First of all, in "Journey to the West", whether it is the queen of the human kingdom, the female benefactor, or the female demon or the female goblin, they are quite a bit of posture, but the Tang monks can always resist in the face of the temptation of beauty, which is the difference between the monk and the ordinary person.
However, Tang Monk was also a flesh and blood body, in fact, he also endured a lot of suffering. For example, in the fifty-fifth episode of "Journey to the West", after the daughter country was destroyed by the scorpion spirit, it is written in the book: This elder clenched his teeth and could not make a sound. If you want to stay, I am afraid that he will be killed, so I have to tremble and follow him into the incense room, but I am dumbfounded, where I look up, and I have not seen what bed and curtains are in his room, nor do I know what kind of cages and makeup there are, and the rain and clouds that the female monster said were also indifferent. Good monk, really that...
Scorpion Spirit and Tang Monk
There are many places in books like this.
Someone summed it up: "Male yokai all want to eat Tang monk meat, and female goblins all want to marry Tang monks", it seems that female yokai are greedy for Tang monks' beauty. In fact, to put it bluntly, the purpose of the female goblin and The Tang monk to become relatives is to seize the "Yuanyang" of the Tang monk, which is not essentially different from eating the meat of the Tang monk. However, because it is the gender color of "female goblin", it gives people unlimited reverie.
From this point of view, tang monks "clenched their teeth" and vowed not to obey, in addition to fearing "breaking the vows", there is a more important factor is the loss of "Yuanyang".
The only exception that may not want to take the Tang monk "Yuanyang" is the king of the daughter country. When the Tang monks wrote about the daughter country, they wrote the daughter country as a "human kingdom", and did not write the queen in the direction of the goblin, which may be the reason for this exception.
Queen of the Daughter Kingdom
The Queen and the Tang Monks
In addition, from a Buddhist point of view, the Tang monk himself is a "holy monk", a senior monk, and he has received sufficient ordination. The so-called full abstinence can be difficult to repair! For bhikkhus, there are as many as two hundred and fifty precepts. In the eyes of our secular people, so many precepts are really tedious, but we must see the effect of the precepts on the exercise of a monk's willpower. This exercise of willpower is embodied in a senior monk, that is, he can restrain himself and control himself more than ordinary people.
Of course, it is even more necessary to see the firmness and persistence of the Tang monks in the matter of taking the scriptures. In the whole "Journey to the West", Tang Monk has some shortcomings such as unclear right and wrong, cowardice and incompetence, timidity and fear of things, but he has never had two hearts for "westward travel". Regardless of whether Tang Monk had just escaped from the mouth of the demon or rescued him from the goblin cave room, Tang Monk immediately asked the three disciples to pack up and continue on the path of learning the scriptures. And the series of shortcomings of the Tang monk I mentioned earlier, and then compared with his tenacity in taking the scriptures, does not it set off his firmness in taking the scriptures?
Jade rabbit essence
Apricot fairy
This is in the case of Journey to the West.
If we broaden our horizons and look at the original Master Xuanzang of the Tang monks, we can find that in terms of their determination to learn the scriptures, the Tang monks and Xuanzang are in agreement. Of course, Xuanzang's performance on the westward journey was far more tortuous and difficult than that of Tang Monk. In "Journey to the West", the main difficulty of the Tang monks is to deal with various demons and ghosts, and the difficulties that Xuanzang has to face on the way west are more diverse and complex than the so-called "eighty-one difficulties", and they are more difficult to deal with, not to mention that many times Master Xuanzang is alone. But Xuanzang never flinched! Therefore, Tang Taizong later commented on Xuanzang's taking of the scriptures in four words, that is, "Labor is light and sincere."
Xuanzang nine died in his lifetime, and after nineteen years before and after his westward journey to take the scriptures, was Xuanzang really "labor light"? This is certainly not true! However, Xuanzang's suffering on the westward journey was "light" compared to his spirit of "one heart to the west"! Indeed, without Xuanzang's spirit of "putting death in the ground and reborn", it would have been almost impossible to accomplish such a great deed.
Lu Xun said in "Have Chinese Lost Self-Confidence": Since ancient times, we have had people who buried their heads in hard work, people who worked hard, people who petitioned for the people, and people who sacrificed their lives to seek the law... Although it is equivalent to the so-called "correct history" of the emperors and generals, they often cannot hide their glory, which is the backbone of China.
There is no doubt that there must be Xuanzang in this!