(Minghui.org) Ji Xiaolan was a renowned scholar of the Qing Dynasty. In addition to editing the massive Siku Quanshu, or the Complete Library in Four Branches, he also composed numerous verses and documented many pieces of folklore and tales of the supernatural.
A collection of such tales under the title Yuewei Caotang Biji—Notes From the Cottage of Close Scrutiny—was published in 1800.
There's a story in the collection narrated by a clan elder named Lei Yang.
Lei tells of a man long ago who bumped into a little spirit, and the two became fast friends. The man once asked the spirit if a person's fate in the human world could be changed.
“Yes,” the little spirit told him. “It can change. But the person has to be very kind or very evil.”
The man asked again, “Who makes the decision to change someone's fate, and who's responsible for carrying out such a change?”
“The decision is made by the person themselves, and the change is also made by the person themselves. The gods and spirits do not have such a right,” the little ghost replied.
“So what about retribution? Why is it that some people can do bad things, but nothing bad ever happens to them?” the man asked again.
“In the human world, you judge people by what they did in one lifetime. And you judge their good fortune and bad luck the same way,” the little spirit explained. “Whereas in the underworld, a life is judged by what they did across multiple lifetimes, like a running tab. Good and bad deeds are tabulated together from all of a being's past lives, and rewarded with good fortune and punished with bad luck across a being's future lives. So it's not always the case that every wrongdoing will be punished in the same lifetime. It's just that humans cannot see the relationship.”
What the spirit said may hold some truth. In the following anecdotes from modern times, we see two people whose fates took a sharp turn following a decision made between kindness and cruelty.
Zhang Fang's Miraculous Recovery
Zhang Fang (an alias) is a 63-year-old farmer in Liaoning Province.
On the morning of July 12, 2020, when his family was about to have breakfast, Zhang Fang told his wife that he felt dizzy and nauseous. Then he started sweating profusely, and his face grew pale. These are all common symptoms of cerebral infarction.
However, the next day, he was able to work as usual and felt just as healthy as before.
As it turned out, as soon as he felt unwell he kept saying “Falun Dafa is good.” He gradually felt better and better, and everything returned to normal in the end.
“Falun Dafa's Master saved my life!” he said.
He was completely overwhelmed by what he had experienced, and broke into tears as he recalled how he was brought back from the brink of death.
Zhang Fang's wife practices Falun Dafa, which is an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline. It was introduced to the public in 1992. Within seven years, the number of practitioners increased to 100 million, nearly one-fourteenth of the entire Chinese population at the time.
Due to its tremendous popularity and revival of traditional Chinese values, something the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had tried to destroy, a nationwide persecution campaign was launched against the practice in July 1999, and it continues today.
Despite the persecution, Zhang has always been very supportive of his wife in practicing Falun Dafa, and has helped the practitioners in his village on many occasions, including taking them in his pedicab to distribute informational materials to raise awareness about the persecution.
His kindness towards Dafa practitioners and his contribution in exposing the persecution was duly rewarded, and altered his original fate of a cerebral infarction. As a result, he was able to make a quick recovery without any lingering effects.
Meng Han’s Retribution
Meng Han was the secretary of the CCP committee in Xupu County of Hunan Province. He suffered an acute disease on July 8, 2020, and died the same day, after a resuscitation attempt failed to save his life.
Earlier in May 8 the same year, he instructed more than a dozen personnel from the 610 Office, an extralegal agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, and the police department to arbitrarily arrest 63-year-old Mao Yanping and 61-year-old Yang Lanying. Under his orders, the two women were detained for 15 days, simply for their faith in Falun Gong.
Meng Han might have had the good fortune to become a top local official, but he did not cherish what he had and abused his power against innocent people. Many believe that his acute disease and early death was retribution for this injustice.
Heaven is above all, and watching everything. What we do in the human world is known to all in the universe. Therefore, each one of our thoughts and actions alters our future prospects. From this perspective, our destiny is truly in our own hands.
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Category: Perspectives
