Let's Talk Mythology and Folklore

Asleep. I've been asleep for so long. Years? Decades? Centuries? I cannot tell. What else can I do trapped beneath a mountain? I sleep. And I dream. I dream of my life before this imprisonment. I dream of the day that I emerged from a stone, high atop the Mountain of Flowers and Fruits. I dream of the simple life that I had among my ape brethren. Of the days of joy before they made me their king. I remember the day that I became the King of the Monkeys. I remember the great waterfall and the secret cavern behind it. I wish I knew back then where my ambition would lead me. Most often I dream about immortality. I dream of the fateful day when I decided that I would not be constrained by the mortality of a living being. I remember it clearly. Too clearly. It always brings me pain. I remember how, on that day, I witnessed the deaths of my friends for the first time. I saw the pain and misery on their families' faces. That day I made a vow to become imm...

A really, really, big hand... Gosh darn it. I knew that Sun was generating too many complaints to the Lord of Heavens. "I had just been thinking I ought to pay Heaven a visit some time..." What a sentence. I guess it's a testament to Sun's power (and arrogance?) that he thinks he can just casually visit Heaven? He's definitely still excitable. The Lord of the Heavens seems to be a rather patient person. This is another instance in which Sun has yet to learn the rules of a polite society. He may soon regret that. So why exactly does Sun take so well to every task that he attempts? He learns them really quickly and (for the most part) seems to excel at and enjoy even the more mundane things. Sun is very prideful and he knows what he wants.  When he saught immortality, he rejected the lessons of the master until he could learn the secrets of immortality. Now he is face to face with literal gods and can't help but to demand a better position or mor...

Or monkey as the case may be... These are some long-living monkeys. Even though the Handsome Monkey King fears death, it seems like he's already lived a pretty long and happy life. It's really interesting that there is such an importance of Buddhism in this story, even though Buddhism originated in India and spread to China. The story says that only three beings are exempt from death: The gods The spirits And....the Buddhas? I guess they're really talking about exemption from the cycle of death and rebirth. I like how the king does not take a large number of subjects or a retinue or anything with him. It's just him on his travels. Very hermit or sage-like. This is, of course, immediately contrasted by the fact that he assaults and robs the first person he sees. But it seems that he learns more or less the "rules" of polite society immediately following this transgression.  That naming was kind of anti-climactic. I feel like a retelling cou...