Rulai

Rulai sits in the Great Hall of the Thunder Sound Temple on Vulture Peak, with the buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats, guardians, monks and nuns ranged on either side to hear him preach and take his orders.

When Sun Wukong had made havoc in heaven and fought his way to the doors of the Numinous Empyrean Hall, the Jade Emperor sent for Rulai to put him down. Rulai came from the west to the Hall of Universal Brightness, asked first what had happened, and learned that Wukong was a stone monkey of Mount Huaguo who had mastered the seventy-two transformations and the somersault cloud and now claimed the Jade Emperor’s seat.

Rulai heard him out with a slight smile and made a wager: if Wukong could somersault out of his right palm, Rulai would ask the Jade Emperor to move west and leave heaven to him; if he could not, he would go back below as a demon and cultivate for several more ages.

Trusting a somersault that carried him a hundred and eight thousand li at a leap, Wukong took the wager without thinking, sprang onto Rulai’s palm, gathered his strength and shot away in a single somersault, out of sight in a blink.

Wukong flew to what he took for the end of the world, found five red pillars standing there, wrote his name on one, left a mark at the foot of it, and somersaulted back to claim his winnings.

Rulai opened his right palm, and Wukong saw the writing and the mark he had left between the fingers. The five pillars had been five fingers, and he had never once left the palm.

In alarm Wukong tried to slip out between the fingers and jump again, and Rulai turned his hand over and pushed him out beyond the western gate of heaven; the five fingers became five joined mountains of metal, wood, water, fire and earth, called Five Elements Mountain, and Wukong was pinned lightly beneath them.

Pinned there, Wukong could not move his limbs but could still speak. Rulai ordered the local earth god and mountain spirit, together with the guardians of the five quarters, to watch him day and night, to feed him iron pellets when he was hungry and molten copper when he was thirsty, and to wait until his term of punishment was up and someone came to release him.

Having settled the matter, Rulai returned to Vulture Peak, and for five hundred years had nothing further to do with Wukong — until Guanyin, sent to find a pilgrim, passed by Five Elements Mountain and Wukong’s imprisonment met the plan for the scriptures.

Five hundred years later Rulai gathered the buddhas at the Thunder Sound Temple, spoke of the constant strife in the southern continent, and decided that a pilgrim from the eastern land should come to Vulture Peak in person to ask for the Tripitaka.

He therefore sent the bodhisattva Guanyin to the eastern land to look along the way for a pilgrim of virtue to be the principal in the quest, gave her the brocade cassock and the nine-ringed staff, and prepared three bands — golden, tightening and restraining — for taking disciples and subduing monsters on the road.

Guanyin took the charge and set out. As Rulai had instructed, she awakened Sha Seng at the Flowing Sand River, Zhu Bajie at Gao Village and the white dragon horse at Coiled Snake Mountain, and then saw Sun Wukong pinned beneath Five Elements Mountain and promised him that he might follow Tang Sanzang west to redeem himself; last of all she chose Chen Xuanzang, the reborn Golden Cicada, at Chang’an as the principal.

Tang Sanzang received the imperial charge and set out west. At Five Elements Mountain he peeled away the seal Rulai had set, and Wukong came free and took him as master; Bajie, Sha Seng and the white dragon horse joined in turn, and the four went west towards Vulture Peak subduing monsters as they went.

On the road Rulai mostly listened at Vulture Peak to the reports of Guanyin and the guardians. When the true and false Monkey Kings came fighting into the Thunder Sound Temple, Rulai named the Six-Eared Macaque’s origin before them all and covered his transformations with the golden almsbowl so that he showed his true shape.

When the pilgrims reached Lion Camel Ridge, three demon kings — a green-maned lion, a yellow-tusked elephant and a golden-winged great peng — were making havoc together and took the whole party into their city. Wukong fought them repeatedly and could not win, and had to ride his cloud straight to Vulture Peak to ask Rulai.

Hearing Wukong out on the three demons, Rulai gave their origins: the green lion was Manjushri’s mount and the white elephant Samantabhadra’s; the great peng had been born of the same mother as the peacock Mahamayuri. The peacock had been honoured as the Buddha’s mother, and by that reckoning the great peng was Rulai’s own maternal uncle.

Rulai therefore went to Lion Camel Kingdom in person with Manjushri, Samantabhadra and the assembled buddhas. Manjushri and Samantabhadra took back the green lion and the white elephant, and Rulai opened out the dharma-realm and set the buddhas at the four quarters to cut off the peng’s flight. With nowhere left to alight, the peng came down at last on Rulai’s head and was taken back to Vulture Peak to receive the precepts.

When the pilgrims reached the foot of Vulture Peak, the Buddha Jieyin ferried them across the Cloud-Reaching Crossing in a bottomless boat, so that they shed their mortal frames, and they went up into the Great Hall of the Thunder Sound Temple to see Rulai.

Rulai told Ananda and Kasyapa to take the pilgrims to the treasure pavilion for the scriptures. The two venerables asked for a gift and, getting none, handed over wordless scrolls; the venerable White Male exposed this, the pilgrims returned to the Thunder Sound Temple, and gave the purple-gold almsbowl granted by the Tang emperor as their gift, exchanging it for the true scriptures with words.

The quest completed, Rulai judged their merits on Vulture Peak according to what each had done on the road, and invested Tang Sanzang as the Buddha of Sandalwood Merit, Wukong as the Victorious Fighting Buddha, Bajie as the Altar-Cleansing Messenger, Sha Seng as the Golden-Bodied Arhat and the white dragon horse as a Dragon of the Eight Classes, each to his own place.