The Pride in Monkey

I am currently taking a world literature class. (Who would have guessed.) Anyway, I am. Despite my early fears that its primarily non-western selection of readings would make for a terrible class, I have been pleasantly surprised. We read a few chapters from a long Chinese novel. (At a few thousand pages, longer than a Russian novel even.) I don't think "novel" is even the best way to describe it; it is more like an epic or something. Journey to the West or Monkey as it is more often called, chronicles the journey of a Buddhist priest named Tripitaka from China who is commissioned to find "scriptures" in India. Along the way he picks up a number of helpers or "disciples" to assist him. The first and most important of these is the title character: Monkey.

The story is definitely fantastic (I mean like a fantasy, but it's pretty good too). Monkey really is a monkey, and along with him a whole host of other talking monsters make their appearance in the tale. My class is an on-line course so for this 16th century story by Wu Ch'eng-en we were asked to examine the flaws in Monkey's character. The thing that most struck me and that relates to my last post on C.S.Lewis is how Monkey is consumed by pride and a desire to show off. He says himself: “I only care for fame” (56). This leads him into conflict with supposed monsters rather than stating his mission as he was ordered. If he had done everything right, things would have gone better for the pilgrims but, of course, we also would not have much of a story to read.

Monkey's pride is his greatest fault. At the very beginning he wishes to elevate himself over all the other monkeys and be their king(12). It is a desire to “show off his own powers” that goads him to many of his actions, as the heavenly buddha Kuan-yin points out (27). It is his pride that makes him leave Tripitaka in a huff when rebuked for killing the robbers and for pursuing his own will in so many other episodes. But what shows this better than anything else is what Monkey calls himself: “The Great Sage Equal to Heaven.” The arrogance of this is stunning. Monkey is basically saying that he (remember, a monkey) is on the same footing as all the deities of heaven. Was not this the same over-weaning pride of Satan when he set himself up in opposition to God? For this sin, of which we only get a flashback of because it happens before the opening of the story, Monkey is imprisoned and later put on probation to learn humility under the care of Tripitaka, a common buddhist priest.

The fact that Monkey acknowledges Tripitaka as his “master” is a sign that Monkey is on the right path to learning humility. Before he “had no master and indeed refused obedience to any power in heaven or earth” (26). The examples above, however, along with many other illustrations of his actions, show that he still has a long way to go. The Dragon King admonishes: “You must learn to control yourself and submit to the will of others, if you are not to spoil all your chances (22). We only read a few chapter from the start of the tale so I only got to see an itty-bitty improvement in Monkey but supposedly by the end (and remember it's a long story) he does indeed learn to control his pride and, in Buddhist fashion, reach "enlightenment." There is a dual quest in Monkey that makes it worthwhile reading; the outward exciting journey to India for "scriptures" and the inward delineation of a character on a personal journey.

Wu Ch'eng-en. Monkey (Journey to the West). The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Volume D: 1650-1800. Ed. Sarah Lawall and Maynard Mack. New York: W.W.Norton and Co, 2002. 2nd ed.

Mere Christianity, Part 3: The Great Sin.

Normal pride.

“If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy” (123).

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better looking than others. If everyone became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest” (122).

“Real thorough-going pride may act as a check on vanity; for, as I said a moment ago, the devil loves curing a small fault by giving you a great one. We must try not to be vain, but we must never call in our pride to cure our vanity” (126-27).

Spiritual pride.

“It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly” (125).

“Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil” (124-5).

“An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons— marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning” (78-79).

The real cure for both vanity and pride; normal and spiritual:

“To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin; though we shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God” (127).

Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins Publishers, 2001

Mere Christianity, Part 2: well, sort of

The somewhat longish gap in time since my last post was not intentional. In fact, I've had a draft just sitting in Blogger for nearly two weeks now. After writing it, however, I decided not to post it immediately. Something didn't seem quite right. Since then it has seemed to me more and more uncharitable. Besides, it was on the free-will controversy which can't really be treated in 3 or 4 hundred words! Interestingly enough though, Calvinism has come up a lot during the time I've been considering what to do with what I wrote. Anyway, what first got me going was reading (as the title of this post suggests) Mere Christianity. It shouldn't do any harm to quote the passage that was meant to be at the heart of the post that was meant to be in place of this one that was meant to be posted days ago, in which I meant to rebut the Calvinist argument against freewill, but, alas, it was not meant to be. I hope you have the means to see what I mean.

I leave you with C.S.Lewis on freewill:

Free will is what has made evil possible... though it makes evil possible it is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight... And for that they must be free (48).

Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins Publishers, 2001