Journey to Heaven

Journey to Heaven and the Underworld: A priest, a merchant and his wife

   
 

16 August 2019

Question: In my dream on 8 August 2019, the music of Amitabha Buddha’s holy name was constantly ringing in my ears. In an instant, Guan Yin Bodhisattva appeared in mid-air and brought my soul to the Guan Yin Citta Pure Land.

The Buddha said, “People tend to lust after beauty. To me, beauty is as venomous as a snake”.

Guan Yin Bodhisattva said, “Vengeance has a way of rebounding upon oneself. Children, your negative karmic affinities in this life are due to the fruition of seeds sowed in past lives. The only way to break this endless cycle of vengeance and rebirth is through reciting sutras to resolve the negative karmic affinities, while not incurring new karmic debts nor forming new enmities.”

Here’s an account of what I saw.

In a 17th century-like setting, a rich merchant and his beautiful young wife were very devout and often prayed in places of worship. The rich merchant would ask a priest to pray for his safe trip every time he travelled for business. Once, the rich merchant left home and did not return for several months. His wife was very worried. She visited the priest every day and asked him to pray for her husband’s safe return soon. She also sent people to search for her husband’s whereabouts, but to no avail for half a year. Meanwhile, the priest had already fallen for the beauty of the rich merchant’s wife. Thus, he took this opportunity by asking a reputable person in the village to persuade her to remarry.

With constant persuasion by the matchmaker, the rich merchant’s wife married the priest. More than a year later, the merchant returned to the village, but in a distressed state. Upon knowing that his wife had remarried, the merchant was very furious and beat the priest with a stick violently. As a result, the priest’s legs were broken, and the wife was also feeling very ashamed upon seeing her former husband. Ever since his legs were broken, the priest had been living in depression. He never expected himself to end up in such a state, as his intention of marrying the wife was only to take care of her after the merchant went missing, while not knowing whether he was alive or dead. A few months later, the priest’s depression ultimately led to his death.

Subsequently, the merchant’s wife gave birth to a son and after which, the merchant married a concubine as he insisted that his wife was unfaithful to him. A decade later, the wife died. The resentful wife’s spirit came to the rich merchant’s bedside every night and clutched at his throat. The rich merchant was frightened throughout every night until the spirit of his wife left in the morning. Less than a year later, the rich merchant also died.

The rich merchant’s wife was reincarnated as a handsome man in the next life. When he grew up, he met a woman who was the reincarnation of the priest. They developed an affection for each other and soon became husband and wife, living a harmonious married life thereafter. Meanwhile, there was a nobleman in the village (the reincarnation of the rich merchant) who coveted the woman’s beauty. Therefore, he tried every means to arrange for the man to work for him permanently at his house. He then took the opportunity to enter the woman’s house and molested her while her husband was out of town to collect payment for him. The woman was molested several times by the rich merchant. Though distressed, she was too scared to tell her husband about the incidents.

One day, the husband returned home earlier than usual and found out the scandal between his wife and the rich merchant. The husband, who was afraid to speak out because of the rich merchant’s power and influence, hid in a dark place and wept. He then harboured thoughts of killing the rich merchant and thus instructed his wife to poison the rich merchant’s meals every day. Six months later, the rich merchant died. After his death, the rich merchant knew that it was the man who poisoned him, and therefore took revenge by possessing the man’s body and made him fall into the river, causing him death. Since then, his widowed wife wept every day, and soon became insane and drowned herself as well.

After multiple lifetimes of rebirth, all of them had reincarnated as animals – the rich merchant had reincarnated as a dog (due to the karmic effect of harsh speech and immoral acts driven by lust), while both the priest and the rich merchant’s wife died in the water and reincarnated as turtles.

My deep gratitude to Master Jun Hong Lu,

My deep gratitude to Guan Yin Bodhisattva.

A disciple from Malaysia

8 August 2019

Master Lu’s reply:

Throughout this lifetime, do not presume that you have a predestined affinity with anyone you met simply because of their good look. Having a predestined affinity might not be a good thing as it means that the karmic affinity from your past lives, which was not resolved, is brought forward to this present life and you will continue to suffer from it. Vengeance has a way of rebounding upon oneself.

Everything in this world has its own cause and effect. This person is the reincarnation of the rich merchant, while the other is the reincarnation of the priest…How confusing can it be? As long as you cause the death of a person, he can hound you in your dream. We must be conscious of the law of cause and effect in every action we take, so we won’t fall and be reborn in the animal realm. As you can see, these three people did not come to a good end, with one being reincarnated as a dog while the other two as turtles, which is really pitiful. So always think twice before doing anything in this human realm.