Now we know that people experience reincarnation and are implicated and dominated by cause and effect. But,
How do people come to reincarnation?
What is the cause?
Let's explore the origins of reincarnation with some scientific examples. Dr. Bryan Jameison, a well-known expert of reincarnation studies in the U.S., began his research into past lives and healing in the late 1960s. He invented a so-called “non-regression hypnotic method,” which helped patients return to their past lives within a few minutes.
Dr. Jameison accumulated more than forty years of research experience and published many books, including The Search for Past Lives: Exploring the Reincarnation Mysteries and The Amazing Healing Power of Past Life Therapy.
A few cases from this book shed light on the origin of reincarnation.
Depression From A Life During World War II
A girl named Nancy suffered from psychological depression from a young age. She always felt guilt and shame. Although she had a happy family, she could not control her sense of guilt. She felt that it was shameful to live in the world, so she attempted suicide three times, but she was rescued every time.
Dr. Jameison helped her to recall her past lives. In one of them, she had been a sixteen-year-old girl in Europe during World War II. Her family lived happily together until, one day when they were eating dinner, Hitler's fascist army suddenly broke into their house and arrested them. Her father protested, saying, “You cannot arrest people like this.” The Nazis shot him on the spot. She and her mother, as well as her brother, were dragged down the stairs. Her brother attempted to pull away
and run down the street, but he was also shot and fell dead to the ground.
When she saw this tragic scene — a happy family destroyed by this fascist army in seconds — she reported feeling very sad. She felt the sky and Earth were spinning, and then she got very dizzy and passed out. She woke up in a truck with many other people who had also been arrested, encountering misfortune like her. Then, they were packed into a crowded train, like sardines. They had to do everything on the train — eating, drinking, defecating, and urinating — just like animals, with no
respect or dignity at all.
When the train arrived at a station, they were pushed into a concentration camp like livestock. Their hair was cut and they were given prisoner uniforms. Then they were enslaved. She and another girl were selected to serve those fascist officers as sex objects. This girl played piano very well and was liked by a Nazi officer, who presented a bouquet to her to show his affection. Later, when this Nazi officer pursued pleasure with her, she even had a delusion, thinking she might live with this young officer forever after the war ended.
The Horrific Anguish of Guilt
One day, this Nazi officer brought her to a yard where a crowd of people were walking. She asked the young officer, “Where are these people heading to?” That officer smiled and said that they were going to enter the gas chamber, which meant that they were going to be killed. At that moment, one person in the crowd turned around and she recognized her mother. She was following this group of people who were about to enter the gas chamber.
The day after this incident, this girl felt overwhelmed by guilt. Her heart was full of anguish. Her entire family had been killed by the monsters of this fascist army, yet she was still here pursuing
pleasure with an enemy officer; she even had a fantasy of living with him later. She ended her own life by slashing her wrist. However,
The sense of guilt in her heart
did not die with her death
but followed her soul
and reincarnated to this life.
As a consequence, she felt an extremely deep sense of guilt since her childhood and often had the thought of committing suicide in this life. This karma… what do we see from it? Chinese ancients said,
Better to die in glory than live in disgrace.
It might be better to sacrifice one's life than drag out an existence with demons. Wen Tianxian* said in one of his poems,
Since time began,
to die who can decline?
Through history books in glory,
let our crimson hearts shine!
As humans, we should live in a dignified and upright manner. We should not live with demons; otherwise, this guilt, this feeling of deficit to the soul, will not be obliterated for life after life.
*Wen Tianxian, 1236-1283, was a famous poet in The Southern Song Dynasty. He left masterpieces like The Song of the Righteous Spirit and Crossing the Lonely Ocean, which have influenced Chinese people for nearly 1,000 years.
A Fear Of Birds: A Tragic Retribution For Rape
Dr. Jameison also treated an American patient named Barbara who had an inexplicable fear of birds. Most of us like birds. Why would someone be afraid of them?
When Barbara was twenty-seven years old, she took a walk on the beach with a friend one day. Her friend took some popcorn to feed the seagulls. When the seagulls swooped down to fight over the food, one seagull swept its wings over Barbara's face. That moment triggered an inexplicable fear in Barbara. From that day on, she was terrified of birds. Before leaving the house, she always looked out the window to see if any birds were nearby. If she saw birds, she would not dare to go out.
She always brought an umbrella when she walked in the street, because she was afraid that a bird would swoop down to attack her. This had become a psychological condition, and eventually, she asked for Dr. Jamison's help.
Under hypnosis, she recalled one of her past lives at the end of the 19th century. She had lived in the Southwestern U.S. and was a white male. When this man was twenty-seven years old, he got drunk and raped a Native American girl. When one has idle time, they will usually do bad things after
drinking. The Confucian classic Mencius has a saying,
There are principles to be learned
for being a human.
If one is fed well, clad warmly,
and lodged comfortably,
yet not educated by the principles,
he will become almost like a beast.
In other words, if you have nothing to do after eating contently, and if you do not try learning sage teachings, you might act out the deeds of beasts. Then your retribution would certainly be tragic.
The Native American family of this man's victim was so angry, they sent warriors to kidnap him. The warriors dragged him to the desert, ripped off his clothes, and then tied his hands behind his back. Before they left, one of the warriors took a knife, carving a wound in his chest. As the blood poured out, the Native American warriors departed and left him alone in that arid desert.
The sun was very strong. It was hot and dry. He was bleeding profusely and quickly collapsed. At this time, he saw a few vultures in the sky circling overhead; they probably smelled the blood. One of the vultures swooped down. He screamed, but the vultures quickly realized he had no ability to defend himself. A few vultures soon rushed forward to fight over and eat his flesh. He experienced such desperate fear, he was literally scared to death. That year, he was the same age as when this
female patient, Barbara, suddenly developed her fear of birds. So doing evil deeds will certainly receive evil retribution. The ancients said,
Filial piety is the foremost of all virtues,
while sexual misconduct is the top among all evils.
People who commit sexual misconduct would not be tolerated by heaven and earth; they would enrage all gods and people. The white man who committed this evil deed received his retribution right away — but this retribution left a deep imprint in his heart. Life after life, he carried the shadow of
this misery. Buddhist sutras state,
Repent from our inner heart, for sins arise from our heart.
When the delusion of our heart is extinguished,
our sins will then be eradicated.
If you extinguish evil thoughts from your heart, your sins will also vanish. No matter how bad your deeds were, do not carry them with you all of the time; let them go and never do them again.
Only when both our delusion and sin are extinguished,
and our heart returns to the emptiness (self-nature, thusness),
it can then be called a “real repentance.”
Revenge Of The Unfilial Hippies And Its Solution
Many of Dr. Jameison's cases clearly illustrate the issue of cause and effect. In the ‘70s in the United States, a group of hippies who were curious about their past lives visited Dr.Jameison for help. Dr. Jameison found out that most of these hippies were reincarnated from Native Americans. In those lifetimes, these Native Americans had fought a war with white men who were new immigrants to the U.S.
We know that the white man in the United States almost completely annihilated the Native Americans. Those Native Americans who were killed by these white men were reincarnated as white people, often as the children of the white men who had killed them. These Native Americans reincarnated to seek revenge, so they were mostly unfilial at home; this disturbed the social order in the society of white people. Through Dr. Jameison's study, we can see that the causal retribution indeed exists.
Nowadays, often in families, father and son do not get along. When parents and children do not have harmony, it is often related to their past lives. In addition, when something breaches the peace in society — for example, when terrorists attack — their motivation is often from resentment incurred in past lives. This life, they came for revenge!
These resentments must be resolved; if not, the accumulated resentment would become deeper and deeper. As ancients said, “The hostility should be resolved rather than entwined”! We should not use force to oppress, persecute, or kill terrorists. We should resolve their hatred. What about
those hippies who reincarnated for revenge — how would their resentment be resolved? Our mentor, Master Chin Kung, told us,
To resolve the resentment of the world,
we can only rely on sage education.
Sage education is indeed the education of gratitude and love. With sincerity, with a grateful attitude and a genuine loving heart, we can resolve the resentment of others.
Only Sage Education Can Resolve the Resentment of the World
Even if resentment is deeply rooted, life after life, it can be resolved when we use our sincere hearts and patience to persistently treat them — we must not be afraid to sacrifice. The only problem is whether we have sincerity or not.
If a soul came for revenge as your child, how could you teach them?
You must teach them from childhood.
Sage education must be instilled from their childhood.
Using the education of Dizigui (Guidelines for Being a Good Person) can help save one from the root. What is the root? First of all, as stated in Dizigui we must teach them filial piety.
The guidelines for being a good person
are exhorted by ancient sages.
And being filial and fraternal is the foremost rule.
This means we must first teach children filial piety and fraternal love.
When we look at these cases, the parents indeed killed those people in the past — yet the debt of gratitude of giving birth to them and raising them is immeasurable. The Book of Odes (Shi Jing) says,
Alas! Alas! My parents!
With what a toil you gave me birth!
The debt of gratitude I shall repay
is like great heaven, boundless.
The deep kindness that our parents bestow upon us is as boundless as the sky. Shakyamuni Buddha elaborated on parents' profound kindness to his disciples in The Sutra of Unrepayable Grace of Parents. This sutra gave us a very detailed description of the debt of gratitude that parents —particularly mothers — bestow to their children.
A mother carries a fetus for nearly ten months, enduring any hardship in order to give birth to a healthy baby. After the baby is born, she takes painstaking efforts, both physically and mentally, to ensure her baby grows to be healthy. Loving parents have their every thought for their children. This debt is impossible for children to pay back. The Buddha gave us an analogy:
Even if someone carries their parents
till their bones are broken
and their bone marrow seeps out
for hundreds of thousands of kalpas,
they are still unable to pay back
the debt of gratitude of their parents.
Even Donating One's Own Kidney Can Still Not Pay Back the Debt
In February of 2005, there was a program on Chinese Central Television called “The People Who Moved China.” The producers had selected ten people who had moved the hearts of China. One of them was a loving child whose filial piety had moved all Chinese people.
Tian Shiguo was a thirty-eight-year-old lawyer in Guangzhou, where I come from. His mother suffered from kidney disease and uremia. The doctor suggested that the best way to treat the disease was to transplant a kidney, but his family was unable to afford a kidney. Tian Shiguo was determined to donate one of his kidneys to his mother without her knowledge. In September 2004, the mother and son had the kidney transplanted successfully in a Shanghai hospital, and both were discharged safely. Even today, the mother does not know that her new kidney was from her son. This filial piety truly touches us.
Yet parents' profound kindness cannot fully be repaid even by making an offering of a kidney. The Buddha stated, even with an offering of bone marrow for hundreds of thousands of kalpas, one still cannot repay their parents' debt of gratitude. Therefore,
Even if there were deadly and deep-seated feuds
with our parents in the past,
as children, we should still be filial to them
no matter how grave their faults are.
Sage Education Should Start from Filial Piety
Only education can make the children develop a genuine heart of filial piety. Only sage education can resolve the problems and the resentment of past lives. This education is important! As The Book of Rites (Li Ji) denotes,
Education is essential in building a country
and in guiding its people.
The most important task of a nation is education. We must make sage education the primary mission of a nation. But what should be the priority of education? In other words, what should be taught first? Confucius has already given us an answer. He stated straight to the point in the beginning of The
Classic of Filial Piety,
Filial piety is the root of all virtues,
and it is where all virtue education originates.
If filial piety is the foundation of all virtues, then all sage education should start from filial piety!
Gruesome Response And Retribution Of A Mother And Child
We have asked: How do we get reincarnated? The answer is that reincarnation is mostly prompted by “collecting debt, repaying debt, returning the debt of gratitude, and seeking revenge.”
Dr. Roger J. Woolger, a psychologist at Oxford University in the U.K. and an expert in the field of reincarnation, had a patient named Paula. This patient wanted to cure some of her psychological problems, so she asked the doctor to help her recall her past lives with hypnosis. In one of her past lives, she discovered she had been a mother in a primitive tribe. This mother had just given birth to a baby. But the tribe lacked food, everybody was hungry. So this mother took an axe to chop her own baby and served it as food. In that life, she was later eaten by some wild beasts.
In the life immediately following, this mother was born into another primitive tribe. This tribe encountered the same problem of starvation, and the mother also killed her baby. During the hypnosis, she saw that this time, she was the baby. The mother who killed her was the baby she had killed in her previous life. To make it clear: The mother killed her own baby in the previous life, and the baby reincarnated to become her mother and killed her in the next life. The causal retribution is truly like the Treatise on Response and Retribution states,
The retributions of good and evil
are like the shadow following its form.
Remembering Being Speared To Death By One's Great Uncle
Allow me to introduce you briefly to two more cases. Professor Stevenson — the famous professor of the University of Virginia in the U.S., had a patient named Charles Porter, a Native American in Alaska. Porter remembered a previous life in which he was also living in a Native American tribe.
During a war between Native American tribes, he was killed when an enemy pierced the right side of his chest with a spear. In this life, he has a big birthmark over his right rib in the shape of a diamond, like the wound caused by the head of a spear.
We have discussed Professor Stevenson's birthmark theory, in which a fatal injury in one life shows up as a birthmark in subsequent lives. But this patient was able to recognize the enemy who killed him. It was a relative — his mother's uncle in this life. This means that his great uncle was still alive, although already very old; he had lived until the person he killed was reincarnated into his family. Since Charles Porter remembered his previous life, we can imagine how he felt when he saw the enemy again, this time as his great uncle.
So, the relationship among people is none other than to “collect debt and return debt,” or even “collect life debt and return life debt.” The famous Buddhist sutra, The Surangama Sutra, states,
You owe me life, I return the debt,
per this cause and condition,
hundreds of thousands of kalpas passed,
we are in this birth and death perpetually.
That means, since you owed me life, I will come back to collect my life-debt. If you owe me a debt, you will also have to pay it back. Life after life, we are reincarnated within the relationships of these entangled debts.
Reincarnated As Husband And Sister's Daughter
Professor Stevenson also had a patient who was a girl in Myanmar named Tintinming. She was born in a city called Pinmana on June 6, 1960. Her father was named Lapi, and her mother was named Sang. Lapi's deceased wife was named Huei, who was the current wife's older sister.
After Lapi's former wife died, her sister dreamed that the departed sister told her: “I am going to follow you.” The older sister, Huei, had had a good relationship with her husband when alive. They stuck together as firmly and inseparably as glue. After she died, she appeared in her sister's dream and said, “I am going to follow you”— because only in this way could she still be with her dear husband. About one year later, Sang became the second wife of Lapi. Soon after, she was pregnant.
During the pregnancy, she again dreamed of her late sister. The late sister once again expressed her wish to follow her younger sister. The younger sister told her in the dream, “You are no longer in the same world as us now. And I also married your husband. If you always follow me, I am afraid it is not appropriate.” But this late sister said in the dream, “The relationship is no longer the same as before. I am determined to follow you.”
Sang gave birth to a daughter named Tintinming in 1960. When she was two years old, she was able to recall and describe her previous life as Lapi's wife. Many pieces of evidence, including a thorough investigation, proved Tintinming was indeed the reincarnation of her father's late wife. Tintinming's affection for her past husband remained. Whenever her parents sat together, Tintinming showed her jealousy by wedging herself in between them. Of course, some children are jealous, but this kind of attitude towards parents is not very common. It indicates that the causal relationship of reincarnation is very intricate. The Surangama Sutra actually interprets these intricate causal relationships in a simple way. It is none other than this reason:
You love my heart, I enamor your beauty,
per this cause and condition,
through hundreds of thousands of kalpas,
we are entangled together.
This suggests that men and women, in reincarnation, are tied together, life after life, because of their entangled love. Maybe in one life they are husband and wife, but not in the next life. Yet, because their hearts hold love toward each other, there is a “karmic attraction” between them. They are drawn together, causing them to be reincarnated again and again.
related post: Chapter Five: How To Transcend Reincarnation
Source Of Information:
《The Scientific Proof Of Causal Reincarnation》, by Dr. Zhong Maosen (Venerable Ding Hong), translated by Mahayana Pureland Team, published by Mahayana Pureland Organization, distributed by: Persatuan Penganut Agama Buddha Amitabha Malaysia, 90 & 92, Jalan Pahang, Gombak, 53000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.)
*** The information provided above does not contain personal opinion of this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment