Karma and Plagues
Karma and Plagues
(Minghui.org) In Journey to the West, Chapter 71, “Under a False Name Monkey Beats the Demon Hound, Guanyin Appears to Subdue the Demon King,” tells the following story: when the Monk Tang and his disciples came to the Kingdom of Purpuria to have their passports inspected and approved, the king of Purpuria, who had been ill for a long time, had just issued a notice calling for doctors to treat his illness. The Monkey King took down the royal notice, prepared some magic medicine, and cured the king’s illness that had been lingering for years.
As it turned out, the Golden Queen of Purpuria had been seized by demons headed by Evil Star Matcher three years prior, and the demons would demand two ladies-in-waiting from Purpuria from time to time. The king had been so worried day and night that he became very ill for the past three years as a result. Fortunately, Monkey King came along and helped the king free himself from this misery.
When Monkey King was about to finally destroy Evil Star Matcher with the magic bells (the golden elixir treasure the beast had with him), Bodhisattva Guanyin showed up and took back the beast. She explained to Monkey King that Evil Star Matcher was in fact a golden-haired giant hound she used to ride on. It escaped and came down to the mortal world to save the king of Purpuria from disaster.
Monkey King was confused and couldn’t understand how the beast could have come to save the king of Purpuria from disaster. Bodhisattva Guanyin went on to explain that when the king was still the crown prince, he was a superb archer and enjoyed hunting. One day he wounded a young peacock and killed a peahen. Both the peacock and the peahen happened to be children of the Bodhisattva Maurya Vidya Rani, who then ordered that the prince would be separated from his wife for three years and suffer the way birds do when they are parted from their parents.
“That was three years ago, and now the misdeed has been paid for,” Bodhisattva Guanyin said to Monkey King. “It was fortunate that you came along to cure the king. I am here to recover the wicked and evil creature [Evil Star Matcher].”
This story tells us that people get sick for a reason and that everything is connected by a cause and effect relationship.
Root Cause of Human Misfortune
It is believed in the community of spiritual practice that those who have done bad deeds or caused harm to others accumulate bad karma for themselves. When a person has a lot of bad karma, they suffer illness, misfortune, hardship, disaster, accidents or even death; when a region contains a lot of bad karma, it suffers poverty, wars, natural and man-made disasters, plagues, etc.
Chapter 87 of Journey to the West, titled, “When Heaven Is Offended in Fengxian It Stops the Rain, The Great Sage Urges Goodness and Brings a Downpour,” tells a story about how a severe drought came to an end after the marquis admitted his wrongdoing and led his people to sincerely pray to Heaven for mercy and rain.
When Monk Tang and his three disciples arrived in Fengxian Prefecture, they saw devastation everywhere. The prefecture, once the land of wealth, had been hit with a severe drought for three years straight, and two-thirds of the population had perished due to starvation. Out of desperation, the marquis of the prefecture ordered that a notice be put up calling for masters of the Dharma to pray for rain and save the people. Monkey King took the notice and offered to help out.
When Monkey King came to the Western Gate of Heaven, he learned that the drought in Fengxian Prefecture was a heavenly punishment. As it turned out, when the Jade Emperor and his aids were on an inspection tour three years ago, they saw that the marquis of Fengxian Prefecture behaved badly; he quarreled with his wife over her wicked conduct and unintentionally knocked over the table with vegetarian offerings to heaven. He then called in dogs to eat the offerings, an act that deeply offended the Jade Emperor.
As punishment, the Jade Emperor had three items set up in the Hall of Fragrance – a 100-foot high rice mountain, a 200-foot high flour mountain, and a golden padlock about one foot three or four inches long, and ordered that “Fengxian Prefecture would only be due for rain when a chicken has eaten all the rice, a dog has licked up all the flour, and the lamp has melted the bar of the lock.”
The heavenly teachers who showed Monkey King the three things told him to persuade the marquis to return to goodness, and then blessings would come of themselves.
After Monkey King came back, he told everyone what he had seen in the Hall of Fragrance and said to the marquis, “If your heart can return to goodness, start invoking the Buddha and reciting scriptures, then I’ll be able to help you. If you persist in refusing to reform, there’ll be nothing I can do to get you off. It won’t be long before Heaven executes you, and your life will be beyond saving.”
The marquis vowed to take refuge. He summoned all the Buddhist and Taoist clergy in the city and ordered that a site be prepared for religious ceremonies. The marquis led his followers in burning incense and worshiping, thanking Heaven and Earth and repenting of his sins. The Monk Tang also recited sutras on his behalf. At the same time, all the men and women, young and old, in all the households inside and outside the city burned sticks of incense and invoked the Buddha. From that moment on, all ears were filled with virtuous sounds.
In no time, the rice and flour mountains in the Hall of Fragrance disappeared, and the bar of the lock melted. The Jade Emperor issued an edict to grant rain to Fengxian Prefecture, and the drought came to an end.
The story tells us that even though Monkey King had tremendous extraordinary powers, he was unable to help unless the marquis changed himself toward goodness and led his people toward goodness as well.
The Harmony of Man and Nature
It is difficult for people nowadays to understand such concepts as harmony of man and nature, largely due to the limitations of modern empirical science.
Ancient Chinese believed in “harmony of man and nature” and that “I Ching [Book of Changes] and medicine share the same origin.” Sun Simiao, a renowned physician in the Tang Dynasty who was also hailed as “King of Medicine,” once said, “If one does not understand I Ching, he is not good enough to be an imperial doctor.”
Taoists regard the human body as a small universe, which has a corresponding relationship with the outer universe. Nature has four seasons and five elements; cold weather and hot weather rotate in an orderly cycle; humans have four limbs and five organs, and follow the path of birth, old age, sickness and death.
The great ancient physicians all had a deep understanding of astronomy and the heavens, geography and the earth, and major events in society. They were capable of curing illnesses and saving people, predicting the future, and foretelling a person’s fate, whether good fortune or misfortune.
Yi He, a famous physician during the Spring and Autumn Period, predicted the fate of Duke Ping of Jin and the destiny of the Jin State. All of his predictions came true, even though many court officials didn’t believe what he said at the beginning.
Sun Simiao, the great physician in the Tang Dynasty, mentioned above, also accurately predicted that his grandson Sun Pu would serve under Lu Qiqing, that Lu would later become the governor of Xuzhou, and that his grandson would serve as magistrate of Xiao County in Xuzhou.
Such supernormal abilities, often referred to as extra-sensory perception in modern times, was commonplace amongst the great ancient physicians, who obtained the abilities through meditation and spiritual refinement.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a high-level mind-body cultivation practice in the Buddha School, guided by the universal principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance and complemented with five sets of slow and gentle exercises. It was first taught to the public by Master Li Hongzhi in 1992 in Changchun City, Jilin Province in China. Within a few years, the number of people practicing Falun Gong increased to over 100 million. The learners strove to live by the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. They saw their health improved and mind elevated, attesting to Falun Gong’s positive impact on social morality.
Due to Falun Gong’s popularity and its revival of traditional values, which are a sharp contrast to communism’s class struggle ideology, Jiang Zemin, the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), launched a nationwide persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999. Jiang vowed to eradicate Falun Gong in three months and ordered three persecution policies: “Ruin their reputations, cut them off financially, and destroy them physically.”
Countless innocent Falun Gong practitioners, men, and women, old and young, have since suffered unlawful detention, imprisonment, torture, injection of toxic drugs, force-feeding, and even organ harvesting. To date, at least 4,641 practitioners are confirmed to have died as a result of the persecution. The actual number is deemed to be much higher, due to strict information censorship in China. This brutal persecution of faith against innocent people is still going on, even though it is carried out in a more covert manner in some places.
Karmic Retribution
In both Western and Chinese traditional cultures, the principle of karmic retribution is widely accepted. In ancient China, people held the belief that offending and showing disrespect to gods and Buddhas, or harming people engaged in spiritual cultivation amounted to great sins. Not only the offenders would suffer retribution, but their family members would also face consequences too if their sins were too enormous for them to bear themselves. Such retributions also occurred from time to time during the persecution of Falun Gong. Take the following cases for example:
Chen Meng, an anchor at the state-run China Central Television (CCTV), actively participated in the persecution of Falun Gong by fabricating lies and slanders to aid the CCP’s brainwashing of the Chinese people against Falun Gong, in particular in the infamous “Tiananmen Square Self-immolation” hoax. He died miserably of lymphoma in 2008 at the age 47.
Li Shuliang was the political head of the traffic police team in the police department of the No. 404 Nuclear Factory in Gansu Province. He actively took part in arresting and torturing Falun Gong practitioners. Once he slapped and kicked a female practitioner in her 70s and whipped her with a leather belt until she passed out. A few years later, Li Shuliang was diagnosed with stomach cancer and suffered unbearable pain until his death. He was in his 50s.
Lu Hongru, in his 70s, was a Zhengzhou University Philosophy Professor and vice-president of Zhengzhou Philosophy Society in Henan Province. He proactively participated in the persecution of Falun Gong and used his status to attack and slander Falun Dafa on Henan Province TV station. One day in early August 2003, his whole family, including Lu, his wife, their daughter and son-in-law, and their teenage granddaughter, were driving to Lu’s hometown. On the way, their car crashed into the rear of a truck. All four adults died instantly, while the teenager was severely injured.
Just as Ji Xiaolan, an influential scholar of China’s Qing Dynasty, once said: “When a person’s sins are overwhelmingly monstrous that cannot be repaid with his own life, it will bring harm to his family.”
Zeng Guofan, a well-known statesman, military general, and Confucian scholar of the late Qing dynasty, also said: “Good people value virtues and enjoy auspiciousness bestowed by heaven. Evil people sow seeds of calamity and bring misfortunes to succeeding generations.”
Why Do Plague Gods Spread Plagues
We can see from the story in Chapter 87 of Journey to the West mentioned in Part 1 that a person would fall sick if he/she has done bad deeds. When an official has offended Heaven, even if his offense is unintentional, not only he himself but also the people he represents, would suffer tribulations as a result.
At the moment, humanity is being hit badly by the deadly pandemic of the CCP virus, with more than 200 million people infected around the world and millions’ lives lost. It may be viewed by many as a devastating public health crisis, but on another level, isn’t it also a timely warning to the world’s people?
Chen Tuan, a great Taoist sage in the late Tang Dynasty, said in Xin Xiang Pian: “Is it because of bad luck that people die from diseases? It is because of their own sins, and yet they curse Heaven and Earth.”
It is said in a Chinese medical classic Mingyi Xubing Lun (Famous Physicians Explain Disease): “The fact that people do not live out their full destiny but in many cases die young is because they do not love or cherish themselves. Instead, they exhaust their intention with anger and competitiveness, strive for fame and go after profit, accumulate toxins, and battle their spirit. On the inside they harm their bones and skeleton; on the outside, they destroy their flesh and muscles.”
Abundant evidence since ancient times warns people that the root cause of short life, disease, plague, and death lies in people’s selfish desires for fame and gain, and their disrespect of Heaven, Earth, and gods.
There is such a story in a report published on Minghui.org that after a CCP village committee member burned truth-clarification materials about Falun Gong, both his hands began to shake involuntarily, and he could not even hold a bowl or a mug.
A Falun Gong practitioner told him, “You have done a bad thing to prevent people from learning the truth. It’s a big sin and you’re getting a warning from Heaven. If you do such things again, bigger disasters may come your way.” After he realized what he did was wrong, he dared not do it again, and his hands gradually turned back to normal and stopped shaking.
In the article “Discourse with the God of Plague,” the ambassador of plagues said to the Falun Gong practitioner who wrote the article: “Dafa disciples have been clarifying the truth to people for more than 20 years. Many people have refused to listen to you. You have delivered many truth-clarifying materials to many households, but how many people really cherish them? It has been a long time. People cannot tell good from bad, and the moral standard has been declining. They followed the evil Party, and have accumulated a lot of karma. This is the real cause of the pandemic.”
Plagues Have Eyes
There is an ancient saying: “If you do good in one day, although the blessing has not yet come, the misfortune is far away; if you do evil in one day, although the misfortune has not come, the blessing is far away.”
During the pandemic, at one stage, quite a few people in Hubei Women’s Prison tested positive with the virus, so people in the entire prison were transferred to hotels for quarantine, and each Falun Gong practitioner was guarded by two inmates.
In one case, the two assigned inmates persecuted the practitioner, and soon both tested positive for the virus. The prison replaced the two inmates with another pair of inmates, who also treated the practitioner badly. Very soon they also contracted the virus. However, the practitioner remained sound and safe. Seeing what had happened to the four inmates before them, the third pair of inmates assigned to monitor the practitioner dared not mistreat the practitioner anymore, and as a result, they both tested negative throughout the period.
Ancients in China often said: “Misfortune and blessings do not come to us without reason, we bring them upon ourselves. The consequences of good or evil deeds are always in company with the doer, like a shadow.”
There have been numerous reports on Minghui.org about how people recovered from the pandemic infection by reciting “Falun Dafa is good. Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good” from their hearts, and that some places stayed away from disasters because many local people had withdrawn from the CCP organizations.
There was such a story that one day when a Falun Gong practitioner encouraged a well-dressed lady to quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations, the lady told her with a big smile that she and all her family members had long done so, “[That’s why] we have few disasters here!”
The practitioner then ran into a gentleman, who said that he had also quit the CCP. Both he and the practitioner noted that their local area had not been affected by the pandemic, whereas nearby cities and counties all had cases of infection. “This is because a lot of people in our local area have quit the CCP organizations and know Falun Dafa is good,” the practitioner said. “Yes, you are absolutely right!” the man agreed happily.
Much has been said about the principle that good and evil would receive their due rewards, sooner or later, and that humanity as a whole and each individual member need to base our conduct on universal moral principles and virtuous values shown to humanity by the Divine since ancient times to truly be able to enjoy peace and prosperity.
The CCP’s repressive ideological doctrines and tyrannic behaviors are in complete contradiction to the universal principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and traditional values and ethics. The CCP represents the most vicious elements in the universe and is most dangerous to humanity.
Now more than 382 million Chinese people have seen through the true colors of the CCP and declared from their hearts to quit it and its associated organizations – the Communist Youth League and Young Pioneers. At the same time, more and more governments and people in the international community have also awakened to the evil nature of the CCP and begun to take action to confront and reject its aggressive expansion and infiltration in the free world.
Justice and virtue will always prevail over evil in the end, and everyone needs to be clear-headed, act righteously and make the right choice in the process for one’s own future.
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