Journey to the West

There is a Chinese story which wrote by an author call Wu Cheng En. The story’s name is Journey to the West. For most of the Chinese, it is a very well-known story. No matter you are kids or an adult, if you are a Chinese, you will have read Journey to the West before. The story is about a monk from china wanted to go to somewhere around India to get some kind of sutra, he believe that the power of the sutra can bring harmony life to all the people in the world. In his journey, he met his three principles in sequence which helped him all the way to the west from east, helping him to kill all the monsters which try to stop them to the way of journey.

The first principle of the monk is called the monkey king. He is the mightiest one among all the three, he fight all monsters who try to harm the monk. The second principle is a swine, he is lazy and he likes to flatter his master. The third principle is a good guy, his mind is as pure as a white paper. Due to the monkey king likes to fight, he always act a bit fierce and this is not so agree by his master. So that his master do not like him so much at the beginning. The master like the second principle because of his flattering skill.

Actually this story is reflecting the old days of china. The master is actually reflecting to the emperors of old days China. The monkey king reflecting to the good officer which always helping the emperor by saying all the weak point of the emperor. Therefore, officers like this doesn’t like by the emperors since people just like to listen to sweet and nice things. While the second principle is like those officers who just keep flatter with the emperor in order to get a good and wealthy life.

In our life, there will always be people like the first and second principle. Therefore, we need to interpret while other are talking to us. Sweet and nice words does not really mean the exact thing while criticism sometimes really work on us although they are not so nice for the one who being criticize to listen.

By Leong Shong Hon