One of the wishes of many immortal cultivators in the world of Journey to the West is to "beyond the Three Realms and not in the Five Elements" and obtain the extraordinary ability to survive forever. But throughout Journey to the West, there is no explanation of what the Three Realms and Five Elements mentioned here are. Both Taoism and Buddhism have the concept of the Three Realms, and their composition and meaning are similar. The Five Elements is a concept in traditional Chinese culture. Taoism has also absorbed this concept and deepened it to derive richer meanings. According to Taoism and Buddhism, the three realms are the realm of desire, the realm of color and the realm of formlessness. The three realms mentioned in Journey to the West are somewhat different from those of Taoism and Buddhism. In most cases, they refer to the heaven, the human world and the netherworld. The following introduces the specific situation of the Three Realms in the world of Journey to the West.
Heaven
The composition of the world of Journey to the West is relatively vague. From the four major continents of the human world, it is obvious that this is a Buddhist world, but from the perspective of heaven and the netherworld The setting is another Taoist world. The structure of the world of Journey to the West is roughly as follows: from top to bottom, there are heaven, human world and netherworld. Judging from the contents of the book, there should be nine heavens in the heaven above, but only Lihentian, Shangqingtian and Thirty-Three Heavens appear in the book. The human world in the middle is more complicated. The part between the human world and the heavenly world should have some residences for gods, such as the Moon Palace, some star kings and other gods. The human world has four continents and four oceans as well as some overseas fairy mountains. In the human world, there will be many City God Temples, Earth Temples and other auxiliary institutions that are affiliated with the Nether World. Regarding the situation in the netherworld, the book mentions places like the Ten Palaces of Hell, the City of Undeserved Death, and the Eighteen Hells in Chinese folklore.
Lihentian in the heaven is above Thirty-three Heavens, Taishang Laojun’s Tusita Palace is above Lihentian, apart from that Lihentian did not mention anything else . Shangqingtian is where Yuanshi Tianzun, one of the Three Pure Ones, is located. His Miluo Palace is in Shangqingtian, but the specific location of Shangqingtian is not mentioned in the book. Maybe it is a certain level among the nine heavens. The Thirty-Three Heavens is the most important part of the heaven in Journey to the West, where all the gods and the Jade Emperor and Queen Mother basically live. There are many palaces in the thirty-three days, where the gods handle various affairs. The Jade Emperor's Lingxiao Palace, the Queen Mother's Yaochi, and King Li Tian's Yunlou Palace are all here. Some of these places are rather vague. For example, there is a Sun Palace in the thirty-three days, and it is estimated that there should also be a Lunar Palace. The Taiyin Palace should be the place of the Taiyin Star Lord, but the Taiyin Star Lord also has another place, the Moon Palace. The Moon Palace should be under the Thirty-three Heavens and above the human world. So which god will live in the Taiyin Palace? The thirty-three lunar palace may be his office.
The Thirty-Three Heavens are called the Traitor Heaven in Buddhism and are the second heaven in the Desire Realm. There are six heavens in the Buddhist Desire Realm, namely the Four Heavens, the Trayastry Heaven, the Yamo Heaven, the Tusita Heaven, the Transformation Heaven, and the Other Transformation Heaven. In Journey to the West, the Four Heavenly Kings were directly simplified into the Four Heavenly Kings, who went to guard the Nantian Gate for the Jade Emperor. When Sun Wukong went to heaven many times, he would basically meet one of the four heavenly kings. Maybe they took turns guarding the four heavenly gates. The Buddhist Trayashatra is Emperor Shakti, which is equivalent to the Jade Emperor in Journey to the West, but does not have as much power and power as the Jade Emperor. Therefore, the heaven in the world of Journey to the West is also a simplified version of heaven, much simpler than the Buddhist twenty-eighth heaven and the Taoist thirty-sixth heaven.
The Human World
The human world in Journey to the West mainly consists of four continents and four oceans. The four major continents are Dongshengshenzhou, Nanfanbuzhou, Xiniuhezhou and Beijuluzhou; the four seas are the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the West Sea and the North Sea. In addition to human dynasties, there are various blessed places, caves, and heavens in the human world, as well as fairyland and paradise. For example, the Great Leiyin Temple where Tathagata is located is located in the scenic spot of Lingshan in Hezhou, Xiniu. The Purple Bamboo Forest in Luojia Mountain in the South China Sea where Guanyin Bodhisattva is located is also in the human world. The overseas Three Immortal Islands including Penglai Island where the Three Stars of Fushoulu are located are also in the human world. . Therefore, the human world in Journey to the West is rather strange. It is mixed with many caves and paradises that are connected to the human world. Although these heavenly paradises are in the human world, they are different from the human world. They belong to another time and space and are not accessible to ordinary people.
Although the Four Continents look like Buddhist settings, the Four Continents here are not the same as those of Buddhism, and there are many things missing here. Mount Sumeru, located at the center of the world, is missing. Mount Sumeru is the core of the Buddhist world, equivalent to the Taoist Kunlun Mountain. It is the core of the human world. The four major Buddhist continents are distributed in the four directions of southeast, northwest and southeast with Mount Sumeru as the center, separated from Mount Sumeru by the sea. In addition to the four major continents, each continent has two middle continents and many small continents. The four major continents are not connected, but Nanfangbu Continent and Xiniu Hezhou in Journey to the West are connected. Tang Monk traveled westward and arrived at Xiniu Hezhou without crossing the sea, so the human world in Journey to the West was greatly simplified.
Epilogue
As for the Netherworld book, there is not much said about it, so I won’t go into details here. In short, the world of Journey to the West is a simplified world that integrates Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. It is much smaller and simpler than the huge world constructed by Buddhism and Taoism. The world of Journey to the West has not built anything beyond the Three Realms, so the vision of "beyond the Three Realms and not within the Five Elements" pursued by the immortals does not have a physical space to realize their ideals. Therefore, what they say is "beyond the Three Realms and not in the Five Elements" is only beyond life and death. They themselves are still active in the Three Realms.