Generated by My Mind’ 淨穢自我心生耳—And the Structure Comes Nearer.[2]

H-Buddhism Breitwieser Goehr on Dong and Dong, 'Further Adventures on the Journey to the West'

Review published on Friday, May 21, 2021

Yue Dong, Sizhang Dong. Further Adventures on the Journey to the West. Translated by Qiancheng Li and Robert E. Hegel. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. 278 pp. $30.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-295-74772-9.

Reviewed by Alia Breitwieser Goehr (The University of Chicago) Published on H-Buddhism (May, 2021) Commissioned by Jessica Zu (USC Dornsife, School of Religion)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=56160

A Journey through Myriad Realms of Desire, with Nothing Wanting

As Qiancheng Li states in the introduction to his and Robert Hegel’s translation, “Further Adventures on the Journey to the West (Xiyou bu 西遊補, 1641) is a short but philosophically and artistically sophisticated novel” (p. xiii). Thanks to the erudition and meticulous care with which the translators have breathed life into this novel’s fresh incarnation, this sophistication is now in full evidence for any reader of English. Li and Hegel’s contribution affords a valuable opportunity to teachers of East Asian and world literatures, for this work’s brevity and complexity make it uniquely well suited to introducing students and scholars outside the field to early modern Chinese thought—in all of its historical particularity, with all of its lasting intellectual and aesthetic appeal. This translation leads readers onto a journey through myriad realms of desire, with nothing wanting.

That the translators manage to conjure this novel into English in the form of a self-sustainingly excellent work of art is remarkable given that the sixteen-chapterFurther Adventures, as its title would suggest, arose out of a relation of dependence on the longer and more famous Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西遊記, 1592). The earlier, hundred-chapter novel is an extravagantly fictionalized account of the monk Xuanzang’s 玄奘 (602-64) historical excursion to Buddhist lands. InJourney to the West, Xuanzang travels in the company of a handful of monsters-turned-disciples, most notably Sun Wukong 孫悟空, a mischievous, violence-prone monkey endowed with cosmic superpowers and a capacity for enlightenment. Partway through the pilgrims’ journey, in chapters 59 through 61, their path westward is blocked by a mountain of flames. Hoping to extinguish this impenetrable fire, Sun Wukong visits Lady Rākṣasī, the wife of his former sworn brother, to borrow a palm-leaf fan. When Lady Rākṣasī refuses, the monkey transforms into an insect and torments her by crawling into her belly. He subsequently obtains the fan and puts out the flames so the pilgrims can continue their mission. As Qiancheng Li points out, from the standpoint of Buddhist symbolism this is an unsatisfying resolution, for “if the fire represents burning human desire, in particular sexual desire, it seems that Sun Wukong had sought an easy—but problematic—solution. He simply extinguishes the fire, without recognizing it for what it is” (p. xvi).

The author of Further Adventures, whom Qiancheng Li conclusively identifies as Dong Sizhang 董斯張 (1587-1628), pursued a more meaningful resolution to this symbolically charged narrative episode.

The intercalary narrative of his sequel, which occurs between chapters 61 and 62 of the parent novel, forces Sun Wukong (now named Pilgrim 行者) to confront precisely that which he evades in Journey to the West by drawing him into a dream journey through manifold realms of desire. In so doing, Dong weaves a complex psychological narrative exploring the themes of desire, dream, and illusion that permeate early modern Chinese aesthetics; and he does so in a manner profoundly informed by late- Ming Buddhist discourse.

At the center of Pilgrim’s varied forays into delusion stands the Gallery of a Million Mirrors (wanjing loutai 萬鏡樓台), each mirror of which contains an entire world, several of which Pilgrim enters. The Gallery is at once a brilliant literary conceit and a figure derived from the “Chapter on Entry into the Realm of Reality” (Ru fajie pin 入法界品, Skt. Gaṇḍavyūha), the climax of the Flower Ornament Sutra (Huayan jing 華嚴經, Skt. Buddhâvataṃsaka-sūtra).[1] For some reason, the translators do not explicitly reference this source, though Qiancheng Li discusses it at some length in the introduction to his excellent Chinese variorum edition of the novel (which this reviewer deems a must-have for any Chinese fiction enthusiast). In the sutra, the pilgrim Sudhana enters the Tower of Maitreya, an architectural figuration of the original mind as Suchness, wherein three thousand worlds can appear in a single thought instant. Early in his journey, our simian Pilgrim comes upon the Gallery in the land of New Tang—a counterpart to the historical Tang dynasty in which the parent novel is set. By means of the Gallery’s mirrors, Pilgrim journeys through diverse realms in a manner that defies conventional and corporeal logic, swiftly transiting through a sensuously evocative array of situations, all of which are ultimately but projections of his own desire. The demon of Pilgrim’s desire achieves its apotheosis in the image of the Qing Fish qingyu( 鯖魚, whose name is a compound of homophones for desire, qing 情 and yu 欲), which Pilgrim battles face-to-face at the end of the novel to symbolically defeat his attachments to delusion.

The temporal and spatial fluidity of these scenes, as well as the uncanny ways they interweave familiar episodes from history and literature with spectacular new layers of fabulation, seem aimed to disorient the reader alongside the desire-entangled Pilgrim. And yet, through an array of expedient strategies, Li and Hegel manage to illuminate the delicate threads that render this work coherent to a degree unrealized in its earlier English translation.

For one, the translators seem to have a strong conception of who Pilgrim is. This clarity of character may have been bolstered by the fact that the translators drew on Qiancheng Li’s Chinese variorum edition of Further Adventures (Xiyou bu jiaozhu 《西游补》校注, 2011), not to mention the literary and philosophical insight Robert Hegel has gleaned from his decades-long engagement with the novel, upon which he wrote his MA thesis. Their shared labor contributes to the reader’s pleasure: Pilgrim’s distinctive presence is clearly felt throughout the story, such that the reader has a stable companion on this dream journey, even as the dreamworld through which they venture together is topsy-turvy.

Throughout the novel, the thread that runs throughout the dazzling tapestry of the monkey’s mindscape is desire, which glimmers upon the page through homophones of qing, flashes of crimson, and manifold other symbols of that which, according to Buddhist teachings, traps beings in saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death. The translators graciously assist the reader in keeping track of this constant thread by noting in parentheses those places where qing and its homophones appear and with endnotes that alert the uninitiated to the many faces of desire in Chinese symbolism.

The work’s coherence is further enhanced by the translators’ decision to incorporate two historical commentaries into the text (also present in the Chinese variorum edition). Such commentaries, normally printed in the upper margins of the page or in line with the text, were a common feature of Ming- and Qing-dynasty publications but are often excised from modern editions and translations. Li and Hegel have thankfully abandoned this modern convention to include the commentaries from the Ming Chongzhen-era and Qing-dynasty Kongqingshi 空青室 editions of the novel (published in 1641 and 1853, respectively). The Chongzhen commentary, which David Rolston attributes to Dong Sizhang himself, are relatively restrained. They occasionally point out narrative features but often just remark enthusiastically on the text. Such comments resemble the general approach Dong’s friend Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574-1646) employed in his vernacular story collections of the 1620s. The Kongqingshi commentary, by contrast, intercedes far more frequently and at greater length. While the Kongqingshi edition was a collaborative effort, Qiancheng Li explains that the bulk of these comments were the work of Qian Peiming 錢培名 (nineteenth century, dates unknown). In certain aspects of phrasing as well as their emphasis on clarifying the narrative’s literary and philosophical coherence, Qian’s comments betray the influence of the famous seventeenth-century commentator Jin Shengtan 金聖歎 (1608-61). While some present-day readers might initially find this additional voice obtrusive, Qian’s comments are often both funny and helpful, contributing to the original work’s entertainment value while also illuminating how disparate moments in the text relate to one another or to the parent novel. Those approaching this novel from an interdisciplinary or intellectual historical standpoint should also note that the Kongqingshi commentary foregrounds the work’s Buddhist implications, such that the novel seems to operate simultaneously as a literary and philosophical work.

The author--a dedicated lay Buddhist who taught his son to recite Buddhist sūtras before instructing him in the Confucian classics--clearly intended his readers to engage in this sort of interdiscursive reading. One of the translators’ greatest contributions to this work and the intellectually syncretic world out of which it was born is their readiness to engage in such a reading themselves, both by explaining the work’s Buddhist import in the introduction and through exquisitely detailed endnotes. Especially valuable for situating the novel in its intellectual context is Qiancheng Li’s observation that Dong Sizhang was acquainted with several prominent monks, including the eminent cleric Hanshan Deqing 憨山德清 (1546-1623). This point is of such intellectual historical significance--and of such significance to the novel itself--that I wish Li had gone into it in slightly more detail, though space might not have allowed for such a focused intellectual historical foray. Li’s introduction does excerpt an important passage from Hanshan Deqing’s famousDream Journey Collection (Mengyou ji 夢遊集) discussing the karmic harm that ensues from attachment to dreamlike delusions, which one must overcome to return to the purity of the original mind. But there are several other points of overlap between Further Adventures and Hanshan Deqing’s writings which deserve consideration. I will discuss these below. More general readers may skip to the end of this review for suggestions regarding how Further Adventures might be incorporated into an undergraduate syllabus.

Perhaps the most significant connection between Further Adventures and Hanshan Deqing’s thought entails a dream recorded in Deqing’s autobiography (Nianpu 年譜, dictated to a disciple in 1623). For Deqing, this dream marked a pivotal moment in his spiritual progress. It took place in 1578, when he was in the midst of copying out the entirety of the aforementioned Flower Ornament Sutra in his own blood mixed with gold dust. According to Lynn Struve’s account, in this dream Deqing:

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Breitwieser Goehr on Dong and Dong, 'Further Adventures on the Journey to the West'. H-Buddhism. 05-21-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/reviews/7751645/breitwieser-goehr-dong-and-dong-further-adventures-journey-west Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3 H-Buddhism comes to rest on a ground flat like a mirror and translucent as glass, the only thing visible being a distant, multistory structure, each chamber of which was as extensive as space itself. Within each chamber all manner of worldly things and activities could be seen--people of various occupations, markets and wells, and petty affairs in progress … Enraptured, Deqing wants to draw nearer. But he also wonders how, in this realm of chill clarity, there can also be such confusion and dirtiness, and as this discriminating thought occurs, the structure becomes more distant. Deqing is able, however, to self-correct with a second thought--‘purity and filth are but [conceptions] generated by my mind’ 淨穢自我心生耳—and the structure comes nearer.[2]

According to Struve, this dream contributes to Deqing’s autobiographical self-fashioning as the pilgrim Sudhana. For those of us engaged with Further Adventures, Deqing’s dream also shines a light upon the fictional narrative’s axial feature: the Gallery of Mirrors. This climactic moment in Deqing’s autobiography clarifies the soteriological aim of Pilgrim’s journey (and, by association, that of the reader who accompanies him). At the same time, it offers a late-Ming Buddhist rationale for employing such “dirty” and “petty” worlds as those which appear in the tower--worlds which clearly parallel those of fiction--as an expedient means (fangbian 方便, Skt. upāya) of clearing away deluded thinking.

Deqing himself proposed such an application for poetry, specifically exile poetry depicting hellish scenes. Here we encounter another intriguing parallel between the themes of the novel and Deqing’s life. Starting in 1595, Deqing spent sixteen years in military exile in Leizhou in western Guangdong. Overwhelmed by the oppressive heat of this tropical region, Deqing’s writings associate the area with the element of fire and the flames of saṃsāra. Deqing came to conceive of this hellish period in his life, and the poetry he composed around it, as crucial to his spiritual progress. As Corey Bell relates in “Genuine Anguish, Genuine Mind”:

Hanshan felt that by capturing the “hellish nightmare” that is exile, poetry could, like one’s memories of an unpleasant dream, prompt one to reflect on the idea that subjective consciousness and the objects that have been perceived are of one substance--that they are all mind-only. Poetry of this type could hence lead to the intuitive verification of the “unadulterated genuine mind,” which represented for Hanshan the un-bifurcated ideal substratum of all mental and perceptual reality--the tathāgatagarbha, or the Buddha nature.[3]

In light of this historical detail, we could read Hanshan Deqing as having fully confronted and spiritually overcome the mountain of fire that Sun Wukong fails to negotiate in Journey to the West. In Further Adventures, Pilgrim’s determination to eliminate the infernal mountain leads him into exactly the same chiliocosmic tower that played an important role in Deqing’s spiritual progress. Through this historical interweaving of fiction and monastic autobiography, the figures of Sun Wukong, Hanshan Deqing, and Sudhana—all pilgrims—collide to produce a psychologically and philosophically satisfying narrative.

Numerous other features of Further Adventures could be meaningfully related to the life and writings of Hanshan Deqing, including Pilgrim’s fixation on acquiring a “mountain-ridding bell;” the narrative’s frequent (often critical) allusions to Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550-1616), who was a spiritually lax lay disciple of Hanshan Deqing’s close friend Zibo Zhenke 紫栢真可 (Daguan 達觀, 1543-1603); and the narrative prominence granted to the theme of political fealty. These will have to be considered

Those hoping to incorporate this excellent work of literature into their teaching or research will benefit not only from the introduction and endnotes included in Li and Hegel’s translation, but also from the monographs these scholars have written on related subjects, which might serve as valuable secondary reading for undergraduates or as references for preparing a series of lectures. Hegel’s still timely monograph The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China (1981) provides a comprehensive examination of the world out of which this novel was born and includes a section entitled “Further Adventures” (therein referred to by its former English title, “Tower of Myriad Mirrors,” see pp. 141-66). Another of Hegel’s monographs, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China (1998), offers a scholarly accompaniment to another exciting feature of this translation: its incorporation of sixteen riddle-like illustrations originally published with the Chongzhen edition. These images alone could provide the material for an entire lesson, especially if paired with Hegel’s essay “Picturing the Monkey King: Illustrations and Readings of the 1641 Novel Xiyou bu” in The Art of the Book in China (2006). Qiancheng Li’s Fictions of Enlightenment (2004) offers an excellent overview of this novel (pp. 90-109), and his recent book Transmutations of Desire: Literature and Religion in Late Imperial China (2020) is sure to offer rich insights into the aesthetic and intellectual influence of this novel’s defining theme. Those who are interested in considering this novel specifically in relation to Buddhist thought should consider including Hanshan Deqing’s autobiography alongside this work.

In the context of a world literature course, Further Adventures would pair well with other literary journeys that combine psychological, cultural, and political themes. Dante’sInferno (completed in 1320) would pair especially well, given that both works feature extended descriptions of the hellish punishments to be endured by political traitors. Nonspecialists should not hesitate to bring this Chinese work into their classroom, for the translators’ contributions, along with the historical commentators’ insights, provide ample support for venturing into the unfamiliar territory of early modern Chinese thought.

Previously, my undergraduate students in comparative literature have been tempted to read this work in relation to Freudian psychoanalysis. While such a forthright application of a European theoretical framework would risk overwriting the novel’s own, equally nuanced, intellectual underpinnings, it would be exciting to place this novel and its attendant philosophical backdrop alongside psychoanalytic theory and an accompanying literary work, such as Wilhelm Jensen’s serial novel Gradiva (1902), to consider how disparate systems of thought and literature negotiate the broad humanistic themes of desire and illusion differently.

Notes

[1]. To be philologically accurate, the Sanskrit reconstruction of the Chinese chapter title is Dharmadhātu-praveśana-parivarta. Early Chinese catalogues, however, identified this chapter as an independently circulating sūtra, Luomoqie jing 羅摩伽經 Gaṇḍavyūha sūtra (T 294). This chapter in Huayan Jing is consequently commonly referred to as Gaṇḍavyūha.

[2]. Lynn A. Struve, “Deqing's Dreams: Signs in a Reinterpretation of His Autobiography,” Journal of Chinese Religions 40 (2012): 1-44; 25-26.

[3]. Corey Lee Bell, “Genuine Anguish, Genuine Mind: ‘Loyal’ Buddhist Monks, Poetics and Soteriology in Ming-Qing Transition-era Southern China” (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2016), 45.

Citation: Alia Breitwieser Goehr. Review of Dong, Yue; Dong, Sizhang,Further Adventures on the Journey to the West. H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews. May, 2021.URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56160

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Generated by My Mind’ 淨穢自我 心生耳—And the Structure Comes Nearer.[2]

Generated by My Mind’ 淨穢自我心生耳—And the Structure Comes Nearer.[2]