Xuanzang Quotes

What benefit have the Hindus derived from their contact with Christian nations? The idea generally prevalent in this country about the morality and truthfulness of the Hindus evidently has been very low. Such seeds of enmity and hatred have been sown by the missionaries that it would be an almost Herculean task to establish better relations between India and America... If we examine Greek, Chinese, Persian, or Arabian writings on the Hindus, before foreigners invaded India, we find an impartial description of their national character. Megasthenes, the famous Greek ambassador, praises them for their love of truth and justice, for the absence of slavery, and for the chastity of their women. Arrian, in the second century, Hiouen-thsang, the famous Buddhist pilgrim in the seventh century, Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, have written in highest terms of praise of Hindu morality. The literature and philosophy of Ancient India have excited the admiration of all scholars, except Christian missionaries.

Because it wasn’t enough to be accompanied by the beast who scared the crap out of every god in Heaven, Xuanzang was assigned a few more traveling companions. The gluttonous pig-man Zhu Baijie. Sha Wujing, the repentant sand demon. And the Dragon Prince of the West Sea, who took the form of a horse for Xuanzang to ride. The five adventurers, thusly gathered, set off on their— “Holy ballsacks!” I yelped. I dropped the book like I’d been bitten. “How far did you get?” Quentin said. He was leaning against the end of the nearest shelf, as casually as if he’d been there the whole time, waiting for this moment. I ignored that he’d snuck up on me again, just this once. There was a bigger issue at play. In the book was an illustration of the group done up in bold lines and bright colors. There was Sun Wukong at the front, dressed in a beggar’s cassock, holding his Ruyi Jingu Bang in one hand and the reins of the Dragon Horse in the other. A scary-looking pig-faced man and a wide-eyed demon monk followed, carrying the luggage. And perched on top of the horse was . . . me. The artist had tried to give Xuanzang delicate, beatific features and ended up with a rather girly face. By whatever coincidence, the drawing of Sun Wukong’s old master could have been a rough caricature of sixteen-year-old Eugenia Lo from Santa Firenza, California. “That’s who you think I am?” I said to Quentin. “That’s who I know you are,” he answered. “My dearest friend. My boon companion. You’ve reincarnated into such a different form, but I’d recognize you anywhere. Your spiritual energies are unmistakable.” “Are you sure? If you’re from a long time ago, maybe your memory’s a little fuzzy.” “The realms beyond Earth exist on a different time scale,” Quentin said. “Only one day among the gods passes for every human year. To me, you haven’t been gone long. Months, not centuries.” “This is just . . . I don’t know.” I took a moment to assemble my words. “You can’t walk up to me and expect me to believe right away that I’m the reincarnation of some legendary monk from a folk tale.” “Wait, what?” Quentin squinted at me in confusion. “I said you can’t expect me to go, ‘okay, I’m Xuanzang,’ just because you tell me so.” Quentin’s mouth opened slowly like the dawning of the sun. His face went from confusion to understanding to horror and then finally to laughter. “mmmmphhhhghAHAHAHAHA!” he roared. He nearly toppled over, trying to hold his sides in. “HAHAHAHA!” “What the hell is so funny?” “You,” Quentin said through his giggles. “You’re not Xuanzang. Xuanzang was meek and mild. A friend to all living things. You think that sounds like you?” It did not. But then again I wasn’t the one trying to make a case here. “Xuanzang was delicate like a chrysanthemum.” Quentin was getting a kick out of this. “You are so tough you snapped the battleaxe of the Mighty Miracle God like a twig. Xuanzang cried over squashing a mosquito. You, on the other hand, have killed more demons than the Catholic Church.” I was starting to get annoyed. “Okay, then who the hell am I supposed to be?” If he thought I was the pig, then this whole deal was off. “You’re my weapon,” he said. “You’re the Ruyi Jingu Bang.” I punched Quentin as hard as I could in the face.

Xuanzang, the seventh-century Chinese monk and scholar, accomplished the amazing feat of journeying to India, bringing back sacred Buddhist texts, and translating them into Chinese. The priest Zenkai devoted the final thirty years of his life to chiseling through rock to create a cliff-side tunnel for worshipers. A dictionary is a repository of human wisdom not because it contains an accumulation of words but because it embodies true hope, wrought over time by indomitable spirits.

In recent years the number of Chinese (and particularly Taiwanese) pilgrims visiting the Buddhist holy sites in India has reached unprecedented heights: today at Bodh Gaya pilgrims from China and Taiwan now outnumber all the others put together. On arrival, they are greeted by a large statue of Xuanzang, striding towards Nalanda with a backpack full of scrolls, a small memorial to an often forgotten time when the Chinese looked towards India for guidance and inspiration.

It was these holy men and women who began the process of bringing their enormously popular brand of Hindu devotion to the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, which since the time of Ashoka had been dominated by the more austere Buddhists and Jains, and before that the cult of warrior heroes and megaliths. According to Xuanzang, in his time the Pallava capital of Kanchipuram was still one of the main Buddhist centres in India, with thousands of monks and a scholarly reputation that Xuanzang said was second only to that of Nalanda.12

I flipped through Xuanzang's records almost 1400 years later, and thought that the written word was a fragile truth. His records were meticulous, but there was a vastness left unsaid. There were spools of thought that fell through the cracks and were swallowed by time. I hungered to know if he ever lost sight of is training, if on empty mountain roads loneliness crept into the sides of his mind till he thought he was mad, if in foreign marketplaces he succumbed to desire or greed or temper.

Xuanzang was right. An Indic florescence had spread Sanskrit language, Indian art and Brahmin and Buddhist religions right across east Asia from as early as the Bactrian Greek kings, with their Shiva and Krishna coins. The spread of this Indosphere had intensified under the influence of a Hindu dynasty in northern India, the Guptas,[*4] but their glory was short-lived.

The alliance of Xuanzang and the future Empress Wu Zetian would in time transform Buddhism into the Chinese state religion and bring Buddhism to greater influence than it had ever previously achieved at the Chinese court. It also brought Indian and Chinese thought into closer alignment than at any other period of history. Never again would India have such influence at the heart of the Chinese world.

Xuanzang meanwhile established a Centre for Sutra Translation within his monastery with a team of assistants that he recruited specially with the Emperor’s patronage: twelve versifiers, nine stylists, a philologist and a specialist in Indian languages and literature. He also successfully petitioned the Emperor for a Nalanda-like Tower of Sanskrit Scriptures to protect the manuscripts he had brought back with him.

In the sixth month of 649 the Emperor’s condition suddenly worsened. Xuanzang moved into the palace and, as Taizong neared the end, the traveller monk was close by his side, chanting his mantras. But despite the prayers and the power of Xuanzang’s much venerated Buddhist relics, Taizong continued to sink. He was dead before the end of the month.12

In this way it would be possible to trace a faint line from the Buddhist argument method via Ibn Sina/Avicenna to the medieval scholasticism of the early universities. If this is right, the ghost of Xuanzang’s beloved Yogacara Buddhist texts can be seen lurking somewhere in the background of many of the most important ideas and arguments underpinning western thought during the Middle Ages.54