The Monkey King

By Manuwant Choudhary

It's a strange co-incidence that 2016 was the Year Of The Monkey !

I've been currently reading The Art Of War by Sun Tzu and in it I came across this interesting Chinese fable of `The Monkey King & The Buddha.' (Translated by Thomas Cleary)

The tale is about this `Magical' Monkey King who founds a monkey civilization and becomes its leader.

He defeats a `devil' and takes his sword.

When he returns he begins training other monkeys using toy swords the practice of swordsmanship.

Just then the Monkey King wonders how his country may be attacked if the neighbouring country sees this and when attacked his monkeys will only have toy swords to fight.

Unfortunately, though ruler of a nation, the martial monkey king is not a ruler of himself.

So the king thoughtfully initiates the arms race, ordering pre-preemptive stockpiling of real weapons.

This is a 13th C description of 21 C politics.

The monkey king in the story exercised power without wisdom, disrupting the natural order and generally raising hell until he ran into the limits of matter, where he was finally trapped.

The Taoist immortals tried to capture and cure this monkey king by cooking him in the cauldron of eight trigrams but he jumped out still unrefined.

The story is that the Monkey could travel anywhere and literally everywhere...and so he went all over...even to heaven where stands the seven pillars and he was about to return when the Buddha holds his finger and he turns to see Buddha's hands and on the middle finger was written, "The Monkey King Was Here."

The Monkey King is imprisoned in the mountain of the five elements by Buddha.

After 500 years Guanyin the Buddhis saint who is the personification of universal compassion shows up at the prison of the now repentant monkey and recites this telling verse.

"Too bad the magic monkey didn't serve the public
As he madly flaunted heroics in days of yore.
With a cheating heart he made havoc
In the gathering of immortals;
With grandiose gall he went for his ego
To the heaven of happiness.
Among a hundred thousand troops,
None could oppose him;
In the highest heavens above
He had a threatening presence,
But since he was stymied on meeting our Buddha.
When will he ever reach out and show his achievements again?"


The monkey pleads with the saint for his release.

The Saint agrees to release him but only if he devotes himself to the pursuit of higher enlightenment not just for himself but for society at large.

But just before releasing the monkey as a precaution the Saint places a ring around the monkeys head, a ring that will tighten every time the monkey misbehaves or brags about his achievements.

A great king or warrior is one who never forgets the ring on his head !