Many friends might have this question while watching Journey to the West, especially those who haven’t read the original novel but learned about the story through movies or TV shows.
The Capable Companions
Among the pilgrimage team, Sun Wukong (Monkey King), Zhu Bajie (Pigsy), Sha Wujing (Sha Monk), and the White Dragon Horse are all supernatural beings. For them, reaching Vulture Peak would have been easy – they could have simply flown there. So why didn’t any of them carry the Tang Monk through the air?
The Divine Mandate
The reason is quite simple. Tathagata Buddha made it explicitly clear when assigning the task to the Bodhisattva.
“How to find a being of power to go to the East and find a believer of good faith, instructing him to traverse countless mountains and rivers and travel ten thousand miles of distant waters to come to my place to obtain the true scriptures? This will be transmitted eternally to the East to advise and transform all living beings. This is indeed a blessing as immense as a mountain, a joyous act as deep as the sea.”
— Journey to the West, Chapter 8
The Essence: Cultivation, Not Transportation
Buddhism emphasizes “undergoing trials to attain Buddhahood.” The essence of the scripture-seeking journey is “cultivation”, not merely “traveling”.
Additionally, as the saying goes, ‘Scriptures cannot be lightly bestowed.’ Otherwise, the people of the Tang Dynasty would not have understood their value or cherished them.
Finally, Guanyin Bodhisattva, the specific executor of the scripture-seeking project, refined the mission into eighty-one tribulations. As long as these calamities were not fully endured, the task of fetching the scriptures could not be considered complete.
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