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The Monkey King, Sun Wukong (孫悟空, pinyin: sun1 wu4kong1, WG: Sun Wu-k'ung, also surn vukorn), is perhaps the most famous and beloved fictional character in all of classical Chinese literature. He is the mischievous protagonist of Journey to the West, based on popular tales dating back to the Tang dynasty. The novel narrates his adventures from birth, in particular how he accompanied the monk Xuanzang to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India.

1 Names and titles

2 Supernatural powers

Legends tells that Wukong was born out of a rock and through his many adventures he was able to master an array of amazing abilities and powers.

Through a series of audacious stunts he acquires the powers of immortality, shape-changing ability, cloud travel skills, and ownership of a handy "as-you-will resizeable cudgel" which can be nestled inside the ear for easy carrying or resized to tree-trunk size for pounding the sense out of dragons and demons. Above all he has monkey chutzpah.

Sun Wukong learned many of his magical tricks while serving as a disciple under the Patriarch Subodhi; it was the Patriarch who gave him the name "Wukong" ("aware of emptiness"). The Patriarch, who by the time they parted ways was certain the monkey would come to a bad end, made him promise never to tell anyone who his teacher was.

3 Making trouble in Heaven

He was invited to the Heavenly Kingdom by the Jade Emperor in the hopes that a promotion and title would make him a little more manageable. He proved to be an incorrigible monkey, however, and soon he was scarfing down the Empress's Peaches of Immortality and popping Lord Lao Tzu's Pills of Indestructability like they were Tic Tacs. Feeling guilty, but not that guilty, he became the biggest headache for everybody in heaven. Finally, the heavenly authorities had no choice but to attempt to subdue him.

He fought and defeated the Army of Heaven of 100,000 strong, Four Heavenly Kings, Erlang Shen and NezhaNezha is a Chinese deity, the enfant terrible of Chinese mythology. Nezha is often depicted as riding on a pair of wind-fire wheels (much like the modern-day roller-skates). His weapons of choice are the spear and a pair of magic hoops, and he is able to successively. Eventually, by the great effort and teamwork by the heavenly forces, including many famous deities, he was finally captured. After several more mundane execution attempts failed, Wukong was stuffed into Lord Lao Tzu's eight-way trigem cauldron to be distilled into an elixir. The cauldron's sacred flames were hot enough to consume anything (including immortals). After a good long cook and then some, the cauldron exploded and out jumped the Monkey King — stronger and refined (for he was born of a rock). Not only was he not harmed in any way, he now had the ability to 'see' evil through what is called Huo Yan JingJing (Firey eyes flickering) no matter which form they appeared as.

All other options exhausted, they finally appealed to the BuddhaBuddha ( Sanskrit, Pali, others: literally Awakened One Enlightened One from the Sanskrit: "√budh", to awaken can refer to the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama or to anyone who has attained the same depth and quality of enlightenment. Buddhism himself, who arrived in an instant from his temple in the West. The Buddha bet with Sun Wukong that he could not fly out of his palm. Wukong, knowing that in one flip he can cover eighteen thousand miles, was over-confident of his own ability and agreed. He took a great leap and landed in a desolate section of heaven. There were nothing but five 'pillars' visible. Wukong surmised that he had reached the ends of heaven. He made a marking on the centre pillar as proof that he was there (not unlike a modern day vandal). Then he leapt back and landed in Buddha's palm. Smiling, Buddha asked him to turn around. He looked back and saw that the marking he made earlier was on Buddha's middle finger. Wukong had lost the bet. Immediately, he tried to escape, but Buddha turned over his palm and imprisoned Monkey under a mountain. There he remained imprisoned for five centuries until he offered to serve Sanzang, the Tang Priest , who was destined to make the journey to the West to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures for ChinaThis article is on the geographic and cultural entity. For other meanings, see China (disambiguation). China ( Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , Hanyu Pinyin: Zhongguo, Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo) is a country in continental East Asia with some oute. The bodhisattvaMaitreya, 2nd century, Gandhara. In Buddhist thought, a bodhisattva is a being that, while not yet fully enlightened, is actively striving toward that goal. Conventionally, the term is applied to hypothetical beings with a high degree of enlightenment and Guanyin helped Sanzang by giving him a magical headband which Sanzang tricked Monkey into wearing. With a special chant Sanzang is able to tighten the band until Monkey cannot bear the pain. In that way he is brought to his true calling as a disciple of Buddha.



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