The was not surprised to see him. The Buddha is never surprised; that is part of what he is. But he received the weeping monkey with a particular gentleness, because a Sun Wukong who has climbed all the way to Vulture Peak and admitted he cannot do it alone is a different creature from the one who was pinned under a mountain here five hundred years ago for insisting he could do anything, and the Buddha, who had watched the whole long sanding-down of that pride from the beginning, knew exactly what it had cost the monkey to make this particular climb.
told him about the three kings, and the swallowed kingdom, and the roc that was cleverer than he was, and asked — not demanded, asked — for help, because there was no one higher to ask and nothing left to try.
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