西 游 记 ** THE JOURNEY TO THE WEST **
Akira “Dragon Ball” Toriyama is dead (1955-2024).
He introduced to the World, with a renewed form, one of the major Classical Chinese novels *Journey to the West* (the West here being India, to the West of China) which, under the appearances of entertaining and fantastic characters, is a profound philosophical treatise on the epistemological Journey.
The novel is historically based on the actual 7-century pilgrimage from 629 to 645 of the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang (602-664) to India in search of sacred texts having happened during the Tang dynasty (618-907).
The HEXAGRAM is the symbol coming from the I Ching, the Book of Change. The Book of Change is the first of the 5 Chinese Classics. The other Chinese Classics are The Books of Rituals, The Book of Songs, The Book of Documents, Spring & Autumn.
The HEXAGRAM is the symbol coming from the I Ching for the synthetic description of the human mind’s development stages but these 6 stages are here symbolized by the characters from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) novel *Journey to the West* by 呉 承 恩 Wu Cheng’En (1506-1582).
西 游 记 (Xi1 You2 Ji4) : The Journey (游/You2) to the West (西/Xi1) Records (记/Ji4) or simply *The Journey to the West*
Below is the HEXAGRAM as re-interpreted by 呉 承 恩 Wu Cheng’En (1506-1582).
The 6 Lines of the HEXAGRAM focused on the stages of the mind. The physical body was not mentioned. So I added stage “0” for the character symbolizing the physical body.
Line 6- The Buddha as the Timeless Form of Truth *道/Dao*
Line 5- The Buddha as the Timeless Form of Goodness *仁/Ren*
Line 4- The Buddha as the Timeless Form of Beauty *义/Yi*
Line 3- The Monk as the Psyche, the inchoate Soul *心/Xin*
Line 2- The Monkey as the Intellect (wording, conceptualizing, imaging) *知/Zhi*
Line 1- The Pig as the Senses-Perceptions *气/Qi*
0- The Swamp Man as the physical body *身/Shen*
The Buddha means *The Awakened One* or maybe better worded the *The Awakening One*
Awakened or Awakening to what ?
Awakened/Awakening to our Being, to our Timeless Reality : *Beauty-Goodness-Truth*
The Four Fantastic Companions *Swamp Man, Pig, Monkey, Monk* together in search of sacred texts are the obvious representation of each one of us in our Earthly Dimension going to meet the Divine Reality of ourselves : Beauty-Goodness-Truth.
Plato (427-347 BCE) would have said unveiled or Remembering (aleitheia) rather than Awakening. But I don’t need to explain that the same fundamental idea is conveyed by the 2 different words.
https://youtu.be/qStcZaCfFQU?si=5wcxLHJZdHwi1bLJ
An excellent movie on Xuanzang (602-664) :