My journey in Taoism started like everybody else, from disbelieving to believing to knowing and then to letting others know.
Affinity with the Monkey God, it all started with a dream. This is long before I met my friend in London Eddie Wong. That is the part where Tao Fa begins...this is kinda like a prequel to that.
Journey into Tao Fa is here
I can barely remember the dream, because at that time I have the slightest idea that one day I will be working for Taoism in this way. I dreamt of The Monkey God 齊天大聖 in my dream, flying high above the clouds and looking down on me. That's the vivid part that I can still remember until today.
After the dream, I have decided maybe it is time for me to have a statue of The Monkey God on my home altar. At that time, I was still living in my parents house. Therefore basically is to have a statue on our altar. Just starting out on my training business at that time, barely had any money.
Then out of the blue after a few days, one of my uncle asked me to go audit his house Feng Shui. I was still learning at that time, anyway I have decided to helped him out. The coincidence part was that, this uncle of mine had his own factory of making Taoist deities statue locally. After the complimentary audit, he asked me do I need any statues? The timing could not be better.
After I received the statue, I went to a local Guan Yin temple and asked the monk there to consecrate it for me. My knowledge and protocol on Taoism was almost nil at that time.
After about 3 years, I had the opportunity to buy my own home. And the first and only deity that I wanted to install at my home altar was The Monkey God. I could not move the statue from my parents house as we were not living together at that time. When the medium came to consecrate the Monkey God at my new place, he told me that the deity had been with me for more than 20 years!
I was surprised, because my interest in Taoism was only about 3 years at that time. Prior to that, I do not even hold the joss stick except for Chinese New Year or some major celebration. Then the medium added that the affinity started when I was a child and have asked helped from The Monkey God before. When I counter check with my dad, indeed when I was child and had some illness, he remembered that he went to a Monkey God Temple in town and asked for the deity's help.
My communication with the Monkey God at my home was basically using the oracle. When I first started thinking about going to Kam Dong San in Ipoh, I have also consulted the Monkey God at my home altar before everything else.
When my eldest son was about 2 years old, he always played in front of the Monkey God altar as his toy stash were just beside the altar near the wall. One evening as he was playing there, I came home late and was just changing the water offering at the altar. Out of the blue, I had an instinct that told me to look to the right while I was facing the Monkey God altar. To my big surprise, there is a green coloured snake slithering on top of some of my son's toy. The snake end up coiling at the corner of all his toys. If I had not look to that direction at that specific moment, I would have missed it. And I could not imagine what my son or the snake would do when he play with his toys.
That's just one of the incident how the Deity protected my family. After I learned Tao Fa and have a dedicated room for all the Taoist Deities in my house. I have asked the Monkey God many times whether he would like to relocate to the altar room, his answer was a direct no - not only asking through meditative stabilization but also a direct no when I asked through the oracle.
When we finally decided to start Kam Dong San Temple, I have enquired with the main deities on the arrangement of the statues. The Monkey God was to be placed first and foremost at the front as the Head Marshall of the Temple. Which explains the reason, when a person offers incense at Kam Dong San Temple, the first urn to offer is one which belongs to Qi Tian Da Sheng 齊天大聖 The Monkey God.
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| Statue of Qi Tian Da Sheng at Kam Dong San |
He not only save me once when I was a child, in my most darkest and dangerous moment of despair in Tao Fa, he was the deity that pulled me out and pulled me through (well that is another blog post).
Some Taoist scholars would like to argue that the Monkey God does not exist and only worshipped after the Wu Cheng'en work on Journey to the West. And some also said most of the inspiration came from Ramayana's Hanuman. In Tibetan Buddhism he is considered one of the protectors of Amitabha. Journey to the West could be just a story, but this deity is real.
Kam Dong San Temple would be celebrating Qi Tian Da Sheng 齊天大聖千秋 this coming Sunday 20 September 2015.
