Amaroth
02-09-2005, 06:27 PM
Many moons ago in a far off land, a magical monkey became the founder of a monkey civilization and became it's leader by establishing a territory for the monkeys. Subsequently the monkey overcomes a "Devil confusing the world," and steals the devil's sword.
Returning to his own land with the devil's sword, the monkey takes up the practice of swordsmanship. He even teaches his monkey subjects to make toy weapons and regalia to play war.
Unfortunatly, though ruler of a nation, the martial monkey king is not yet ruler of himself. In eminently logical backwards reasoning, the monkey reflects that if neighboring regions note the monkeys' play, they might assume the monkeys were preparing for war. In that case, they might therefore take preemptive actions against the monkeys, who would then be faced with real warfare, and only armed with toy weapons.
Thus, the monkey king thoughtfully initiates the arms race, ordering pre-preemptive stockpiling of real weapons.
The monkey king then 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. There he lost the excitement of impulsive enthusiasm, and he was eventually released to seek the science of essence, under the strict condition that his knowledge and power were to be controlled by compassion, the expression of wisdom, and the unity of being.
The monkeys downfall finally comes when he one day meets Buddha, whome the Taoist celestial immortals summon to deal with the intractable beast. The immortals had attempted to 'cook' him in the "cauldron of eight trigrams," that is, to put him through the training of spiritual alchemy based on the Taoist I Ching, but he had jumped out still unrefined.
Buddha conquers the monkey's pride by demonstrating the insuperable law of universal relativity and has him imprisoned in 'the mountain of five elements', the world of matter and energy, where he suffers the result of his arrogant antics.
After five hundered years, at the length Guanyin (Kuan Yin), the transhistorical Buddhist saint traditionally honored as 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 the 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 hundered 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 us his achievements again?
Now the monkey pleads with the saint for his release. The saint grants this on the one condition that the monkey devote himself to the quest for higher enlightenment, not only for himself but for society at large. Finally before letting the monkey go set out on the long road ahead, as a precaution the saint places a ring around the monkey's head, a ring that will tighten and cause the monkey severe pain whenever a certain spell invoking compassion is said in response to any misbehavior on the part of the monkey.
Returning to his own land with the devil's sword, the monkey takes up the practice of swordsmanship. He even teaches his monkey subjects to make toy weapons and regalia to play war.
Unfortunatly, though ruler of a nation, the martial monkey king is not yet ruler of himself. In eminently logical backwards reasoning, the monkey reflects that if neighboring regions note the monkeys' play, they might assume the monkeys were preparing for war. In that case, they might therefore take preemptive actions against the monkeys, who would then be faced with real warfare, and only armed with toy weapons.
Thus, the monkey king thoughtfully initiates the arms race, ordering pre-preemptive stockpiling of real weapons.
The monkey king then 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. There he lost the excitement of impulsive enthusiasm, and he was eventually released to seek the science of essence, under the strict condition that his knowledge and power were to be controlled by compassion, the expression of wisdom, and the unity of being.
The monkeys downfall finally comes when he one day meets Buddha, whome the Taoist celestial immortals summon to deal with the intractable beast. The immortals had attempted to 'cook' him in the "cauldron of eight trigrams," that is, to put him through the training of spiritual alchemy based on the Taoist I Ching, but he had jumped out still unrefined.
Buddha conquers the monkey's pride by demonstrating the insuperable law of universal relativity and has him imprisoned in 'the mountain of five elements', the world of matter and energy, where he suffers the result of his arrogant antics.
After five hundered years, at the length Guanyin (Kuan Yin), the transhistorical Buddhist saint traditionally honored as 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 the 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 hundered 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 us his achievements again?
Now the monkey pleads with the saint for his release. The saint grants this on the one condition that the monkey devote himself to the quest for higher enlightenment, not only for himself but for society at large. Finally before letting the monkey go set out on the long road ahead, as a precaution the saint places a ring around the monkey's head, a ring that will tighten and cause the monkey severe pain whenever a certain spell invoking compassion is said in response to any misbehavior on the part of the monkey.