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Monday, October 3, 2016

Week 7 Reading Continued: The Monkey King

This week I am reading The Monkey King from The Chinese Fairy Book by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens. This post will cover Part B.
The Monkey King, from Wikipedia

  • The existence of multiple gods in heaven reminds me of the ancient Greek Gods in Olympus. 
  • The Monkey King is making progress on the road to immortality, but I think the ultimate point might be that it has a moral cost. He's stealing things from people, which is bad. But, some of these people may be morally objectionable themselves. 
  • I think it's interesting that he meets the founder of Taoism, kind of like how Jesus is mentioned in the Koran. 
  • I find it interesting, but not surprising, that the Gods don't want any more immortal figures running around and are doing whatever they can to stop the Monkey King. 
  • I wonder what Buddhas motivation will be to stop the Monkey King, Buddha has always struck me as a peaceful figure. 
Thanks for reading with me. 

1 comment:

  1. Hey Andrew, I was just stopping by to say hi. I was going to comment on this and say that I was between choosing this reading and Laos folk-tales for this weeks readings. From your notes this looks like it was a pretty interesting choice as well. I look forward to seeing what comes from it when you write up a story telling. Thanks for sharing and I look forward to more of your posts.

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