Not very long ago, a reader told me of his past experience which makes me afraid of doing wrong. Below his part of his story.
I’m a chiropractor, living in the countryside not very far from Chiayi City. I have child who is very intelligent. I have a child who is very intelligent. In his seventh grade, one day he was not paying attention in class but was reading an extracurricular book. When the teacher found out, he was asked to answer questions from an untaught lesson. The teacher wanted to teach him a lesson of humility. he paused,
read the textbook for a minute, then answered the questions correctly. Everyone was amazed at his talent. Some time later, the teacher met me on a road and asked me in admiration, ‘How have you raised a child so smart?’
Sadly my son started to fall behind as he reached the eighth grade. His grades dropped and his academic ability was not as high as before. He dropped to the bottom of the class. I was so worried about
him. I went to many temples and fortune tellers to ask about his future; I even called god mediums to get
help from supernatural power. I was disappointed because everything was in vain. My son ridiculed my behavior. He even imitated the god medium’s action to tease me. i could not stand his disrespectful behavior and told him to stop. Suddenly, at that moment, his body become unexpectedly strong; he became wild. Due to my professional training as a chiropractor, I know martial arts quite well. However, at that moment, I could barely fight my son. I was injured by sticks he threw at me. To me, this incident is unbelievable. I worried about his strange and cruel behavior and yet had no idea of what to do about it.
Right at that time, an old friend of mine, a pious Buddhist, came to visit me. He suggested that I visited a famous master who might be able to help my son. The next day, I went to visit the master who was very kind to me. He made arrangement for several members of my family and me to talk with him. From the long discussion, I finally realized the reason for my son’s sudden change of disposition and falling grades. It was all due to the bad behavior of my son’s grandfatheryears ago. At that time, he was so incensed by a group of monkeys that had eaten and destroyed his crops. He used any means possible to capture them. Each time when he caught a monkey, he used a knife or stick to kill it. he even chopped their heads off in order to scare the other monkeys. He also brought trapped monkeys home, slaughtered and ate them. Due to the huge amount of monkeys he slaughtered, the dead monkeys’ spirits searched for the killer and his decendants for revenge. Thus my poor child became one of the victims.
From this story, we can see the dreadful result of the killing and torturing animals. This is a lesson we should keep in mind.
Recently, another reader living in Meisan sent me a letter. His name is Shu. He had an experience in the bad karma (cause and effect). Below is part of the letter.
I was so naughty and naive when I was a young child. I liked to catch frogs a lot. Each time, as I went fishing, I would catch little frogs and used them for bait; I had killed many frogs. Meanwhile my family used to raise ducks. In order to feed these ducks, I often went with other people to look for earthworms; I have killed thousands or millions of earth worms as well. As a Buddhist, when I recall my past, I realize that i was sinful and had committed many bad deeds. I now believe that my body has been tortured by diseasedue to the strong connection to my killing of animals in the past.
Another thing that makes me feel miserable is recalling my biology class in high school. We had to study the anatomy of small animals especially frogs. I was so sorry for those little frogs as their trembling bellies were cut apart with their organs exploding. After the scene, i did not have an apetite for meals at all. I threw up everytime I tried to eat. This symptom took many years to heal completely.
There is another story I feel ashamed to tell. When I was in elementary school, I used to help people peel bamboo shoots to help support my family financially. One day, my father scolded me for something, and I became angry at him. In anger, I spit on the bamboo shoots and stamped on them. Since then, my throat has been itchy and sore, and it cannot be healed by any medicine. i have never had a chance to enjoy fine meals or snacks. It is such a pity.
Finally, i have one more shameful story to tell. I used to call people “stink head” all the time I was in high school. Strangely, my head later got some kind of skin disease. This disease was treated but came back again and again. thus, I became a “stink head’ myself. From this experience, I strongly feel that we should never hurt people by calling them names. Some day, the curse might come back to haunt us.
Adapted from The Incredible Phenomenon of Karma by Prof Wun Ho