My Transformation: After Five Hundred Years, Still a True Man

A casual wager from the Buddha, a heavy shackle, and this unruly stone monkey who dared to challenge heaven was trapped inside a dark mountain belly for five hundred years.

At the bottom of that lightless mountain, only endless loneliness and despair wrapped around him. He once cursed fate for its injustice toward the mountains, hated the Heavenly Court’s hypocrisy and cunning, and hated the Buddha’s step-by-step schemes. But as the days and years passed in endless stillness, the sharp edges on his body were eventually worn down little by little by time.

The faint light leaking in from the mountain bottom, the stubborn weeds growing from cracks in the stone, the occasional injured eagle flying past, the smoke and bustle of the people below, their joys and sorrows, a scholar’s passing advice, a traveling monk’s Buddhist words—all of them were like strands of warm sunlight, little by little knocking at his long-frozen heart.

Over those five hundred years, he watched dynasties rise and fall and witnessed the sorrows and joys of all living beings. From that arrogant rebel who looked down on everything, he slowly transformed into a cultivator who held compassion in his heart. He let go of the resentment in his mind and began to devote himself to inner cultivation, using mountain stone as his seat and Buddhist law as his lamp. In solitude, he reflected on his former arrogance and slowly grew through silent redemption, quietly waiting for the fate of the pilgrim who would come for the scriptures.

When Xuanzang’s hoofbeats pierced the forest and Wuxing Mountain crashed apart, all the shackles on his body vanished. The me who had been tempered for five hundred years laid down every attachment of the past, bowed and entered Xuanzang’s sect, and set foot on the road to the Western Heaven to seek the scriptures. This redemption, delayed by five hundred years, is a legend of becoming clear after unruliness and of rebirth after confinement, and within it lies the most moving steadfastness and growth of those five hundred years.