1. Wu Cheng’en:The Journey to the West (Volume D)

2. Wu Cheng’en (ca.1500–1582)
The novel was first published in 1592 but is the cumulative retelling of a story that circulated orally and was adapted through the centuries. Wu Cheng’en had a reputation for being a versatile poet and for writing on mythical and supernatural subjects in a satirical style. He was a native of a region in southeast China, whose dialect appears in the novel. Wu served as a minor official during the Ming Dynasty.
The image shows a scene from The Journey to the West, in the Long Corridor.

3. Ming Dynasty
With the Ming Dynasty, the civil service examinations regained importance as a venue for a political career and thus created a national culture of shared elite education, leading to a renewal of classical literature. An emergent urban bourgeoisie, increasingly literate and influential, provided an eager market for literature in the vernacular, the stories of which were rooted in oral performances that had already existed during the previous dynasties but now gained more complexity.
The image shows the Jade Emperor. Ming Dynasty, 16th century.

4. Journey Literature
The journey narrative is one of the most popular and frequently used narratives in all of literature, extending back to some of the earliest known literature such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey. The Journey to the West, like other popular journey narratives, is both a great adventure story and a story of the spiritual growth of its protagonists, as they attain enlightenment through their journeys and struggles and become immortals by the end of the story. The physical journey allegorically represents the spiritual journey of the protagonists. The physical journey of the story takes the characters from Chang’an, the Tang capital, to their destination of Vulture Peak in India. The characters travel along the path of the Silk Road from China to India, but once they leave China, the geography becomes almost entirely fantastical and fictional.
The image is a woodblock of The Journey to the West. The caption reads: “Pigsy succumbs to earthly temptations by accepting food, while Zuangzang, unmoved, and Monkey, look on.” Chinese woodblock, 18th century. The British Library.

5. Xuanzang, Tripitaka
The story had a historical basis in the journey of the monk Xuanzang, or Tripitaka (596–664), who traveled from China to India in search of Buddhist scriptures during the reign of Emperor Taizong, one of the most splendid emperors of the Tang Dynasty. At the time, travel to the Western territories was forbidden and Tripitaka could have faced arrest and execution. He returned seventeen years later under imperial patronage and spent the last twenty years of his life in the Tang capital of Chang’an, translating sutras and Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Chinese and writing a record of his experience during his travels.
The image is a depiction of Xuanzang on his journey to India (ca. 14th century). Tokyo National Museum.

6. Sun Wukong
The most important addition to Xuanzang’s journey is his acquisition of a wondrous discipline named Sun Wukong, “Monkey Aware of Vacuity.” Monkey understands the world with a comic detachment that is in some ways akin to Buddhist detachment, and this makes him always more resourceful and wiser than Tripitaka. Yet in his fierce energy and sheer joy in the use of his mind, Monkey falls short of the Buddhist ideal of true tranquility, while remaining a hero for unenlightened mortals.
Statuette of the Monkey king, Beijing. The right image depicts Sun Wukong and Xuanzang (1864).

7. Chinese Buddhism Daoism Chinese myth, folk tradition Buddha, pantheon
pilgrimage to India
The religious background of The Journey to the West represents Chinese Buddhism, which blends Buddhism with Daoism and Chinese mythology and folk tradition. As an example of this blending, in The Journey to the West, Buddha and his order of bodhisattvas and other spiritual beings coexist with the Taoist pantheon of gods. The Journey to the West demonstrates the mixed heritage of Chinese Buddhism because Xuanzang and his cohorts must travel to India, the birthplace of Buddhism, to recover the sacred texts and return them to China, where people have veered away from belief into hedonism and sin. In addition, all of Xuanzang’s disciples must make the journey to atone for their own sins of hubris, greed, and carelessness. Throughout their journey, the pilgrims encounter various fantastical creatures from Chinese mythology, but in this telling they are tools of the Buddha, used to test the pilgrims.
The image shows a scene from chapter 21 of Journey to the West. Sun Wukon fights the demon of the yellow wind (1864).

8. Buddhism in the Text
“Devoted and intelligent as a youth, [Xuanzang, a Master of the Law] realized at an early age the three forms of immateriality. When grown he comprehended the principles of the spiritual, including first the practice of four forms of patience” (p. 490).
The excerpt represents a long treatise presented on pp. 489–91 of the text, in which the concepts of yin-yang and practices leading to enlightenment (including four forms of patience: endurance under shame, hatred, physical hardship, and being in pursuit of faith) are outlined.

9. Detachment
“Delivered from their mortal flesh and bone, a primal spirit of mutual love has grown. Their work done, they become Buddhas this day, Free of their former six-six senses sway” (p. 476).
Tripitaka represents the Buddhist ideal of detachment, as he is able to remain detached and emotionless at the story’s end, and that is why he is rewarded with Buddhahood. Tripitaka remains emotionless and shows no fondness or attachment to his disciples at the end, despite their attachment to him. He fully embodies the Buddhist ideal of separating one’s self from all earthly attachments and demonstrates how hard it is to attain this ideal.
The image is a statue titled Seated Guanyin Bodhisattva, by an anonymous artist (late 14th–15th century). Housed in the Walters Art Museum. The caption reads: “This late Ming Dynasty dry-lacquer sculpture is an image of the bodhisattva Guanyin, an enlightened being venerated in Chinese Buddhism as an embodiment of compassion.” Called Guanyin sitting in Royal Ease, this theme and its iconography derive from textual inspiration found in the Avatamsaka Sutra and indigenous Chinese traditions.

10. This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for The Norton Anthology
of World Literature