio, from Old Italian monna; Spanish mona "ape, monkey."

"Arabic maimun "monkey," literally "auspicious," a euphemistic usage because the sight of apes was held by the Arabs to be unlucky [Klein]
"1890s British slang, to have a monkey up the chimney meant "to have a mortgage on one's house." The Online Entomology Dictionary

"In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey" Beck

Ideas flow from the East to the Indian Peninsula. In India you have Hanuman, The Monkey Demon God who looks and acts a lot like the Monkey King. When I was little I remember reading Hanuman comic books at the Self Realization Fellowship Lake on Sunset. They had a little shop that sold Indian stuff. When I am six years old reading I sit reading Hanuman Comics backstage by a giant cardboard box of dying flowers, while Mom interviews a Swami. I learned from the comics, what I know about Hanuman, he's a lot like us, animal, Human, God spark, demon, a complicated cat, always fighting evil.

He thought the sun was a ripe mango and went to get it, and ended up always being on fire. He healed Rama by bringing back a medicinal herb covered mountain. Was Ramas best pal and loyal servant. Loyal  Hanuman, the son of the wind,  the Monkey King. The Journey to the West describes the journey of a real Monk, Huanzang who traveled to India looking for the original scriptures of Buddha's teachings.

I was standing out front in the garden I just planted, and it was that time of day, when the houses are casting shadows. My front yard garden is my own Fruit and Flower mountain,(where the monkey king hailed from BTW). At the far end of the street a kettle of about twenty five vultures started to slowly tip down the street towards us. The sun was tipping their chocolate colored wings with an orange glow as the slowly circled between us and the half moon. It is such a blessing that they fly over the house every day. Looking up and watching them circle over you, is like being in the best kind of tornado there is. In Journey to the West the four travelers are climbing to the top of Vulture Peak. In many cultures the vulture is considered a symbol of a higher level of consciousness. The head of a vulture along with a cobra are affixed to the third eye of Tutankhamon, and women in Ancient Egypt wore elaborate jeweled vulture shaped headdress. Why,  because they soar, and seem to be able to carry our thoughts up to heaven. There are many rivers to cross, treacherous mountain passes and even demons on the path to Vulture Peak. In Journey to the West,  the monkey is there to protect the heart on the difficult journey, and he is given the name Sun Wukong, which means Monkey Awakened to Emptiness.Which Monkey King would you dear reader like to emulate, would your Sun Wukong rather smash things or become enlightened?

The Monkey King on Fruit and Flower Mountain JMH