Speaker 1: Weird things happened in the Weird.
Speaker 2: Weird Weird. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome one, Welcome all to another
Speaker 2: episode of Blesso said, so, thank you.
Speaker 3: Who who is that the happy Buddha? Oh, the enlightened one?
Speaker 2: Is that me? Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 3: Cool?
Speaker 2: Uh? What's up everybody? How are we doing?
Speaker 3: Doing good? Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Doing good?
Speaker 2: Alex? How are we doing fantastic?
Speaker 3: We just cut up for an hour or so?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really did. I'm riding high, like I know,
Speaker 2: my face is probably red and my eyes are probably
Speaker 2: red because I've been laughing really really hard.
Speaker 3: For the business too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was business.
Speaker 3: It's business.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: A lot of cutting up in this since then.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But also right before we started, Ryan showed me
Speaker 2: some gameplay of Black Myth Wukong, which is on theme
Speaker 2: for today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I said, the Ami Taba because there's a boss
Speaker 3: you fight kind of like early in the game, and
Speaker 3: I think it was this I can't remember the name
Speaker 3: of it, but you've probably seen videos floating around of
Speaker 3: these big headed baby monks. Yeah, you fight one and
Speaker 3: he's like, O me Tapa is It's just cool, man,
Speaker 3: It's it's like the the Great Savior Buddha.
Speaker 4: M M.
Speaker 2: Okay, well Black Myth Wukong is on theme for today's episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2: What part?
Speaker 3: Well, just like the vibe of it, it's very cool because.
Speaker 2: The game Yeah oh yeah.
Speaker 3: So for those who don't know or are not like
Speaker 3: gamer people in general, nerds, Yeah all right, I'm listening. Okay,
Speaker 3: I was gonna, you know, throw up my little nerds
Speaker 3: sign of people, but you'll just have to miss it anyway. No,
Speaker 3: it's a cool game. But for those who aren't like
Speaker 3: gamer nerds and they're not like aware of the significance
Speaker 3: of it, it's the first ever like mainstream Chinese game,
Speaker 3: so it's like, oh cool, you know, I can't wait
Speaker 3: to see what it's like. But honestly, even though I
Speaker 3: expected this, I think think about it like this, Nick,
Speaker 3: most games we've ever played have been American or Japanese.
Speaker 2: Right, the vast majority, I mean there are outliers, but
Speaker 2: the vast majority. Yeah, exactly, Like like by I mean
Speaker 2: we've lost triple A games ever, with a few exceptions,
Speaker 2: are either American or Japanese.
Speaker 3: Right, So imagine a game where it's literally set out
Speaker 3: to be the first mainstream Chinese game, right, the first
Speaker 3: Triple A game, Dude. The vibe is Buddhas statues every bro,
Speaker 3: the Buddha chants, Like a lot of your enemies are
Speaker 3: like just these Yao got yao guays, which are like
Speaker 3: you know, Chinese demons and they're like, you know, seeking
Speaker 3: enlightenment and they're talking about the the elixir of immortality,
Speaker 3: and it's just it's on vibe, dude.
Speaker 2: It's the music. The music is sounds like very authentic,
Speaker 2: like ancient Chinese, like the flu, the bamboo flu sounds
Speaker 2: and it's it's amazing and it's gorgeous, oh God, like
Speaker 2: like this is the first, like you said, Triple A
Speaker 2: Chinese title, and they came out swing in. Ryan and
Speaker 2: I have been following this game for since it was
Speaker 2: first every announced, which is probably like two and a
Speaker 2: half years now.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's been more, dude.
Speaker 2: It was my first apartment, might have been since I
Speaker 2: saw this trailer. It has been like my most anticipated game.
Speaker 2: I'm just so hung up on Elden Ring DLC still
Speaker 2: at the moment, but I'm buying it like next week probably.
Speaker 3: I feel like it definitely lived up. Like I'm a
Speaker 3: little over halfway through the game, and I still feel like, ah,
Speaker 3: I just got to keep going. I got to keep
Speaker 3: seeing what happens next.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, we should probably say it's it's called Black
Speaker 2: Myth Wukong. If you don't know, it's about Journey. It's
Speaker 2: based off of Journey to the West, which is like
Speaker 2: one of the most famous mythology stories of all history, right,
Speaker 2: it is one of the very most famous. It's an
Speaker 2: all ancient, ancient like Taoist slash Buddhist Chinese myth novel.
Speaker 3: Yeah in confusion too, Yeah, yes, yeah, so I didn't
Speaker 3: know this obviously until we started doing research for the episode.
Speaker 3: But in Chinese literature it's either four or five. I
Speaker 3: can't remember the number. I want to say four, but
Speaker 3: in Chinese culture there are considered to be let's just
Speaker 3: say the number four. It could be five, but four
Speaker 3: great works, like great classic Taoist and Buddhist works, and
Speaker 3: one of them is Journey to the West. It's literally
Speaker 3: one of the most prolific works that has ever come
Speaker 3: out of Chinese history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ever and not so like not only is it
Speaker 2: is it like groundbreaking legendary fantasy, it is also legendary
Speaker 2: like religious text like it is, I mean we'll go
Speaker 2: into that a little bit later. And not only that,
Speaker 2: the cultural impact of Journey to the West, but also
Speaker 2: the historical truth in it. It's based on a real story,
Speaker 2: yes it is. Yeah, it's like an it's like a
Speaker 2: mythologicalized that's like philosophized, mythologized, that's the word. It's like
Speaker 2: a mythologized version of a true story. It's like they couch.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that at all.
Speaker 2: I didn't either until I did research for this. They
Speaker 2: like built a myth around a true story, which is
Speaker 2: like so epic. But I mean the cultural effect, like
Speaker 2: I don't know you ever heard of dragon ball z.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying, dude. I was reading parts of
Speaker 3: the novel Journey to the West today and I didn't
Speaker 3: realize it was a thousand pages. So I was like,
Speaker 3: there's no way I can finish this, you know, in
Speaker 3: one day. I would like to read it though it
Speaker 3: reads really well, like I read parts of the first
Speaker 3: chapter and yeah, too long. But something that's really cool
Speaker 3: is there is a king Yama who is like the
Speaker 3: king of Hell, who checks his ledger to let spirits
Speaker 3: cross to and from the afterlifs so familiar yeah. King Yima.
Speaker 2: Yeah, King Yima. He's got horns and everything. He's like
Speaker 2: a big giant demon guy. He sits at a desk
Speaker 2: and he has his Ledger of souls. You know what
Speaker 2: I wonder, I wonder if that's the Book of Life
Speaker 2: and Death? Is that what that is?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that's a good point. We'll have to
Speaker 3: read the novel. But I just had a memory. I
Speaker 3: recently read the first episode, I mean the first issue
Speaker 3: of Dragon Ball, just out of nowhere. I was like,
Speaker 3: I want to read the first ever dragon yeah, like
Speaker 3: with a few months ago, and I want to say
Speaker 3: it's at the end of it or at the beginning.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna show you real quick. It basically says like,
Speaker 3: here's you know, Goku based off of the Chinese legend.
Speaker 3: Let me see if I can find it. But Goku
Speaker 3: based off of the what do you mean, like when
Speaker 3: it's introducing dragon Ball.
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh, it actually acknowledges I'm pretty sure in the manga. Yeah, so,
Speaker 2: I mean basically like the Dragon Ball parallel thing is okay,
Speaker 2: So in Journey to the West, just to like jump
Speaker 2: ahead a little bit, Wu Kong starts as this.
Speaker 3: I found it.
Speaker 2: Oh, you did. Yeah. He starts as this little stone
Speaker 2: monkey inside of a stone who like the stone is
Speaker 2: actually an egg and it hatches and it's the stone
Speaker 2: monkey on top of this waterfall.
Speaker 3: What's it called, like the Mountain of Fruit and Flowers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Great Mountain of Fruit and Flowers, which is
Speaker 2: so cool. And in dragon Ball, Goku he like crash
Speaker 2: lands by a waterfall. Yeah, you know it's right there.
Speaker 2: He's got the little monkey tale. He's like a little
Speaker 2: baby monkey thing flying nimbus uh Wukong like has this
Speaker 2: he flies around on clouds. He can like travel on
Speaker 2: clouds and stuff like. And then the power pole. You know,
Speaker 2: we'll go into that a little bit later. But like,
Speaker 2: like Goku is kind of.
Speaker 3: His name is Sun Goku. Yeah, like he's listen. Look,
Speaker 3: this is the very first ever issue of dragon Ball.
Speaker 3: This is the last page. When you get you know,
Speaker 3: you read right to left. When you get to the
Speaker 3: very end, there's a little banner. It says, remember your
Speaker 3: Chinese fairy tales. You don't not even the impish monkey
Speaker 3: king and his magic staff the nioibo. Oh well, drop
Speaker 3: in next time and you'll learn. And then it says,
Speaker 3: next my balls are missing obviously the dragon Balls. But
Speaker 3: you know that's cool though, right, Like we never read
Speaker 3: the original growing up.
Speaker 2: No, I I definitely never did. I never know. I
Speaker 2: never knew they explicitly acknowledged it. Yeah, I didn't even
Speaker 2: in Dragon Ball.
Speaker 3: And they don't in the anime, which I've seen multiple times.
Speaker 3: So that's that was cool little sinkerity there. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess I'll go into that for a second.
Speaker 3: But even though I've never like read Journey to the West,
Speaker 3: Son Wukong has always been one of my favorite characters
Speaker 3: of all time. And I know you never played this
Speaker 3: game because I showed it to you before, but enslaved
Speaker 3: no which game? Monkey Magic? Oh, it was from like
Speaker 3: twenty five, almost thirty years ago. I think it was
Speaker 3: on the PS one. It's one of the first PS
Speaker 3: one games I ever had. And you play a Sun
Speaker 3: Wukong and it's called Monkey Magic.
Speaker 2: Right you told me up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you have the little power pole. It's like
Speaker 3: a two D platformer game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looked awesome and when you.
Speaker 3: Fight bosses, you fly on the cloud and it's just amazing, dude.
Speaker 3: And I thought that was cool because I was doing
Speaker 3: obviously like I was trying to see every adaptation of
Speaker 3: Wukong ever made in like movies, And apparently there was
Speaker 3: a show through like the eighties and nineties in China
Speaker 3: that I can't remember what it was called, but the
Speaker 3: theme song was called Monkey Magic.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Oh that's cool. That's awesome. There's been so many
Speaker 2: they've done games. Did you know the game I'm talking about, Enslaved?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I was watching videos of it today. Andy serkis voicing him.
Speaker 2: No way, Oh my god, it's been such a long time.
Speaker 3: I played that demo when it came out. I never
Speaker 3: played the game.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, in like Xbox three sixty I think, huh yeah,
Speaker 2: I played the game at some point. I think it's
Speaker 2: actually on game Pass. Oh sweet, it might be, but
Speaker 2: and then smite. I love playing as Wukong and.
Speaker 3: Well the Legends too. That's like the first character I
Speaker 3: ever played in Legal Legends. I didn't know that it's
Speaker 3: Sun Wukong.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's sick the clones and everything. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: this this is like one of the most adapted characters
Speaker 3: in history. Obviously, Like if you really think, I mean,
Speaker 3: you could say, okay, well Naruto is you know, Japanese,
Speaker 3: and that's fair, but it's also like one of the
Speaker 3: most ubiquitous fiction shows on the planet. I mean, for sure,
Speaker 3: millions and millions of people have consumed this material. I
Speaker 3: mean even he has on the surface has nothing to
Speaker 3: do with uh, you know, Sun Wukong and Journey to
Speaker 3: the West, and even his main ability is shadow clones yep,
Speaker 3: like Wukong, you.
Speaker 2: Know, And there's there's references to Wukong all throughout. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: what was.
Speaker 3: It, the foretail or the his name is sung Goku, yeah,
Speaker 3: which I mean you know, technically he is an ape.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's tons of references at one piece. Oh
Speaker 2: my god.
Speaker 3: Really, oh monkey do loofy Yeah. Yeah, I thought about
Speaker 3: that today.
Speaker 2: And then like spoiler alert, Gear five is like is.
Speaker 3: It monkey related?
Speaker 2: I mean no, but he if you think about it, yeah.
Speaker 3: He is kind of like Wukong.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I didn't think about that until now, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that does make sense.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of parallels. But also his personality is
Speaker 2: the biggest thing. Yeah, because that's true. So Wukong's personality,
Speaker 2: he's like very like reckless but rebellious, but also he
Speaker 2: is like he fights for freedom above everything else, like
Speaker 2: that's his like major price. He wants everybody to be
Speaker 2: free and like liberate people, Like that's his big thing.
Speaker 2: But he's also like he wants to smoke all the time,
Speaker 2: and he he wants to fight.
Speaker 3: Bro the game is like that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's that's sick. But like it makes
Speaker 2: sense that like Goku and Loofy what they want to smoke, like,
Speaker 2: they they don't just like not shy away from they
Speaker 2: are ready to scrap all the time.
Speaker 3: That's something that I appreciate about like martial arts culture
Speaker 3: or you know, just anime or Chinese movies because there's
Speaker 3: tons you know, Helo kung fu movies and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: It's it's always about just like you know, won the smoke.
Speaker 3: You know, I love that. I really love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like yeah his character, Lufy's character is very
Speaker 2: much like inspired by wuk So.
Speaker 3: I never realized I had a misunderstanding about the journey
Speaker 3: of Sun Wukong. I never again, like I said, I've
Speaker 3: never fully read the story. I've just always like loved
Speaker 3: this character and seen the many different adaptations and I'm
Speaker 3: like that's cool, but never read the thousand page novel.
Speaker 3: But then today, you know, I had the luxury of
Speaker 3: like reading tons of you know, explanations and watching you know,
Speaker 3: YouTube documentaries, you know how it goes with research where
Speaker 3: you're condensing all this information. And I learned so much
Speaker 3: about Wukong's lord that I was never aware of the
Speaker 3: fact that he becomes a Buddha, that.
Speaker 2: Is the victorious fighting Buddha.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it's like victory over strife or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he becomes a Buddha. And even before he became
Speaker 2: a Buddha, he had power that rivaled the Buddha himself.
Speaker 3: Wow, did you did.
Speaker 2: In your research? Did you come across the thing where
Speaker 2: he was locked into that eight trigram crucible m hm
Speaker 2: and like burned for forty nine days. They were trying
Speaker 2: to melt him, Yeah, and turn him into an elixir.
Speaker 2: The reason the fire didn't burn him is that that
Speaker 2: fire can't burn people that are like on Buddha's level.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so cool.
Speaker 2: He's that Like I.
Speaker 3: Read the part where he was like seeking immortality through
Speaker 3: various means, and we can go a little more into that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he apparently ate this peach that was you know,
Speaker 3: in the land of the Buddhas. I guess they call
Speaker 3: it like the pure lands.
Speaker 2: And it's basically like Heaven, right, and.
Speaker 3: When he ate this peach, it gave him immortality. Fun fact,
Speaker 3: when you start Black Myth, you play the prologue, which
Speaker 3: is where you're like the fully realized Sun Wukong and
Speaker 3: you're fighting basically the gods up in Heaven, the Buddhas,
Speaker 3: and you know, you know how it goes in video games.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you start full power and then you get nerved
Speaker 3: and you go all the way back down to level one.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really like explicitly explain the lore, which I appreciate,
Speaker 3: just kind of moves you along. And so when you
Speaker 3: start off for the first time as the Wukong that
Speaker 3: you actually play throughout the game, a peach drops into
Speaker 3: a little field and this wolf, which is the very
Speaker 3: first enemy that you fight after the prologue, bites the
Speaker 3: peach and he's like and he throws it down and
Speaker 3: then poof, out of a cloud comes You're a peach,
Speaker 3: just like in the myth. I didn't even know that
Speaker 3: till today. He eats the peach and he achieves immortality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the in the myth, he is like he
Speaker 2: at one point becomes the guardian of like the Great
Speaker 2: Peach Tree in Heaven, like how do you think do
Speaker 2: you think we should like go chronologically like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's just do like we do with other myths
Speaker 3: and just kind of like start from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, I have bullet points like on the beginning
Speaker 2: of because essentially the first like seven or eight chapters
Speaker 2: of the story is like is like everything leading up
Speaker 2: to the actual journey to the West. It's like his
Speaker 2: kind of origin story. Wulkong's like or how he became powerful,
Speaker 2: how he became what he is, who he is whatever.
Speaker 2: So basically I already said he was born out of
Speaker 2: like this magical stone right on top of a and
Speaker 2: it's said that the stone is imbued with the energy
Speaker 2: of the five elements and the yin Yang energies, which
Speaker 2: is heaven and earth. It's like heaven and earth energies.
Speaker 2: That stone was apparently at some place where it absorbed
Speaker 2: all of those energies, giving it the ability to like
Speaker 2: create life, and it created a little stone monkey, right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he's he started as just like this little stone monkey.
Speaker 2: He like finds these other monkeys they play in this stream. Ah,
Speaker 2: he's being a monkey whatever, blah blah blah. They tell him,
Speaker 2: if you can find the source of the stream, you
Speaker 2: can be our king. Right, he goes and he finds
Speaker 2: the source, and he becomes their king.
Speaker 3: And then I read that in the first part of
Speaker 3: chapter one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he becomes their king because just because he found
Speaker 2: the source of the water that they could never find
Speaker 2: for whatever.
Speaker 3: It's like it was like on the other side of
Speaker 3: a waterfall. Yes, he had to cross through this waterfall, yes.
Speaker 2: Which is like the the symbolism is already starting, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, It's it's like it's it's so
Speaker 2: this whole story is so chock full of symbolism. And
Speaker 2: then basically kind of his like heroes journey catalyst is
Speaker 2: that one day one of his like monkeys in this
Speaker 2: kind of like adopted monkey family dies and he's like
Speaker 2: just he's like heartbroken by it, and he goes on
Speaker 2: a quest to learn how to defeat death, which is like,
Speaker 2: that's a story we've heard so many times. It's it's
Speaker 2: like there are so many parallels to that. The symbology,
Speaker 2: like the going into the underworld, like it's it's already
Speaker 2: a typical legendary like origin myth type thing. So he
Speaker 2: travels across an ocean. He makes it like a little raft,
Speaker 2: and he eventually comes across a magical Taoist martial artist
Speaker 2: named Putizushi, who gives him the name sun Wukong. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's like a few different vers Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: there's a few different like versions. It's it's been translated
Speaker 2: many times. We're talking about an age story. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of like varying names of things and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But yeah, basically, this uh Puti Zushi,
Speaker 2: he teaches uh the stone Monkey, the the art of
Speaker 2: like Daoism, and he teaches him martial arts, and he
Speaker 2: teaches him all of these like mystical Dallas practices, including
Speaker 2: the Way of Immortality.
Speaker 3: Subputi is the name that I saw.
Speaker 2: Saputi Zushi. Yeah, yeah, And so after he teaches him
Speaker 2: all of these these Dallas principles and like the Way
Speaker 2: of Immortality and stuff, he names him sun Wukong.
Speaker 3: What does it mean?
Speaker 2: It means the monkey awakened by the emptiness m And
Speaker 2: there's like, again, there's a few different translations of that,
Speaker 2: Like some of the ones that I saw were like
Speaker 2: meaning in the nothingness. There's a few different Like, so I.
Speaker 3: Wonder what that means awakened to the emptiness like awakened
Speaker 3: to his like he's.
Speaker 2: Aware, awakened by the emptiness ah awakened. But but again,
Speaker 2: I've seen like a few different versions. Let's let's read
Speaker 2: a couple of the different versions. Let me find it
Speaker 2: real quick.
Speaker 6: To me, that makes me think death like awakened by
Speaker 6: the death right because it was the death of his
Speaker 6: friend or family member that sent him down the path.
Speaker 2: So it's a good one.
Speaker 3: The cool thing while he's looking for this, I want
Speaker 3: to say, like, something that I realized is that the
Speaker 3: story of Sun Wukong. So without knowing the story in
Speaker 3: great detail, I thought it was just a story, but
Speaker 3: I came to realize that it's actually like an allegory
Speaker 3: about awakening absolutely becoming enlightened one thousand percent. That is
Speaker 3: imagine that. Yeah, it it actually is, Like that's the thing,
Speaker 3: like it actually is.
Speaker 2: So check this out. His name literally translate as the
Speaker 2: monkey awakened by the emptiness.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Wukong's name is meant to represent his spiritual journey from
Speaker 2: an ignorant, short tempered monkey to a benevolent, enlightened being
Speaker 2: monkey mind. In Japan, he is known as Sun Goku.
Speaker 7: Oh wait a minute, oh hallelujah, think about it, dude.
Speaker 2: That makes me just go, what is Goku at birth?
Speaker 2: He is a saying, he's a rash little punk, and
Speaker 2: then he crash lands on earth and his mind is empty.
Speaker 2: He has brain damage, he loses his memory.
Speaker 3: This ah, I mean, I don't necessarily believe this, but
Speaker 3: this is.
Speaker 6: Making me think of the stoned ape theory because he's
Speaker 6: a monkey that gains consciousness.
Speaker 2: That's actually kind of crazy.
Speaker 3: That theory only came out like forty or fifty years ago.
Speaker 3: Which is the interesting thing because this story has existed
Speaker 3: like in well that's what I'm unconscious.
Speaker 2: Well look what just happened with the quantum entangled particles.
Speaker 2: The yin yang symbol has been around for thousands, if
Speaker 2: not tens of thousands of years, and now all of
Speaker 2: a sudden we get pictures of quantum entangled particles and
Speaker 2: it's yin yang. Yeah that's wild, dude, it could That's
Speaker 2: really the same thing that Alex is talking about.
Speaker 3: Like, I know this is a little bit off trail,
Speaker 3: but not really. Since I've been reading The Secret Teaching
Speaker 3: of All Ages recently, a take that I really appreciated
Speaker 3: about esoteric symbolism from that book is that when we
Speaker 3: think of symbols, we think someone created them, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's the natural conclusion who made the symbol?
Speaker 2: Made it? Yes, made it.
Speaker 3: But the take and I'll see if I can find
Speaker 3: the quote later, but the take from the secret teaching
Speaker 3: of all ages is not that these symbols are created
Speaker 3: and like have attributed meanings, but rather that they exist
Speaker 3: in nature and the metaphysical power that they are concealing
Speaker 3: exists in the math of the symbol. So when you
Speaker 3: think of these symbols, they have specific mathematical precision. You know,
Speaker 3: you've probably seen videos on the five point of star
Speaker 3: and all this stuff, and that these symbols might actually
Speaker 3: subconsciously contain secrets of literally the structure in the origin
Speaker 3: of the universe.
Speaker 2: That that tracks.
Speaker 3: Think about the yinyang tracks with the yin yang thing.
Speaker 3: It's an ancient pre probably pre like as far back
Speaker 3: as you know, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu. I don't know if
Speaker 3: that's that's related to Hinduism at all, but as far
Speaker 3: back as these Eastern mystical cultures go, before written culture
Speaker 3: when they were orally transmitted, this symbol has been around
Speaker 3: and oh look, quantum dangle particle.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty three, twenty twenty three. We look at it
Speaker 2: and it's like it's Yanyang. It's perfectly yin Yang. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not like kind of it's like exactly yin Yang.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so just interesting, you know.
Speaker 2: I agree, I think that thought there. I think that's true.
Speaker 3: Symbols come from nature, they pre exist human consciousness.
Speaker 2: That makes perfect sense to me, if if only just
Speaker 2: based off of the yin Yang thing. Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: fully yeah, I believe that.
Speaker 3: Monkey mind though. We were just getting on that that.
Speaker 3: You know, when we're meditating, it's like we I have
Speaker 3: monkey it's monkey mind. Monkey mind, that's what you can't meditate.
Speaker 3: He's literally an allegory for that.
Speaker 2: He is. He's an allegory for like the human spirit
Speaker 2: and like the evolution of the human spirit, like overcoming
Speaker 2: our monkey mind. Right, Like that's that's who Sun Wukong is.
Speaker 2: That's it's honestly the coolest. Okay, So he becomes Sun Wukong.
Speaker 2: He learns all of these Taoist principles and practices, learns
Speaker 2: martial arts, he's beaten ass, he learns the Way of immortality,
Speaker 2: and then he gets back to all of his monkey
Speaker 2: family and he's jacked up, and he's like, I'm badass,
Speaker 2: but all of you need to be able to defend
Speaker 2: yourselves too, So I'm gonna go steal you a bunch
Speaker 2: of weapons. And he goes and he steals them a
Speaker 2: ton of weapons, and he's teaching him how to fight.
Speaker 2: It's like the freaking scene from Mulan where they're training there,
Speaker 2: you know, like they're all training. He's and then but
Speaker 2: he's like, I can't I can't just use one of
Speaker 2: these like normal ass, normy weapons. I gotta find me
Speaker 2: a bad ass fucking weapon, a sick ass weapon, Like
Speaker 2: where where could I get the sickest weapon of all?
Speaker 2: A dragon? A dragon king? Hmm? So he goes in
Speaker 2: search of.
Speaker 6: That makes sense because dragon's more of a royal food.
Speaker 2: It is more of a royal meat. Yes, so yep, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's ranked when it goes bad.
Speaker 2: Okay. So he goes in search for a dragon king
Speaker 2: and he eventually finds one in al Guong. Yeah, oh
Speaker 2: like al Quang, Yes, oh wow, Alang the dragon king.
Speaker 3: You want to know a fun fact about that, The
Speaker 3: way that the Chinese language transliterates into English, did you know,
Speaker 3: like an alternative way to say, kung Fu is gong Fu?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, like Enterchaine, a lot of the k's and
Speaker 2: g sounds are interchangeable.
Speaker 3: That's cool, dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Alguog he meets him, and basically Wukong rolls up
Speaker 2: and he's like, hey man, listen, King to king. He's like,
Speaker 2: I'm a king, bro, you gotta give me a badass weapon.
Speaker 2: You gotta give me, like literally just asks him, like,
Speaker 2: give me a badass weapon. That's it. That's and Alguong
Speaker 2: is like, who the fuck is this little kid? But
Speaker 2: reluctantly he's like, you know what, I'll give him a
Speaker 2: weapon because he's like saving face. He doesn't want to
Speaker 2: look like he's he's hedging his bets. He doesn't know,
Speaker 2: he doesn't look like he doesn't know. Yes, I mean, hey,
Speaker 2: closed mouse still get fed exactly. So he's like, you
Speaker 2: know what, sure, let him pick a let him pick
Speaker 2: a weapon. So his servants go and pull out all
Speaker 2: these weapons and and uh, Wukong is trying all of
Speaker 2: these out and he's like not not liking any of
Speaker 2: them or whatever, and then he picks one up that's
Speaker 2: the size of a needle m and he like when
Speaker 2: he grabs it in his hand. It turns into a
Speaker 2: huge staff, a bow staff that weighs eight metric tons,
Speaker 2: and he's king.
Speaker 3: I just had that thought. There is a reference and
Speaker 3: he has the staff and there's reference. Sorry, that just poh, that's.
Speaker 2: Perfect and he's one of my favorite characters, Sartoby.
Speaker 3: So this is a king dragon arms dealer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where do you get that job? A god? You're
Speaker 2: a god, like a literal, actual god.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna try for that reincarnation. Yeah, I've already defeated
Speaker 3: two of the dragon kings in the game.
Speaker 2: Oh, let's go. Yes. So he gets this staff called
Speaker 2: Ruyi Jingubong, which is there's a couple of translations of that.
Speaker 2: One is the Stabilizer of the Four Seas. Come on,
Speaker 2: that's so cool. That's that's one of the name of
Speaker 2: his staffs, Stabilizer of the Four Seas. Another translation calls
Speaker 2: it translates it to the Staff of Miraculous Will, which, like,
Speaker 2: I just think both of those translations are so badass. Anyway,
Speaker 2: he like he now he has this newfound power. Al
Speaker 2: Guong reluctantly gives him this weapon, Like whatever, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: keep tabs on this guy. I'm gonna let him run
Speaker 2: off and do his little thing, but I'm gonna keep
Speaker 2: my eye on him. And little did he know, Wukong
Speaker 2: runs back and he's like, yo, I am strong as shit.
Speaker 2: Right now, He's like, I am the shit. I'm so
Speaker 2: strong nobody can touch me. I'm gonna go and find
Speaker 2: other people as strong as me. I'm gonna fight them,
Speaker 2: and if they are, like, if they can hang a
Speaker 2: little bit, we're gonna start a little gang. And he
Speaker 2: started a group called the Seven Sages. So he went
Speaker 2: and he found these different sages of like different animal tribes,
Speaker 2: and he fought them, and if they proved worthy, he
Speaker 2: would like let them join the Seven Sages. Now he's
Speaker 2: like making a name for himself. He's out there doing
Speaker 2: some shit. He's in the gang together. So now that's
Speaker 2: when al Guog is like, I hold up, hold up,
Speaker 2: hold up. This is getting out of control. He gets
Speaker 2: angry and basically claims that son Wukong stole that weapon
Speaker 2: from him because he's angry that he's gaining all this power,
Speaker 2: and he sends sentences Wukong's soul to death. He sends
Speaker 2: hell after Wukong, and Wukong's response is the coolest shit ever.
Speaker 2: Wukong defies hell goes on a quest, finds the Book
Speaker 2: of Life and Death and strikes his name from it,
Speaker 2: takes his name out of the Books of Life and Death,
Speaker 2: and also takes out the names of every monkey he knows,
Speaker 2: all of them. He just takes him out. He's like,
Speaker 2: we're not in this shit anymore, We're not alive.
Speaker 3: And blow up and act like he knew nobody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exact it took are coming.
Speaker 7: Yes, they ain't no fun if my homies can't have
Speaker 7: no Exactly, the whole gang glowed up.
Speaker 3: That's like when I saw this video that Brad Pitt
Speaker 3: or somebody maybe it was uh, I think it was
Speaker 3: Brad Pitt gave one of his childhood friends fourteen million dollars,
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, I took all my monkey friends' names
Speaker 3: out of the Book of Life and Death. Yes, so
Speaker 3: now the immortality.
Speaker 2: Basically yeah, yeah, dude, the whole gang glowed up.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: I know he's he is the.
Speaker 3: Sh He really is the epitome of like literally challenging
Speaker 3: the highest forces of the cosmos.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the highest forces. And now, because of this
Speaker 2: act of wiping all these names from the Book of
Speaker 2: Life and Death, now the most powerful force has got
Speaker 2: his eyes on him, the Jade Emperor, the Jade Emperor,
Speaker 2: which is like the primordial God.
Speaker 3: Isn't there like a celestial Emperor above the Jade Emperor
Speaker 3: that he put too? Because from what I read, the
Speaker 3: Jade Emperor is like asking could like I thought the
Speaker 3: Jade Emperor was over Earth and then there's like a
Speaker 3: like an equivalent to the Jade Emperor of the heavenly realm.
Speaker 2: Could be it could.
Speaker 3: Be Celestial Emperor or something. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It may be that what I read is that it
Speaker 2: was just the Jade Emperor was like he's the primordial God.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he like commands the Heavenly Armies and the
Speaker 2: Celestial Warriors, which like, yeah, he commands an army of
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand celestial warriors, each of them possessing the
Speaker 2: power of a celestial body.
Speaker 3: What's his name?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just the thing that I was
Speaker 2: reading was referring to him as the Jade Emperor.
Speaker 3: This makes me want to play Jade Empire. Oh dude,
Speaker 3: I had the same did I haven't played that game
Speaker 3: in like twenty years. It's a game pass on PC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get it on PC. Played on PC yeah. That
Speaker 2: is a good marshal large game. It's just a great
Speaker 2: game in general. You have you did you see the
Speaker 2: trailer for that secret level?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, yes, And like the the Seafoo episode
Speaker 2: is like in the style of Seafoo, it looks like anyway, okay. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: he gets reported to the Jade Emperor, the God, the
Speaker 2: Big G, the Guy, the Primordial God, because I mean
Speaker 2: he's like messing with the books of life and death, right,
Speaker 2: so he's he's crossing lines. So he gets reported. They're
Speaker 2: like Master Master.
Speaker 3: Like the nineties movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and okay, and so the the Big G
Speaker 2: sends the whole Heavenly Army at Wukong, just sends them together.
Speaker 3: That's literally the opening of Black Man.
Speaker 2: Sends them to get him, shut up, the whole army
Speaker 2: go get him, and and they fail. Wukom fights them
Speaker 2: all off, fights them all off. So then the response,
Speaker 2: this is crazy. This is crazy. He sends everybody to
Speaker 2: beat Wolkong's ass, everybody, and when it doesn't work, he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, homie, you can live in heaven. He's straight
Speaker 2: up like, I don't even want to deal with your ship.
Speaker 2: You can live in Heaven. Just don't bother me no more,
Speaker 2: Like straight.
Speaker 3: Up, I get those feelings sometimes. What do you mean,
Speaker 3: I'm tired of messing with you many? Yeah, they go
Speaker 3: easy on me, dude.
Speaker 6: No, no, I think like you know, I'll do something
Speaker 6: and I'll be like man or like like locking the
Speaker 6: house right or locking the upstairs door or whatever, like
Speaker 6: if someone.
Speaker 3: Wants it that bad, they can have it.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I feel that way, but.
Speaker 2: Oh locking, Oh I see what you mean. Yeah, like
Speaker 2: I leave my third floor like balcony doors open because
Speaker 2: I'm like they deserve it. Yeah, go ahead, yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: they climb all the way up here. You got it,
Speaker 2: you got it. That's what the Jade Emperor did. He's like, bro,
Speaker 2: you just smacked my whole damn army like you got it.
Speaker 2: But but he was sly about it. He was he
Speaker 2: was trifling, like bad who was Jade Emperor. He invites
Speaker 2: him to Heaven, and so Wukong is like, okay, that's cool,
Speaker 2: like I could I could do that, And he's thinking
Speaker 2: like damn, they're gonna like I'm gonna be a god,
Speaker 2: Like I'm gonna be a god now. But no, the
Speaker 2: Jade Emperor names him names Wukong the stable boy of
Speaker 2: the cloud horses.
Speaker 3: I saw that, and he took it as a great insult.
Speaker 2: It's the lowliest job in all of heaven, like in Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's the lowliest job.
Speaker 3: Which is another cool thing about like Chinese myth is
Speaker 3: how they portray the gods in the celestial You could
Speaker 3: say the spirit world as like a bureaucracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, they call it computer. Yeah, they call it
Speaker 2: like a divine bureaucracy or like a something something like that.
Speaker 2: But the word bureaucracy is used.
Speaker 3: It's like how they saw the because it's how it
Speaker 3: was on Earth. So you know, it's I guess it's
Speaker 3: like maybe subconsciously that as above so below thing like
Speaker 3: when they're writing this, well you know, surely heaven was
Speaker 3: worked this way too.
Speaker 2: Your good point. No, that's a good point. That's probably
Speaker 2: what it was. They're like, well, if we're doing this,
Speaker 2: it's because they're doing it and we're you know inspired.
Speaker 3: Yea, that's how Chinese culture was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, so he gives him the worst job
Speaker 2: in heaven basically.
Speaker 8: So just just a pause though, because I don't think
Speaker 8: that's the worst thing, like striving for beauty striving for perfection,
Speaker 8: I don't know, wanting to be like heaven.
Speaker 3: Oh no, oh of course no. It's just funny that
Speaker 3: the way that they describe heaven in their mythology.
Speaker 2: Is like a bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: Like, dude, we were talking about yeah, we were talking
Speaker 3: about how like the the Guardian of the Gates of
Speaker 3: Hell or the King of Hell. He has a ledger,
Speaker 3: he has a book full of names. It's like, ah, this,
Speaker 3: you know, this sold.
Speaker 2: Probably the book of Life and Death probably what it
Speaker 2: was talking about.
Speaker 6: When I mean, how else you're gonna keep track? Yeah,
Speaker 6: you can't memorize iPad.
Speaker 2: I was literally iPad iPads Now, dude, you know records
Speaker 2: it is heaven. Yeah. So yeah, gives him the worst
Speaker 2: job in heaven, makes him a stable boy, and Woukong's like,
Speaker 2: hold up, shoot, I take that job. No. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I ain't no stable boy's son, I ain't doing it.
Speaker 2: He refuses, and he frees the cloud horses. He like
Speaker 2: opens up all the gates and just lets them all go.
Speaker 3: That's what I would do.
Speaker 2: I know, he's such a g dude. He just lets
Speaker 2: them all go. And then he's like he lets them
Speaker 2: all go. He turns to leave, and then he's like,
Speaker 2: by the way, I'm the Great Sage, Heaven's equal peace. Bro,
Speaker 2: Like he does.
Speaker 3: I feel like he is low key and this is
Speaker 3: what Jeremy told me to but I think he was right.
Speaker 3: He literally is like the original own character.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's the original archetype of the shown in Hero
Speaker 3: one thousand percent, and that makes it so much better.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's like reading this is like reading an Amonga right,
Speaker 2: straight up, it is. He's he is like a shown
Speaker 2: in Protagonist.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He he refuses their offer, frees all the horses, and
Speaker 2: then he's like on the on the Great Sage, Heaven's
Speaker 2: equal peace, and he leaves. Dude, he's a gee, he's
Speaker 2: the ship.
Speaker 3: I mean, dude, I mean, at least my favorite but
Speaker 3: arguably one of the very best characters in all of
Speaker 3: fiction is literally directly based on him. So like, there's
Speaker 3: definitely a powerful resonance to this.
Speaker 2: Okay, archetype. So he bounces out, he bounces, and then
Speaker 2: Jade Emperor's like, wait wait wait wait wait wait wait
Speaker 2: wait wait wait okay, all right, fine, fine, I'll give
Speaker 2: you the job of guarding the heavenly peach garden and
Speaker 2: and Woo Kong is like I like peaches. He's like
Speaker 2: like Goku and Loofy. He's all about eating and drinking
Speaker 2: and like that's what he does. He likes to eat.
Speaker 3: How much crime is going on in this heaven because
Speaker 3: a lot it's a bureaucus. Okay, yeah, they got like
Speaker 3: white collar heave and fraud.
Speaker 2: That's what I mean.
Speaker 3: Why you gotta guard everything is heaven? You got people
Speaker 3: freeing the horses in the stable.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's like a realm. It's not like heaven.
Speaker 2: And according to this, it's not like you only get
Speaker 2: there if you're like pure of heart and like whatever.
Speaker 2: It's okay, you have.
Speaker 3: To lend to this realm by escaping reincarnation and achieving
Speaker 3: Taoist merits. They have a merit system in their philosophical system.
Speaker 3: It's nothing like Western sticks. I don't know, man, maybe
Speaker 3: like peaches. Yeah yeah, peach slices.
Speaker 2: So he takes the job. He's like cool, I like
Speaker 2: peaches that I can eat a lot of peaches. He's
Speaker 2: from the Mountain of fruits and flowers. It's like he
Speaker 2: likes fruits whatever, So he takes it. And he's like,
Speaker 2: now they'll respect me as a god. But they didn't,
Speaker 2: sadly because the Jade emperor called a huge banquet, and
Speaker 2: who is the only god that didn't get invited? Sun Wukong.
Speaker 2: Which this I wanted to take a little side note
Speaker 2: and point out, this is a direct parallel. There is
Speaker 2: a direct parallel here to Norse mythology because the start
Speaker 2: of Fimble Winter and Ragnarok was because Loki was not
Speaker 2: invited to sit at the Hall of Valjawa. He wasn't
Speaker 2: invited to sit at the table.
Speaker 3: That's interesting because I also read that the parallel basically,
Speaker 3: like if you think about it as a parallel to
Speaker 3: Viking myth, Wukong starts as Loki, yes, absolutely, and he
Speaker 3: ends his store. Yeah, it transforms into the hero.
Speaker 2: Oh that's badass. He's both that's bad ass, dude.
Speaker 3: He is very trickstery and very first yes, yes, but
Speaker 3: then he becomes you know, the a Buddha, not the Buddha,
Speaker 3: but a Buddha.
Speaker 2: Yeah, straight up. He becomes the victorious fighting Buddha.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the end. Yeah, so he is the only guy
Speaker 2: that doesn't get invited, and now he's real pissed, real, real,
Speaker 2: real pisted, so he openly defies Heaven openly again again.
Speaker 2: But now he's like, bring them, bring the rest, Bring
Speaker 2: the rest what I want seconds, bring, Bring the ones
Speaker 2: you didn't bring out the first time. Let's go. But
Speaker 2: before he does that, he's like, they're setting up for
Speaker 2: this banquet that means there's a hell of food and drink,
Speaker 2: but it's only gonna be up towards the top. So
Speaker 2: he wanders to the in the Heavenly Palace, he wanders
Speaker 2: to the thirty third floor. Ooh, he wanders all the
Speaker 2: way up to the thirty third floor.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you just a quick pause. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you guys remember this, but on episode
Speaker 3: thirty three, we talked about symbolism behind the number, and
Speaker 3: none other than in Buddhist philosophy, there were thirty third
Speaker 3: gems in the gate to Heaven. There we go, you know,
Speaker 3: or thirty three gems.
Speaker 2: You know, there we go? And uh. This kind of
Speaker 2: piggybacks off the not locking your doors thing the on
Speaker 2: the thirty floor. On the thirty third floor, they describe
Speaker 2: in the story that they leave everything unlocked. All the
Speaker 2: doors are open, all the windows are open, because you
Speaker 2: can only get there, like only the deities with the
Speaker 2: highest spiritual power can get there.
Speaker 3: That is insane that that just like played out right
Speaker 3: in front of us. How he talked about I don't
Speaker 3: lock my third balcony window, you know, thirty third.
Speaker 2: Floor, they don't lock the windows, they don't lock the doors,
Speaker 2: and you could because you can only get there if
Speaker 2: you're like the highest spiritual power.
Speaker 6: Maybe I wonder if there's like some functuae about keeping
Speaker 6: your third floor windows and doors open.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe something to look into.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. I'm all about the I've always
Speaker 2: wanted to like get really into functuay.
Speaker 6: It's cool, man like, especially when you get into like
Speaker 6: because we're we me and Olivia are really into our
Speaker 6: bedroom being a place for sleep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's no TV.
Speaker 2: No, I don't And.
Speaker 6: We are very deliberate about the furniture placement and having
Speaker 6: to do with funk shue and where your headboard is
Speaker 6: in relation to a window, like where the head of
Speaker 6: your bed is in relation to a window, Where the
Speaker 6: head of your bed is in relation to a door,
Speaker 6: like if you sleep on one side, like if the
Speaker 6: door is on one side of the bed or the other.
Speaker 6: It's like the way the energy moves to the space.
Speaker 6: You have one person that sleeps better than the other person.
Speaker 6: It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. We looked into some of that stuff
Speaker 2: when we were setting up in our new apartment. The
Speaker 2: issue is that it's a two bedroom. One of the
Speaker 2: bedrooms is much bigger than the other, and we chose
Speaker 2: the bigger bedroom to be our shared office space. So
Speaker 2: then like our actual bedroom is much smaller. But I
Speaker 2: like that because we do the same thing. Where our
Speaker 2: bedroom is literally just where we go at the very
Speaker 2: end of the day to go to sleep. There's no TV, there's.
Speaker 3: No Yeah, she goes as far now as her phone
Speaker 3: does not go in the bedroom.
Speaker 2: I have to do alarms.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, well she's got the alarm clock. Yeah well
Speaker 6: it's one of the new school plays and sounds.
Speaker 2: But still using an alarm.
Speaker 6: It's honestly, it's sweet, like it'll play damn, I go,
Speaker 6: don't want to do dude, it plays, It plays whatever
Speaker 6: noise you want, rain, crashing waves, whatever. I love the
Speaker 6: crashing waves, so do the light and then in the
Speaker 6: morning Jenny wants one. The light slowly gets brighter as
Speaker 6: you get closer to your alarm.
Speaker 2: See, I might want to do that and stop using
Speaker 2: the alarm on my phone because then I would like
Speaker 2: to keep my phone out of the bedroom.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she's gotten super serious about it, and she's like
Speaker 6: then she gets on me about being on my phone
Speaker 6: as we're winding.
Speaker 3: I bet she sleeps better now.
Speaker 2: She does for sure.
Speaker 6: And she's into mouth taping and like sleep scores and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I sleep so much better when I read before
Speaker 2: going to bed rather than like being on my phone.
Speaker 3: I've noticed, and this is going to sound like sense,
Speaker 3: but I have noticed when I stop having any sort
Speaker 3: of like tea is fine, but like coffee after like
Speaker 3: two o'clock at the latest, normal coffee, I sleep. I
Speaker 3: can go to bed if I have coffee past you
Speaker 3: know too, If I have coffee like three, four, five, whatever,
Speaker 3: it's like I'm up all night my noon. And that's
Speaker 3: common sense, right, but not really when when your your
Speaker 3: schedule is not the same every day.
Speaker 2: And see I've just been doing I've been like way different.
Speaker 2: I cut off caffeine at like seven pm, but I'm
Speaker 2: not drinking coffee or mons like soda. I'll drink like
Speaker 2: a soda, but that's light maybe too, Like after work,
Speaker 2: but it's usually just a soda, like a zero sugar soda.
Speaker 2: And yeah, normally I would say I'm not really drinking
Speaker 2: coffee past probably Yeah, you know what, I might have
Speaker 2: a cup after lunch and that's it. Yeah, I go
Speaker 2: to lunch, come back around one o'clock.
Speaker 3: Helping me a lot like paying attention to that. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: before we I wanted to say this real quick because
Speaker 3: I was searching. I can't remember exactly what it was,
Speaker 3: but in that thirty third episode, we talked about some
Speaker 3: Buddhist symbolism. Maybe it wasn't thirty three gyms on the
Speaker 3: gates of heaven, but apparently the number of deities and
Speaker 3: the Vedic religion is thirty three. The second level of
Speaker 3: heaven and Buddhism is named Trios Strimsa, meaning of the
Speaker 3: thirty three gods. And I just wanted to say a
Speaker 3: little spoiler for what I was going to get into
Speaker 3: it a little bit. Was that the monk's name that
Speaker 3: in the Journey to the West that he's helping is
Speaker 3: also based on the guy of the real name. I
Speaker 3: think it's like Juan Jing.
Speaker 2: His name is hang On. I got it here, So
Speaker 2: the real guy.
Speaker 3: Jean Jane, Yes, but his name is that in the
Speaker 3: story as well. Yeah, he's he's traveling to India because
Speaker 3: his quest is to receive sacred scrolls. But see the
Speaker 3: spiritual significance of that is because Buddhism originated in India.
Speaker 2: And Indian you know exactly.
Speaker 3: It's so cool, that's cool. And then the Vedic texts,
Speaker 3: which is you know, Hindu, there's thirty three gods. So yeah,
Speaker 3: talk about the thirty third you know floor. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: Like the whole thing where he's like he he eats
Speaker 2: a bunch of food and drink, he gets drunk. He
Speaker 2: wanders up to the thirty third floor where it's like
Speaker 2: all unlocked and whatever. And up in the thirty third
Speaker 2: floor is where like these gods and deities like they
Speaker 2: they have their things up there, like there their belongings
Speaker 2: up there. They're there while they're doing this banquet thing
Speaker 2: or whatever. So while he's up there, he found he
Speaker 2: finds Laos's pills of immortality. Laosi the god.
Speaker 3: Do you know who was in history? No, it's the
Speaker 3: founder and founder, the creator of Taoism. Oh, it was
Speaker 3: a real person, loud see. And the book the Tao.
Speaker 3: It's written by Louzy.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: He got he was deified.
Speaker 2: You know. He got pills up there, and if you
Speaker 2: take him, you'll turn immortal.
Speaker 3: When you buff your status forever. Gas pills, Bro, they
Speaker 3: got them at the gas station. Bro, taking them, they
Speaker 3: got them.
Speaker 2: A different kind of immortality, Bro. They got.
Speaker 3: And monkeys and all kinds of animal, different, different forms
Speaker 3: of philosophy. Dude in black myth when you boost your stats, Uh,
Speaker 3: their pills, Dallas pills.
Speaker 2: That's awesome the vibe. Yeah yeah. And he also steals
Speaker 2: she wung, moves peaches of immortality and takes all the wine,
Speaker 2: all of it, takes it and escapes back to his
Speaker 2: kingdom to get ready for open rebellion.
Speaker 3: You're flasking. The game is a Gordon. You drink rice wine.
Speaker 2: There is there is he liked to drink. He liked
Speaker 2: to drink, which is a little Dionysian, a little you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, A little baki and if you will,
Speaker 2: so he takes all this ship, takes all the wine,
Speaker 2: the pills. He's he's kind of a party animal.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Wine feels different to me than everything else.
Speaker 2: What do you like physically? It feels different.
Speaker 6: Well, yes, but I just mean esoterically it feels and
Speaker 6: I don't want to get into endorsing things and and.
Speaker 2: No, it's different. It is different, like it is different.
Speaker 2: It's it's definitely different. I mean like it was. It
Speaker 2: was literally like the nectar of the gods in Greek
Speaker 2: mythology and like it's think about it. Do Jesus for
Speaker 2: a turn water to wine? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, also like meat that's been around since not only
Speaker 3: like Viking culture, they were making wine and it was there,
Speaker 3: you know, sacred drink, and I think in Egypt they
Speaker 3: might have made some drinks with wine. It's it's many
Speaker 3: cultures had some sacred wine.
Speaker 2: It'd be something interesting to look into, because it could
Speaker 2: it could just be that like wines were the some
Speaker 2: of the earliest forms of alcohol that were discovered, or
Speaker 2: it could also be because there's some kind of significance
Speaker 2: to it. It'd be cool to look into.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well I know that me and Olivia went to
Speaker 6: a wine class last year and learned that there's some
Speaker 6: vineyards I think it was Spain that pay attention to
Speaker 6: celestial bodies and where the stars are.
Speaker 3: When they plant their vines.
Speaker 6: Wow, and that has some sort of there's a there's
Speaker 6: a fancy term for it, but they they literally do
Speaker 6: star mapping and zodiacs and like all of this you know,
Speaker 6: New Age stuff and kind of like infuse that energy
Speaker 6: into their wine. Really interesting, which which is like it
Speaker 6: all kind of you know.
Speaker 3: But you know the thing though, is that like the
Speaker 3: earlier part of Wukong's story shows him being uh, you
Speaker 3: could say maybe not immature, but like monkey mind rebellious.
Speaker 3: He's he's not he's not awakened yet, he's not enlightened yet,
Speaker 3: till you know, it's the journey he's becoming awakened. He's
Speaker 3: becoming enlightened. Yeah, he's brash and violent, and it's allegorical
Speaker 3: of the the material desires of the flesh, the problems
Speaker 3: of the ego, and earthly desires. So like maybe his
Speaker 3: his great love for wine could be one of those
Speaker 3: material desires that he's attached to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and his ego. He's scrapping with gods, like he's
Speaker 2: like fighting them all because of his pride and his
Speaker 2: ego and like, yeah, he's going toe to toe with
Speaker 2: like the strongest deities in existence just out of pride. Right,
Speaker 2: He's very brash and ignorant and like cocky and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's he's monkey minded, so okay. So he steals all
Speaker 2: the pills and the peaches and the wine and all
Speaker 2: of it, and bounces again and tells all of his
Speaker 2: seven sages and his army of monkeys and their armies
Speaker 2: and everybody, like, we gotta go fight everybody in heaven.
Speaker 2: Every yeah, as he steals their wine and he runs out,
Speaker 2: and he's like, all right, guys, I gotta I got
Speaker 2: hella wan and stuff, but also we gotta go fight
Speaker 2: God and like heaven, and so he does that. The
Speaker 2: Jade Emperor sends one hundred thousand celestial warriors, twenty eight constellations,
Speaker 2: the four Heavenly Kings, and more deities to capture Wu Kong.
Speaker 2: Wu Kong single handedly defeats all of them, all of
Speaker 2: them single handedly, and then the Jade Emperor's like, all right,
Speaker 2: I got one more, my nephew, Erlong. Oh m hmmm, Erlong.
Speaker 3: He's the first person you fight in the game.
Speaker 2: And he is the first person that Sun Wukong ever
Speaker 2: fought that matched his energy, matched his like.
Speaker 3: Match his freak, He messed his freak.
Speaker 2: He's the first person to ever miss his freak. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Irlang Shin.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I remember when he came out, dude, So yeah,
Speaker 3: he had he was broken.
Speaker 2: He had to scrap Rlong and Irlong got him. Rlong
Speaker 2: captured him and imprisoned him in Laoshe's eight trigram crucible
Speaker 2: for forty nine days. The crucible is like a huge
Speaker 2: cauldron with like the primordial flame in it, like the
Speaker 2: original flame, the hottest flame in all of existence.
Speaker 6: So what I'm getting at is like, you don't ever
Speaker 6: get punished until you get defeated.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty sick. Absolutely behind that, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2: He did not get he didn't get any punishment until
Speaker 2: he finally got captured. They put him in this giant crucible,
Speaker 2: this this cauldron for forty nine days to try to
Speaker 2: melt him and turn him into an elixir of him
Speaker 2: more vitality as punishment for eating all those pills and
Speaker 2: taking all the peaches and all that stuff. They were
Speaker 2: going to turn him into an elixir of immortal solid plan.
Speaker 2: I know that solid plan didn't work because after forty
Speaker 2: nine days they opened it up and he bust out
Speaker 2: and the flames made him way stronger.
Speaker 3: So and the go ahead, well part of The reason
Speaker 3: he was able to survive the flames was because of
Speaker 3: his teachings from Subhuti who taught him inner alchemy and chigong,
Speaker 3: which these are real ancient Taoist practices of well, with
Speaker 3: inner alchemy, it's what the pills are, the lousy pills.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, lousy created Tallism, and they had a form of
Speaker 3: inner alchemy where they would make these mixtures and these
Speaker 3: herbs and certain gems and would crush them up. They
Speaker 3: would eat them because they believed it had properties to
Speaker 3: like give you, you know, divine energies and stuff. But
Speaker 3: then the chigong was breath work, so he learned breath
Speaker 3: work and he was focusing on his and inner alchemy
Speaker 3: is more than just eating mixtures too, it's also you know,
Speaker 3: meditation techniques and manipulating the subtle energy of the body.
Speaker 3: So they're telling you like he literally was meditating, practicing
Speaker 3: chigong and his breath work to survive this crucible in hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he survived. He survived, and not only that,
Speaker 2: he emerged way stronger, like like reinforced by that flame,
Speaker 2: that like primordial flame.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a parallel to Western alchemy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it definitely is. And they also describe
Speaker 2: in the story that it didn't burn him and melt
Speaker 2: him because that flame cannot melt people or deities whose
Speaker 2: power rivaled Buddha himself. Wow, so like that's implying that
Speaker 2: already Wukong is like one of the supreme power level deities.
Speaker 2: Like he's just stupid, stupid strong, and it didn't melt him.
Speaker 2: He came out stronger, and then yeah, they open it up.
Speaker 2: He emerges stronger than before. He also emerges. This is
Speaker 2: really cool. I didn't know this. He emerges with the
Speaker 2: ability to like into it and recognize evil. He can
Speaker 2: see a person and see.
Speaker 3: When he's born, he has light beaming from his eyes.
Speaker 2: And you know what's crazy, Oh, it's because when he emerges,
Speaker 2: his eyes are fiery and his pupils are golden.
Speaker 3: Don't you remember when you were just watching me play Blackmiths.
Speaker 3: I was in the Pagoda realm in the third chapter
Speaker 3: and the eyes were flames.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were red like that, and the enemies were
Speaker 2: highlighted red. Uh huh. Yeah, he can like see their
Speaker 2: evil auras with his fiery eyes and golden pupils, which
Speaker 2: is awesome. He then destroys the crucible, makes his way
Speaker 2: to the to Heaven's main chamber and squares up with
Speaker 2: the Jade Emperor himself like god, like the primordial God,
Speaker 2: and Jade Emperor bitched out what he called Buddha, said, Buddha.
Speaker 3: That's what it was. Remember, I said, isn't there somebody
Speaker 3: above the Jade Buddha?
Speaker 2: It's the Buddha, yeahs Bodha.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew there was one deity above.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like Buddha, Buddha, he's being bad and whatever.
Speaker 2: And then the Buddha basically is like tells Wukong pretty
Speaker 2: much like, hey, listen, man, you're honestly pretty dope. But
Speaker 2: also you're you're wiling right now, Like I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: to do something, so let's have a little test if
Speaker 2: you can escape the palm of my hand. What are
Speaker 2: you laughing at?
Speaker 3: Alan?
Speaker 7: It's like when you do something bad but your buddy's
Speaker 7: the manager. Yeah, right now, skip ity toilet. Yeah, I
Speaker 7: can't lose my job. I gotta do something here. But
Speaker 7: that was honestly pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, honestly, bro, you're sick as fuck right now,
Speaker 2: but we're gonna have to punish you. Somehow. So he's like,
Speaker 2: he puts him in the palm of his hand, and
Speaker 2: he says if he can, if you can escape the
Speaker 2: palm of my hand, then you're good. Otherwise you're gonna
Speaker 2: have like a long punishment. It basically, Wo Kong travels
Speaker 2: to the edge of the universe.
Speaker 3: And he shows up at the five pillars.
Speaker 2: The five pillars. He shows up at these five pillars.
Speaker 2: You know what he does.
Speaker 3: It's his fingers. He pees on one of them.
Speaker 2: He pisses on one of the pillars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you hear that.
Speaker 2: He gets to the edge of the universe, sees these.
Speaker 3: Five Buddha says, escape my palm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he sees the five pillars, he pisses. He he
Speaker 2: intuits in his mind, I'm at the edge of the universe.
Speaker 2: These five pillars must be like some primordial truth that
Speaker 2: exists in all realms. And he pees on one of them.
Speaker 2: He's like, fuck these people.
Speaker 3: I love this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he pisses on Is that one of his fingers, Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: the finger of one of the fingers, fingers the five pillars,
Speaker 2: or Buddha's finger.
Speaker 3: But but you get that right. The Buddha encompasses the
Speaker 3: whole universe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, we'll see.
Speaker 3: That's not the part I really can The whole universe
Speaker 3: is in the palm of the Buddha. You got the
Speaker 3: whole world, palm.
Speaker 2: World. Piss on my fingies, piss on my fingis.
Speaker 3: That had to mix it up?
Speaker 2: Oh god? Yeah, he pisses on the finger and then
Speaker 2: Buddha is like, all right, you just piste on my finger. Uh,
Speaker 2: And he basically puts a mountain on top of Wukong
Speaker 2: and and locks him up there for five hundred years.
Speaker 3: It's what the Mountain of the Five Elements.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he locks him up there for five hundred years,
Speaker 2: and then you know that's that's like, that's the first
Speaker 2: like seven or eight chapters of Journey to the West.
Speaker 2: This is a one hundred chapter book.
Speaker 3: It's over a thousand pages. Dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is huge.
Speaker 3: I feel I feel drawn to reading this now after
Speaker 3: you just read it for me and I'm just watching
Speaker 3: it playing out.
Speaker 2: That's the beginning.
Speaker 3: That's the beginning. Yes, Then after five hundred years, here's where.
Speaker 2: I come in. That's not even the journey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's his origin. Then after the five hundred years,
Speaker 3: he's freed from the Mountain of the Five Elements, and
Speaker 3: then he's sentenced by the Buddha on a quest. You
Speaker 3: can no, No, it's Gwan Yin. Yeah, this this Uh,
Speaker 3: she's like a Taoist deity, like a celestial princess or
Speaker 3: empress or something, and she sends him on a quest.
Speaker 3: Helped this monk huang Xiang traveled to India and retrieved
Speaker 3: these sacred scrolls. And he has this magic circlet on
Speaker 3: his head that when the not the Emperor, the Monk
Speaker 3: xuang Xiang says a certain mantra, it restricts Wukong's head
Speaker 3: and gives him like headaches and like basically subdues him.
Speaker 3: And it's an allegory for subduing the monkey mind.
Speaker 6: Ah, because this to me sounds like archangel meets uh,
Speaker 6: what is his name?
Speaker 3: Harrison Bergeron? Who?
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 3: Is that the right book? Harrison and Bergeron? Yeah, hang on,
Speaker 3: hang on, you're talking about the boy and the heron.
Speaker 3: I feel like y'all are talking.
Speaker 2: About that lumberjack guy that y'all were talking about in
Speaker 2: that one episode. Remember when we were talking about Paul
Speaker 2: Bunyan and y'all were saying some other name.
Speaker 4: Oh, John Henry yeah, man, Yeah, well I don't yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 4: this is a book Harrison bergeron.
Speaker 6: This is a dystopian novel where they where everybody in
Speaker 6: this universe has to be equal.
Speaker 3: So they so if I've heard.
Speaker 6: Of that if you're super strong you have to wear
Speaker 6: weights to be equal to the weakest person.
Speaker 2: It was more like, and.
Speaker 3: They had these headsets that would give people headaches. But
Speaker 3: they're just getting like, if.
Speaker 6: You were too smart in the way you were too smart,
Speaker 6: you had one of these headsets on and that at
Speaker 6: random free nine times.
Speaker 3: Sorry, nine plus plus nine plus ten, you're stupid. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So so then the journey actually begins after five hundred years,
Speaker 3: and it's an allegory about him. You know, at first
Speaker 3: he was like this monkey mind, rebellious trickster figure, and
Speaker 3: then he helps this monk huang Xiang go get these
Speaker 3: sacred scrolls. Right, So on the journey they basically fight
Speaker 3: like tons of demons, I mean just tons of demons.
Speaker 3: And there's other characters too, did you see about them?
Speaker 3: So I wanted to talk about them, and Sandy Piggsy yep,
Speaker 3: another one. It's like the white dragon White dragon Horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I forget the dragon Horse's name, and.
Speaker 3: They're all symbolic of other things.
Speaker 2: So they all like join the like bodyguard squad for Yeah,
Speaker 2: what's his name, Chuang Zanganang.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's another translation for that too. But so again,
Speaker 3: the story of this monk xuang Xiang came from like
Speaker 3: this the five hundreds. Yeah, there's either the five or
Speaker 3: the six hundreds. I think it was the six hundreds. Yeah,
Speaker 3: seventh century monk and he he was real, he really
Speaker 3: made a pilgrimage to India and like if you study
Speaker 3: this ancient monk, he actually went to India, he got
Speaker 3: these scrolls, he came back to China and he found
Speaker 3: it like a pretty significant Buddhist institute, like a monastery.
Speaker 3: So the Journey to the West story is based on
Speaker 3: this real story, right, So he's helping Xuangxiang. But this
Speaker 3: is this is the actual journey to the West.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, it's it's this this monk juan Xiang and
Speaker 2: he's leaving China to go. But it's based on what
Speaker 2: Buddha is Like there's going to be demons so protect
Speaker 2: so Wu Kong and all these other deities need to
Speaker 2: go with him to protect him on the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because there's these not great at geography. It just
Speaker 3: took me a little.
Speaker 2: We're making sure you're with us.
Speaker 3: So the the actual Journey to the West story is
Speaker 3: an allegory for the quest for spiritual enlightenment and immortality.
Speaker 3: And it's about integrating the mind, the body, the spirit,
Speaker 3: in the will to become a fully realized Buddha. It's
Speaker 3: about awakening of consciousness.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So you have all these different characters. You have the
Speaker 3: pig Pigsy, who symbolizes like your typical uh, you know, gluttony, greed,
Speaker 3: uh lust, all these like physical desires. You have uh,
Speaker 3: the human monk Juang Xiang, who symbolizes the heart, the
Speaker 3: human spirit, overcoming you know, grief and despair and all
Speaker 3: these different trials. You have Wu Kong, who symbolizes the mind,
Speaker 3: uh subduing the monkey mind, reaching enlightenment through meditation. You
Speaker 3: have the story of Uh getting Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, which
Speaker 3: one of Sandy's the ogre, the river ogre?
Speaker 2: Right? Was he an ogre? I think? So? I don't think,
Speaker 2: So hang on, let me see join you to the West, Sandy, Uh.
Speaker 2: And then what was the what was the dragon horse's name?
Speaker 3: I don't remember his name. I just saw the White Dragon.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, Sandy was like a sand ogre or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: shah Wing, a sand monster, a sand hulk.
Speaker 3: Represent since the physical body and its endurance. Unlike the
Speaker 3: other two disciples, he's not driven by passions or desires,
Speaker 3: but just strictly duty and loyalty. He's kind of like
Speaker 3: basically strong endurance, patience. He's common adversity, steady nature. He's
Speaker 3: like the ability to remain composed in the face of adversity. Ye,
Speaker 3: then you have Pigsy. He represents the flesh, the human desires, gluttony, laziness, lust,
Speaker 3: all of those base animalistic you know, things that suppress
Speaker 3: like the ego, you know, you know, And it's basically
Speaker 3: the warning against like indulging in these desires, the struggle
Speaker 3: for purity. Despite his flaws, he's still willing to like
Speaker 3: join the pilgrimagine, you know, help on the quest. But
Speaker 3: he's apparently again I haven't read the full story, but
Speaker 3: he's apparently constantly backsliding, and he's like overcoming his trials.
Speaker 3: He's backsliding into his base desires and then overcoming those trials.
Speaker 3: These characters are all symbolic of elements of us, right,
Speaker 3: and then you have have the seeking of sacred knowledge
Speaker 3: by taking the pilgrimage to India. That's allegorical, right. So
Speaker 3: they have all of these different things like the mind,
Speaker 3: the body, the spirit, the will, but then you have
Speaker 3: the actual quest for knowledge and immortality you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: which is symbolic of our earthly human experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they're having like their individual awakenings and individual
Speaker 2: journeys of enlightenment. But also the overarching thing is.
Speaker 3: It sounds like Wizard of Oz. Yeah, it does. Think
Speaker 3: of that too.
Speaker 2: Ah, good freaking point.
Speaker 3: I was literally when he was talking about damn something
Speaker 3: a minute ago, I was literally thinking, this is like
Speaker 3: Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 2: I was thinking, it's like one piece. They are literally
Speaker 2: journeying to the west blue.
Speaker 3: Really they're going west.
Speaker 2: I mean technically they're going east, but to end up
Speaker 2: at west of the red line. We yeah, uh yeah.
Speaker 3: So the cool thing also about this story is it
Speaker 3: is a syncretic blend of uh Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, were you ready to.
Speaker 3: Say something that was a good word syncretic or syncretistic,
Speaker 3: whichever one suits your fancy. But it's like it's a
Speaker 3: blend of all these different philosophies. You have these Buddhist
Speaker 3: monks have you have the Buddha, you know, Ami Taba
Speaker 3: and all of these different celestial beings of all these realms,
Speaker 3: and then you have Taoism. You have the kind of
Speaker 3: like mystical forests and the inner alchemy of Laosi and
Speaker 3: the pills and his teacher SABOUTI teaching him Taoist practices
Speaker 3: and martial arts and chigong, which is you know, that's
Speaker 3: tao And then you have all this bureaucracy of the
Speaker 3: gods of heavens and all these different realms, and it's Confucianism.
Speaker 3: So it's cool that like back then they took they
Speaker 3: weren't separate, they weren't distinct, you know, they were all
Speaker 3: these different systems that they kind of merged into one system.
Speaker 3: So it's really cool. You know, it's not like in
Speaker 3: the West where it's like, you know, everything there's these
Speaker 3: borders between belief systems.
Speaker 6: So it's just interesting with more shared well that eventually
Speaker 6: happened in the East, right, all of the all of
Speaker 6: the things that were once one kind of separated out
Speaker 6: into what you said, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's true, but they still do. You can look at
Speaker 2: Daoist Buddhism, like Daoism they share hindu they share a lot,
Speaker 2: and they don't they're.
Speaker 3: Not I mean, you could climb the Christianity tree and
Speaker 3: see it.
Speaker 2: But they're not like I feel like those cultures are
Speaker 2: not at odds and they don't necessarily negate one another
Speaker 2: in any way, whereas when you get into the tree
Speaker 2: of Christianity, it's all you know.
Speaker 3: There's also Jainism and which are similar at least Jainism.
Speaker 3: It's like these are like offshoots of sex of Buddhism.
Speaker 3: I could be completely wrong, but I'm pretty sure Jainism
Speaker 3: was like an offshoot of Buddhism. Buddhism is an offshoot
Speaker 3: of Hinduism. It comes from Hinduism, right, India.
Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, well, yeah, because the Buddha was
Speaker 2: like technically practicing Hindu Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess he was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they share a lot. It's very different from
Speaker 2: Western religion, where it's much more like at odds.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure you're correct. Jainism Ryan so after being
Speaker 3: born from a stone and realizing his mortal nature, he
Speaker 3: seeks out his Taoist master to learn the secrets of immortality.
Speaker 3: He became a disciple of the immortal Taoist sage Sabuti,
Speaker 3: who taught him various magical arts, including the seventy two transformations,
Speaker 3: which allowed Sun Wukong to shape shift into different forms.
Speaker 3: He learns how to ride clouds and other mystical skills.
Speaker 3: He practices in alchemy, which is a real ancient Chinese practice.
Speaker 3: I learned about this in college in my Eastern Religions
Speaker 3: class Chi Gong mastering his breath, controlling the flow of
Speaker 3: his energy, meditation. One of the ways that he seeks
Speaker 3: immortality is avoiding the cycle of reincarnation. He's trying to
Speaker 3: reach enlightenment. He's trying to stop. That's his first thought.
Speaker 3: He's like, because again, and when we start the story,
Speaker 3: he's just an ordinary monkey. I mean, he's he's different.
Speaker 3: He's born from a magical stone, but he's more or
Speaker 3: less like an ordinary monkey. And they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: you could be our king. If whoever braves this waterfall
Speaker 3: and finds the source of the stream it gets to
Speaker 3: the other side, they can be the king. So then
Speaker 3: he gets there and then like Nick says, you know,
Speaker 3: he lives like an ordinary monkey for a while, and
Speaker 3: then he gets bored because he realizes someday we're gonna die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that his buddy died, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Wulkong's like, I don't want to die, right,
Speaker 3: And he's like, well, I want more. So he starts
Speaker 3: seeking immortality. His original quest is, you know, he's how
Speaker 3: can I seek immortality? So the first way he seeks
Speaker 3: immortality is maybe avoiding the cycle of reincarnation. So he starts,
Speaker 3: you know, training under the tallist Monk, and then it's
Speaker 3: the peach Guard and all the other stuff we already
Speaker 3: talked about, the pills of lousy, striking his name from
Speaker 3: the Book of Life and Death. Yeah, and I want
Speaker 3: to say, oh, he goes to the underworld, he descends,
Speaker 3: he finds the ledger kept by King, which is where
Speaker 3: he strikes his name all of his monkey subjects, and
Speaker 3: then surviving, I think that's it. Surviving attempts at execution. Oh,
Speaker 3: the Lousi's eight trigram furnace, which was meant to refine
Speaker 3: him into an elixir. He comes out with his eyes golden, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 3: We already covered this stuff. He challenges the heavens and
Speaker 3: an act of rebellion. Then he's imprisoned by five hundred
Speaker 3: or four five hundred years. He comes out and as
Speaker 3: redemption from the body Saffo Gwan Yin, he faces many
Speaker 3: trials and defeats numerous demons, protecting the monk shuang Xiang
Speaker 3: on his journey to India to retrieve the sacred scrolls,
Speaker 3: starting out as a rebellious trickster entity or deity, to
Speaker 3: eventually reaching enlightenment and bestowed the title the Buddha Victorious
Speaker 3: and Strife, symbolizing he's conquered the impulses of his own
Speaker 3: mind and he has awakened to immortal consciousness. So I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess, I guess that's.
Speaker 2: Like, that's the that's the story of Sun Wukong.
Speaker 3: It's insane, Like I didn't realize that it was actually
Speaker 3: I thought it was just a story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Didn't realize like it was actually real spiritual allegory.
Speaker 2: There's all another there's another bit of media that has
Speaker 2: a lot of parallels to this story, and it's one
Speaker 2: that we both recently watched. Monkey Man.
Speaker 3: Monkey Man. Yeah, no, it does.
Speaker 2: It's about it, dude. He climbed to the penthouse.
Speaker 1: Yeah he did.
Speaker 2: And yeah, sorry, yeah, oh sorry, Alex hasn't finished it yet,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I won't say I won't say much more.
Speaker 2: He freaking climbed it. There's a ton of parallels. That
Speaker 2: movie is more focused on Hanuman, right, which is.
Speaker 3: I don't know much about Hanuman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's another monkey.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 2: I think there's probably a ton of parallels. I didn't
Speaker 2: look specifically into that, to be honest.
Speaker 7: Creation and destruction, right, yeah, yeah, which I mean like
Speaker 7: could definitely represent Woukong, Like it's the Yin yang thing.
Speaker 2: It's the the ignorant impulse kind of version versus the
Speaker 2: enlightened version. It's it's I could see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that movie kind of shows that there was a
Speaker 3: couple things actually I didn't hit because I was like, dang,
Speaker 3: you know, you kind of hit the whole story here,
Speaker 3: and I don't want to rehash the whole thing. But
Speaker 3: what I didn't talk about yet was the White Dragon Horse.
Speaker 3: How he symbolizes willpower. He's transformed into a horse. He
Speaker 3: symbolizes the willpower and the strength needed to carry the
Speaker 3: burdens of life. He's Juan Jang Steed, and he represents determination, perseverance,
Speaker 3: you know, our need to fulfill the spiritual journey. Then
Speaker 3: you have like the symbolism of the demons and monsters,
Speaker 3: that's our internal and our external obstacles. Heaven and the
Speaker 3: Jade Emperor authority and order, because they saw in Confucian
Speaker 3: philosophy there's like an order to everything, you know, So
Speaker 3: the Jade Emperor it symbolizes like the cosmic order of
Speaker 3: the universe and divine authority, the bureaucratic nature of heaven.
Speaker 3: In the novel, obviously, the Journey to the West often
Speaker 3: mirrors the Confucian idea of order and hierarchy in society,
Speaker 3: and there's an imperfection in this authority. There's a flaw,
Speaker 3: there's a limitation of the rulers of heaven, you know
Speaker 3: classic Chinese thought which suggests that even divine authority is
Speaker 3: not infallible and that true enlightenment transcends earthly and even
Speaker 3: heavenly powers. So that's pretty cool. If we look at
Speaker 3: Wukong as an allegory for us, right the whole story,
Speaker 3: which he is, even we have the ability to become
Speaker 3: more enlightened than what we can even comprehend, even more
Speaker 3: than the powers that we can comprehend we have that
Speaker 3: that cosmic nature within us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we can.
Speaker 3: Go higher than those those realms that we can even imagine.
Speaker 3: Buddha and guanyin combastion and ultimate wisdom, the Buddha represents
Speaker 3: ultimate truth and enlightenment. His intervention in some Wukong's rebellion
Speaker 3: and his guidance of Juan Jiang's journey symbolized the guiding
Speaker 3: force of divine wisdom and overcoming ignorance and achieving spiritual awakening.
Speaker 3: And then you have guan yin the body Satfa of compassion,
Speaker 3: which I think a body Saffa as a being that
Speaker 3: attains like Buddha hood, you know, becomes enlightened cool. So
Speaker 3: there's many body saffas r right. Her role in recruiting
Speaker 3: the disciples and protecting the pilgrim reflects the importance of
Speaker 3: compassion and mercy in the spiritual journey. And then I
Speaker 3: think the last couple of things, the symbolism the scriptures,
Speaker 3: the search of spiritual knowledge, which we already talked about
Speaker 3: that the completion of the spiritual path. They complete the journey,
Speaker 3: you know, it ends, and it shows that the spiritual
Speaker 3: journey ends, and it brings the enlightenment back to the world.
Speaker 3: It suggests that the purpose of spiritual wisdom is not
Speaker 3: only personal salvation, but also the enlightenment of others. Sharing
Speaker 3: the scrolls with others, and then the cycle of sansara
Speaker 3: and constantly referencing people's past lives and their reincarnations that
Speaker 3: reflect the obvious Buddhist concept of samsara, the cycle of death, life, birth, rebirth,
Speaker 3: And it's the break free of this cycle. It's the
Speaker 3: symbolism of breaking free from this cycle, you know. So
Speaker 3: it's like again his first thought of how to achieve immortality, Well,
Speaker 3: maybe I would think to break free from the cycle
Speaker 3: of reincarnation. I don't know. That also sounds like gnosticism. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like, once you achieve nosis, you don't
Speaker 3: have to come back here anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly know, that is the end of the cycle
Speaker 2: according to narcissism, according to a few.
Speaker 3: Really right, like what the Egyptians say, once your heart
Speaker 3: is a you know, as light as a feather, you
Speaker 3: don't have to reincarnate anymore. So yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, that's basically the symbolism. What dude, I'm
Speaker 3: telling you, Man, this blew my mind because I've I've
Speaker 3: been aware of Wukong my whole life, but never looked
Speaker 3: at it through this lens.
Speaker 2: It is deep.
Speaker 3: I've looked at it through like media entertainment lens.
Speaker 2: So it is one of my very favorite mythologies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it makes playing the game that much better. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when you know some of this stuff, like when you
Speaker 3: start out as the Peach in the beginning, I didn't
Speaker 3: even have a thought about that, and then you know,
Speaker 3: seeing it through this lens, I'm like, oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like I want to replay the game after knowing a
Speaker 3: lot more of this stuff and like really look and
Speaker 3: be like how much of this you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like one of the first things that I saw
Speaker 2: because I was watching you play it and when you
Speaker 2: like respawd, there was a you rep spawned from a
Speaker 2: little hair. Or another thing was when you summoned clones
Speaker 2: of yourself, he would like pluck hairs off of himself
Speaker 2: and the hairs would become his clones. Because then your
Speaker 2: staff too. Yeah, because in the myth it says that
Speaker 2: son Wukong has eighty four thousand hairs all over his body,
Speaker 2: and each of them he can pluck them and transform
Speaker 2: them into anything. Like he can transform himself into anything.
Speaker 2: He's just like taking a little bit piece of himself
Speaker 2: and transforming it into whatever he wants.
Speaker 3: That just reminded me of something that the number seventy
Speaker 3: two was kind of symbolic in The Journey to the
Speaker 3: West because in an ancient philosophical way of thinking, like
Speaker 3: Wukong has seventy two transformations. Well, what he's getting at
Speaker 3: is it's limitless. Basically, it's such a big number, infinite. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean he can transform into anything. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: to us, maybe seventy two is a small number, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like in the Bible when it says seven
Speaker 2: times seventy exactly, it's like a huge number. It's exaggeration, yeah,
Speaker 2: but in real reality it really means infinite. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: because it describes in the novel in Journey to the West,
Speaker 2: like he can take the form of any any object
Speaker 2: or being in existence.
Speaker 3: Dude, he's in the eight trigrams of Laotzi's hell, yes,
Speaker 3: or something like that. Maybe it's not a cauldron, yeah,
Speaker 3: the cauldron, yeah, the crucible eight tragram palm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought the same thing.
Speaker 3: I saw that today.
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, all of Neggie's moves are eight
Speaker 2: trigrams something.
Speaker 3: Isn't it a yin yang in the middle of it?
Speaker 3: Or am tripping.
Speaker 2: Something like that? It might actually be a yin yang.
Speaker 2: It's it's something like that. But but yes, yes, eight trigrams.
Speaker 2: I thought the exact same thing, Bro.
Speaker 3: Eight trigram palm. I want to see if that's it's
Speaker 3: been many years since I've seen that. Yeah, since I've
Speaker 3: seen that technique even. Yeah, it's a yin yang in
Speaker 3: the center. So they're showing you Misashi Kishimoto. He's sewing
Speaker 3: you Chinese philosophy. So eight tragram Bro, it's literally a
Speaker 3: reference to Laosi in the eight trigram cauldron.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's all there's there's more like Journey to the
Speaker 2: West references than I realized. Sorrow toob with his staff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that turns into a monkey, a king, any.
Speaker 3: Named whatever that means.
Speaker 2: I wonder what I think that means monkey. Maybe I
Speaker 2: don't know. I could be completely wrong. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Japanese, well, I just had a little spoiler. Oh and
Speaker 3: Japanese mythology, Emma is the king of Buddhist hell, the
Speaker 3: judge of the after Oh, he judge is right and
Speaker 3: wrong after a person dies and goes to hell and
Speaker 3: you get many different types of punishment. That's it's the
Speaker 3: Japanese Lord of Death.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You just look around and you'll see so many
Speaker 2: things influenced by Journey to the West that you may
Speaker 2: not have ever known.
Speaker 3: He's derived from the Hindu god of the underworld, Yama,
Speaker 3: which Yama is the name in the story of Sun Wukong.
Speaker 2: Remember.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, wow, dude, it's like the more you see
Speaker 3: these connections, it's like, uh, I don't know, man.
Speaker 2: It really inspired and is still inspiring so much, thousands
Speaker 2: of years after being written, thousands and thousands of years
Speaker 2: after being written, it's still inspiring the stuff that we're
Speaker 2: watching and playing, and it's just it's really cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I thought you guys were gonna sit here and talk
Speaker 6: about a video game. And I've thoroughly enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 2: No, that was that was just one little piece of it,
Speaker 2: because no, I was just I just didn't I didn't
Speaker 2: know anything about this when you were talking about I
Speaker 2: never heard about this.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the coolest man. He's like sounds like it.
Speaker 2: He's like the og, Like.
Speaker 3: Just be careful when you go pe and on pillars.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, yeah, p and PVC pipes.
Speaker 6: Or anything that resembles a pillar, right right, dude, I
Speaker 6: can're everywhere.
Speaker 3: You gotta watch shout. I can't find the official title
Speaker 3: of this figure, but there's like a spokesperson for the
Speaker 3: Chinese government. I can't remember where her title was, but
Speaker 3: I saw the video and.
Speaker 2: It's real, dude, the Great Sage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Gwan Yin.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But she was doing like a public press conference and
Speaker 3: she was just saying, I don't know much about video games,
Speaker 3: but this new game Black Myth that came out as
Speaker 3: a testament to the the what was the word she used,
Speaker 3: It was like basically, it's a testament to the significance
Speaker 3: of Chinese culture. So, dude, like this game comes out
Speaker 3: and within days you literally have people in the Chinese
Speaker 3: government being like, I'm the Great Sage, Equald have Heaven.
Speaker 3: You know, our game is impacting. It's just cool, like
Speaker 3: the fact that they're giving an official press conference about
Speaker 3: this significant cultural achievement, you know, like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it should It cannot be understated how huge
Speaker 2: Journey to the West is. It's it's one of the
Speaker 2: very most famous mythologies of all time and one of
Speaker 2: the most impactful as we've covered today. Thank you for
Speaker 2: joining folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll have to find this this lady later, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I hope you guys enjoyed this one.
Speaker 2: I had a lot of fun. I still want to
Speaker 2: read it, that's my boy. Yes, I would too. I'd
Speaker 2: like to as well. There are actually a few versions,
Speaker 2: and many years ago I read like an even older
Speaker 2: version because in the sixteenth century it was transcribed into
Speaker 2: a full novel, one hundred chapter novel. But before then
Speaker 2: it was like a much, much shorter poem. It was
Speaker 2: like wow, And I read that version many years ago,
Speaker 2: before that it was passed down orally.
Speaker 3: Listen to how this reads, dude, this is just the
Speaker 3: very beginning. It's beautiful, Like I really want to read this.
Speaker 2: Man, I do too. I was thinking about going to
Speaker 2: the library and seeing if they have a copy.
Speaker 3: Well, from what I understand, it's in four different volumes,
Speaker 3: so you would like physical copy wise, or you could
Speaker 3: get like I saw today, you could get each of
Speaker 3: the four volumes for like three bucks apiece on Kendle,
Speaker 3: you know. But listen to this. Let me find the
Speaker 3: part where it talks about him being born. It talks
Speaker 3: about the creation of the universe and how it's like
Speaker 3: different thousand, multi thousand years cycles, twelve cycles of the
Speaker 3: cosmic cycle, and that's a pretty cool part. But I
Speaker 3: want to see, Oh, here goes. There was once a
Speaker 3: magic stone on top of the mountain, which was thirty
Speaker 3: six feet five inches high and twenty four feet round.
Speaker 3: It was thirty six feet inches high to correspond with
Speaker 3: the three hundred and sixty five degrees of the heavens,
Speaker 3: and twenty four feet round to match the twenty four
Speaker 3: divisions of the solar calendar. On top of it were
Speaker 3: nine apertures and eight holes for the nine palaces and
Speaker 3: eight trigrams. There were no trees around it to give shade,
Speaker 3: but magic fungus and orchids clung to its sides. Ever
Speaker 3: since creation began, it had been receiving the truth of heaven,
Speaker 3: the beauty of Earth, the essence of the Sun, and
Speaker 3: the splendor of the moon, and as it had been
Speaker 3: influenced by them for so long, it had miraculous powers.
Speaker 3: It developed a magic womb, which burst open one day
Speaker 3: to produce a stone egg about the size of a ball.
Speaker 3: When the wind blew on this egg, it turned into
Speaker 3: a stone monkey, complete with the five senses and four limbs.
Speaker 3: When the stone monk he had learned to crawl and walk,
Speaker 3: he bowed to each of the four quarters. As his
Speaker 3: eyes moved. Two beams of golden light shot towards the
Speaker 3: Pole Star Palace and startled the Supreme Heavenly Sage, the
Speaker 3: greatly compassionate Jade Emperor of the Asser Vault of Heaven,
Speaker 3: who was sitting surrounded by his immortal ministers on his
Speaker 3: throne in the Hall of Miraculous Mist in the golden
Speaker 3: gated Cloud Palace. When he saw the dazzling golden light,
Speaker 3: he ordered one thousand mile eye and wind accompanying ear
Speaker 3: to open the southern gate of Heaven and take a look.
Speaker 3: The two officers went out through the gate in obedience
Speaker 3: to the imperial command, and while one observed what was
Speaker 3: going on, the other list and carefully. Soon afterwards they
Speaker 3: reported back, in obedience to the imperial mandate. Your subjects
Speaker 3: observed and listened to the source of the golden light.
Speaker 3: We found that at the edge of the country of Aoli,
Speaker 3: which in ancient times they had different names for you know, countries,
Speaker 3: and some of them were just mythological. In the country
Speaker 3: of Aoli, which is east of the ocean, belonging to
Speaker 3: the eastern continent of Superior Body, there is an island
Speaker 3: called the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. A magic stone
Speaker 3: on the top of this mountain produced a magic egg,
Speaker 3: and when the wind blew on this egg, it turned
Speaker 3: into a stone monkey, which bound to the east to
Speaker 3: each of the four quarters. When he moved his eyes,
Speaker 3: golden light shot towards the Pole Star palace. But now
Speaker 3: he is eating and drinking, and the golden light is
Speaker 3: gradually dying. And his benevolence and mercy, the Jade Emperor said,
Speaker 3: creatures down below are born of the essence of the
Speaker 3: heaven and earth. There is nothing remarkable about him. On
Speaker 3: his mountain, the monkey was soon able to run a
Speaker 3: jump feet from plants and trees, and then he goes
Speaker 3: on to be a normal monkey. But how beautiful was that?
Speaker 2: It's gorgeous.
Speaker 3: It was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it reads.
Speaker 3: So it reads like a modern novel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually interesting to read.
Speaker 3: It's not like some exactly, it's not like some boring
Speaker 3: you know, old mythological text that you have to bore through.
Speaker 3: But it's bro this is like an anime.
Speaker 2: It's awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like reading like Lord of the Rings or something.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's an epic. Yeah, it feels like reading Lord
Speaker 2: of the Rings or fantasy novel.
Speaker 3: I definitely want to read it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Same, I want to check out. I still haven't
Speaker 2: been to the library here, so I want to go.
Speaker 3: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It's you know, there's a couple I want to I
Speaker 2: want to go check it out and see if they
Speaker 2: have it. I'll check it out and read it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been to the one downtown. I have to
Speaker 3: check it out.
Speaker 2: I'll have to check it. Wow, dude, it's been a minute.
Speaker 3: It's been a minute. But I will actually have to
Speaker 3: check that one out. Yeah, it's cool. You guys feeling good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude.
Speaker 3: You ready to wrap up this journey to the West.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's wrap it up all right? Bye yard, Bye Piggsy.
Speaker 1: Happened in the backyard. Piggy my favorite character, like smiring
Speaker 1: on the inside of it.
Speaker 2: No one knows that.
Speaker 5: Wow, let's come for I ever did sigh
Speaker 2: At happy