Five Hundred Years Later, Wukong Doesn’t Want to Become a Buddha

In the four hundred and ninety-first year beneath Five Elements Mountain,

Sun Wukong chewed on a green-skinned mountain peach.

In a crack in the stone, four hundred and ninety-one peach pits were stacked in neat rows.

Guanyin came to ask, “Will you come with me?”

He said, “You didn’t ask if I wanted to.”

Later, a monk arrived.

A pig, a silent, towering man, and a dragon with white hair covering its body.

And a toothless creature, with the wind of scripture hidden within it.

They traveled west together,

without fighting monsters, becoming gods, or attaining Buddhahood.

They simply walked.

They walked through the silence of Five Elements Mountain,

through the broken reveries of Gao Village,

through the sands and sutras of Yellow Wind Ridge.

Five hundred years later, Wukong had no wish to become a Buddha.

He only wanted to take this band of broken souls

along a road with no end,

and keep walking.