The Buddha stretched out his palm and said: “If you have the ability to jump out of my palm with a somersault, I will persuade the Jade Emperor to go to the west and give you his position.” Sun Wukong did not know that it was a trap, and he was quite happy. He put his golden hoop staff in his ear, lightly jumped, and stood on the Buddha’s palm, shouting: “I’m going!”
A somersault, and he was gone.
Sun Wukong rode on the clouds and flew forward like a flash. Suddenly he saw five red pillars in front of him. He thought that this must be the edge of the sky, and the pillars must be used to support the sky. He stopped there. He was afraid that he would have no proof when he went back to see the Buddha, so he plucked a hair from his body, turned it into a pen, and wrote eight big characters on the middle pillar: “The Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here.”
After putting away his hair, he ran to the first pillar and peed on it. Then he drove his somersault cloud back to the Buddha’s palm and said: “If you keep your word, hurry up and tell the Jade Emperor to give up his position!” The Buddha said that Sun Wukong had never left his palm. Sun Wukong was unconvinced and asked the Buddha to go and see the evidence he left at the edge of the sky.
The Buddha did not go. He asked Sun Wukong to look at his right middle finger and smell his thumb root. Sun Wukong opened his fiery eyes and saw that there were the eight characters he wrote on the Buddha’s right middle finger, and there was still some stinky smell of monkey urine on his thumb root. Sun Wukong was shocked and said: “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it at all. I wrote those words on the pillars that support the sky, how come they are on your hand? Let me go and see again.”
