On our trip to the Met one thing that particularly stood out to me was the fact that artistic designs followed conquers to the many places they went to. One example of this was when Alexander the Great traveled to Asia he brought Greek artists with him. So the use of sea serpents like in the artwork Lunette the Serpents can be found in artwork all the way in Pakistan. We see sea serpents in the dish with marine creature and couple. Its interesting because Pakistan is a landlocked country so obviously the Greek artists influenced Pakistan’s art because the people who lived there were never exposed to marine animals.

At the Rubin Museum we saw an exhibit which has the Fifty Four Paintings that show the Purification of the All Bad Rebirths Tantra. This set of paintings shows the stages of the ritual of the All-Knowing Buddha Vairochana. There are six groups of paintings within the set but the third stood out to me the most. The third step of this ritual is “Imagining Oneself As The Deity” which contain leaves 17-29. Leaf 17 shows how the man following this ritual sits on a lotus and above him is the Vairochana. The man is envisioning himself as a deity and is reciting the mantras. This painting really stuck out to me because of the beautiful colors and I thought it was interesting how one of the steps in because a deity is imagining yourself as one. Also I like how the Vairochana is above him in a circle as if the man is day- dreaming because this is how we depict someones inner thoughts in pictures today.

Group: Annelise Schroeder, Sara Neher, David Yang, Dukhwa Seo

“What crime is there that you have not committed? You have stolen peaches and stolen wine, upset the high feast, purloined Lao Tzu’s elixir, and then taken more wine for your banquet here? You have piled up sin upon sin; do you not realize what you have done?’ ‘Quite true,’ said Monkey, ‘all quite true but what are you going to do about it?’” (Ch.5 pg.60)

This quote shows how arrogant and selfish the Monkey is during this part of his life. The Nine planets were trying to discipline monkey but he was not the slightest bit worried about what they could do to him. This connects to the very first line in chapter five “Monkey knew nothing about official matters… he and his subordinates ate their three meals, slept soundly at night, had no worries, but only perfect freedom and independence” (pg.53). This connects to our next quote from Chapter six.

“We were about 100,000 men, and fought with him till dusk, when he used some magic method of self- multiplication, and we had to withdraw. On examining our booty we found we had captured a certain number of tigers, wolves, leopards, and other animals but not a single monkey” (Ch.6 pg. 64).

This event shows how the political leaders such as the Jaded Emperor, Vaisravana, and Vaistavana’s son, Moksha, cannot understand where the Monkey’s power comes from and how he could defeat 100,000 men in battle and this only provokes them to want to capture the monkey even more for what he has done.