Explore "The Journey to the West" by Cheng'en Wu on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Our Buddha makes scriptures to impart ultimate bliss; / Guanyin receives the decree to go up to Chang'an.1 / Ask at meditation-pass / Why even countless queries / Would lead just to empty old age! / Shine bricks to make mirrors? / Hoard snow for foodstuff? 2 / How many youths are thus deceived; / A feather swallows the great ocean? / A mustard seed holds the Sumeru? 3 / Golden Dhūta is gently smiling.4 / The enlightened transcends the ten stops5 and three wains6 / Sluggards must join the four beasts and six ways.7 / Who can hear below the Thoughtless Cliff, / Beneath the Shadowless Tree, / The cuckoo's one call for the dawn of spring? / Roads at Caoxi, perilous; 8 / Clouds on Vulture's Peak, dense; 9 / Here an old friend's voice turns mute.
At a ten thousand-foot waterfall / Where a five-petal lotus unfolds, / Incense wraps an old temple's drapes.