The story of Maitreya

Maitreya is called the Buddha from the East in the Buddhist west. Under him was a chime-striking boy called Yellow Brow, who attended him at the chime and the bell and kept two ritual objects: a set of golden cymbals and a human-seed bag, ordinarily kept in his sleeve and never lightly shown.

One year Maitreya was invited to an assembly and was away from the mountain for days, leaving Yellow Brow alone to keep the cave. Seeing the golden cymbals and the human-seed bag before the seat with nobody watching, the boy took a sudden mind to it, stole both, and came down by night to the country of Little Mount Sumeru.

Yellow Brow gathered earth and timber in the hills and raised a monastery, and hung above its hall a plaque with only the three words “Thunder Sound Temple”, leaving out the word “little”, so that from a distance it looked no different from the true temple on Vulture Peak. He sat in the hall himself in the likeness of Rulai and expounded the dharma.

The pilgrims came west to that place, saw the towering halls, took it for the holy ground of Vulture Peak, and despite Wukong’s repeated warnings Tang Sanzang dismounted, straightened his robes and went into the hall to bow to the ground.

Yellow Brow, seated on the buddha-throne, saw Tang Sanzang bow, suddenly showed his true form and ordered the nets dropped; Tang Sanzang, Bajie and Sha Seng were seized and bound together, and only Wukong outside the hall had not yet been taken.

Wukong went forward with his staff to demand his master, and Yellow Brow drew the golden cymbals from his sleeve and clapped them together over him, shell fitting shell without a seam, so that the hall was suddenly dark inside and not a ray of light came through.

Wukong made himself very small inside the cymbals and propped the golden staff about him on all sides; but the walls were thick and hard, and however he battered he could not open a crack, and it grew stifling within, with hunger and thirst on top of it.

The twenty-eight lodges came at the news to help, and among them Kang the Golden Dragon bent down and pushed at a corner of the shell; the two horns on his head were hard and sharp, and at last he pierced a small hole, and Wukong shrank himself into a mosquito and slipped out through it.

Once out, Wukong worked with Kang the Golden Dragon, one prising and hammering with the staff and the other butting with his horn, and between them they cracked the golden cymbals apart; the shell fell to pieces on the ground as scraps of bronze.

Seeing the cymbals destroyed, Yellow Brow in a rage took out the human-seed bag, opened its mouth, and swept in Wukong together with the heavenly officers who had come to help, so that all of them were held in the sack and could not move.

Wukong quietly worked his art inside the bag, drew himself out into a thread, slipped through the seam at its mouth, and got out of the cave alone; looking round and finding nobody left to fight with, he stumbled off along the mountain path.

Coming to a melon field on the slope he saw an old man sitting cross-legged, keeping a field full of melon vines. The old man was Maitreya in another shape, and he told Wukong that Yellow Brow was his own chime-striking boy, that the two treasures he had stolen were his as well, and that he had come to take him back.

Maitreya had Wukong become a great ripe melon in the field, and sat down himself under the melon shelter to wait for Yellow Brow to come looking for something to eat and drink.

Yellow Brow duly followed the trail to the melon field, saw a fat melon, picked it and ate it; Wukong took his chance and kicked and turned in his belly until Yellow Brow, unable to bear it, threw himself down and begged for mercy. Maitreya then took back the golden cymbals and the human-seed bag, put Yellow Brow into his cloth sack, and carried him back to the Buddhist house; the pilgrims were freed and went on west.