Journey to the West and other classics
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| Sun Wukong - which means, Aware of Emptiness |
The epic was written as a super huge novel, but it is much better read aloud. Which is what i am doing with Ghin. I have never gone further than the first half of the first book, which i have read about fifteen times, but this time i began with the third volume (cos it was lying around and he had a tummy ache and needed to read him something while i sat beside him, nursing him.) I was completely blown away by what a wonderful story it is. It has everything. Action, wit, humour, endeavour - it is uplifting without being twee. It has poetry and prose. It has very funny dialogue. It has terrible violence. It is filled with insights into what life was like then - and it shows that people in 16th century China were not unlike what we are today. The urbanity of the travelling companions, the problems they faced, and their superhuman powers speak of the wish and imagination of human beings to surmount their difficulties.
They are constantly quarreling too. The timid Sanzang, the lazy and lecherous Pig, sensible and dull Sandy and of course, the real hero - Wukong, who completely out classes every single character he meets. They are always squabbling, so i read the conversations in a Singaporean accent and Ghin finds this hilarious. (Their favourite word is Nonsense! which also happens to be my mother's favourite word.) By way of context, I was telling Ghin about the amazing feats that Wukong could do and i became excited as well about how he was so accomplished. He can become so large that his feet are at the bottom of the deepest ocean and his head in the highest heaven. He cannot be killed because he stole all the elixir of immortality and ate the immortal peaches - but he caused all this disruption in heaven... but the story of Wukong is the story of us. We are Wukong and we root for him because in him we see our own story unfolding... which made me think of freedom.
Why have freedom? Freedom is essential for honest inquiry to happen. How are we supposed to be the best which we can be - how are we to redeem ourselves, if we do not have freedom? Freedom is essential for redemption and yet, it appears that we have fundamentally misunderstood what freedom is for. We have taken this gift and we have squandered it. We have taken freedom and debased it. But it is not up to someone to say, you MUST use freedom to become our highest selves. That is the paradox of freedom - we must reach that conclusion for ourselves. To make the mistakes. I think the most horrible part of the abuse of freedom is how we end up abusing others. The freedom to be complete assholes to other people is probably the most horrible thing about this abuse and the world at the present moment is bursting at the gills with examples of this.
Other things we are reading - Yeats' collection of Fairytales and Fairy lore in Ireland. Completely fascinating. And English Fairy Tales - collected in the 1920s as well. I had this dream the other night about Jack and the Beanstalk and realised that the reason the giant's wife keeps letting Jack in is because she wants the giant dead as well. She wants Jack to liberate her from his tyranny. This was a revelation to me, but when i shared it with my mother, she told me, isn't it obvious? The giant was a bully and treated her so badly. I was quite humbled by this insight, although i took comfort that Oisin also did not see this - and Ghin didn't even realise that she was his wife. Was she not his servant, he asked.
So, if anyone is looking for something good to read this year, and will probably take you a year - Journey to the West. Find a child to read it to, if you can - other wise just read it aloud with your friends. It is a story that demands to be shared.
Comments
Thank you,
Cathy
ps Your class 3 chalkboards are lovely :-)