Rulai Fozu- Chinese GodDeity"Tathagata Buddha"

The Buddha of Lingshan

Rulai Fozu sits atop Lingshan, Spirit Mountain, preaching the dharma from a lotus throne to an assembly of bodhisattvas and arhats. His name combines Rulai (the Chinese rendering of Tathagata, "Thus-Come One") with Fozu (Buddha Patriarch). In the Journey to the West, he is the being whose single palm contains the entire universe, whose authority surpasses even the Jade Emperor's celestial government. In the Fengshen Yanyi, he appears under the name Jieyin Daoren, the Guiding Daoist, wielding powers that even the greatest Daoist immortals cannot match.

The Palm

When Sun Wukong declared himself the Great Sage Equal to Heaven and defeated every army the Jade Emperor sent against him, the emperor petitioned Rulai for help.

Rulai arrived at the gates of heaven and proposed a wager. If the Monkey King could leap out of his right palm in a single somersault, he would concede heaven to him. Sun Wukong accepted. His cloud-somersault carried him 108,000 li, and he arrived at five great pillars at the edge of the world. He wrote his name on one and urinated at the base of another to mark his presence, then somersaulted back to claim victory.

Rulai showed him that the five pillars were his five fingers. The writing and the stench were still there. Before Wukong could move, Rulai turned his palm over and pushed the Monkey King out through the Western Gate of Heaven, transforming his fingers into Five Elements Mountain. He sealed it with a golden strip inscribed with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum. Sun Wukong would remain there for five hundred years.

The Golden Cicada

Among Rulai's foremost disciples was Jin Chanzi, the Golden Cicada, who sat at the front of the assembly at Lingshan. During a sermon, Jin Chanzi fell asleep. Rulai punished him with exile, sentencing him to ten successive reincarnations in the mortal world.

In his tenth life, Jin Chanzi was born as Chen Yi, who became the monk Xuanzang. The journey west would be his trial of redemption: a fallen disciple walking back to the mountain he had been cast from.

The Blank Scrolls

Rulai chose Guanyin to travel east and find a pilgrim worthy of retrieving the scriptures. She went, and along the road she gathered the disgraced celestial beings who would guard Xuanzang on his journey west.

After eighty-one tribulations and fourteen years of travel, the pilgrims reached Lingshan. They crossed the Cloud-Transcending Stream on a bottomless ferry piloted by a boatman who was Rulai himself. Xuanzang watched his own mortal body float away in the water.

At the Great Thunder Monastery, Rulai instructed his disciples Ananda and Kasyapa to present the scriptures. When Ananda asked for a gift and Xuanzang had nothing to offer, they handed over blank scrolls. The Dipankara Buddha alerted the pilgrims to the deception. Rulai, when they returned, remarked that the blank scrolls were actually the wordless scriptures, the true dharma beyond language, but that the people of the East were too foolish to appreciate them. He ordered the written scriptures given instead.

Xuanzang was elevated to Candana Merit Buddha. Sun Wukong became the Victorious Fighting Buddha. The monkey who had tried to leap out of the Buddha's palm now sat in his assembly as a Buddha himself.