In his book The Record of Marvels and Eccentricities, Chinese scholar Lu Can (1494-1552) collected stories of strange and extraordinary events during the Ming Dynasty, including reincarnation.
2 such stories involving reincarnation
1. The silver watchdog
In the city of Suzhou in eastern China, there was a family living near the west gate of the old city who had a big, healthy dog that slept by the threshold every day and would not leave for a moment. Once someone got too close to it, there was a possibility of being bitten, so family members warned each other not to approach this threshold unless strictly necessary.
One day, a merchant who was doing business came to their shop, unaware of the situation. He was bitten by the dog, causing his thigh to bleed. The angry merchant cursed the owner of the shop. The owner was already somewhat fed up with the dog, and now with the customer being bitten, the deal was about to fall through. So the owner apologized, saying: “Please forgive me. I will kill the dog tomorrow to make things right and ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”
The merchant returned to his inn after the wound was treated, and that night he had a dream. A man appeared to him and said: “I was the father of the owner of the shop and I have been dead for several years now. During my lifetime, I quietly saved hundreds of taels of silver and buried them under the threshold of the door.
“After my death, I couldn’t forget about the money and was reborn as a dog in my son’s house. I have been guarding the threshold day and night, waiting for descendants to come and take away the silver buried in my previous life. This karma resulted from my obsession with money. I inadvertently offended and bit you during the day, but that was not my intention. Now my son from my previous life wants to kill me, so I am reaching out to you, asking for your help. Please go to the owner of the shop and ask him not to kill me.”
The merchant woke up from his dream and immediately went to the shop and knocked on the door. When the shop owner saw that it was the merchant who had returned, he immediately came to welcome him.
The merchant asked: “Where is the dog that bit me?” The owner replied: “It has been killed.” The merchant listened with regret and informed the owner of his dream. The shop owner did not believe him, thinking that since the customer had gone through the trauma of being bitten during the day, he had a wild dream at night. How could it be true?
So the merchant proposed: “Why don’t you pry open the threshold and check it out in order to verify the truth of the dream? That way, both of us can be assured.” The shop owner ordered someone to remove the threshold and saw that there was indeed a tile jar under the threshold containing more than 400 taels of silver. At that moment, the shop owner knew the merchant’s dream was true. His father had been reincarnated as the dog and he deeply regretted that he had killed it.
2. Reincarnation of a child with the characters for ‘long life’
During the Ming Dynasty, in the countryside near Suzhou, there was a resident surnamed Guo who had a son who unfortunately died at a young age. Guo and his wife were so grief-stricken that they wrote the characters for “long life” in ink on their deceased son’s back during his burial. Local folklore had it that if one made such a mark on the deceased, it would be carried to the next life so that they could be recognized when they went through reincarnation.
The next year, Guo’s wife gave birth to another son, and this child was born with the characters for “long life” very clearly written on his back. People believed that their deceased son had been reincarnated as this new child.
Happiness or disaster
Reincarnation is a real phenomenon and actions during our lives have tangible consequences. In the first story, the deceased was reincarnated as a guard dog because he could not let go of the money he had accumulated and buried under the threshold. This story illustrates the importance of letting go of material possessions and not becoming too attached to wealth.
In the second story, the deceased child goes through reincarnation, and the mark made by his parents in his previous life becomes the birthmark of the next life. Now many experts who study reincarnation have also found that sometimes the wounds of the previous life become birthmarks after reincarnation.
The good and bad deeds people do will likewise have a carryover effect and become the source of happiness and disaster they experience in the next life, because it is the unchanging truth of the universe that “you reap what you sow” regardless of whether or not you believe in the cycle of reincarnation.
Translated by Audrey Wang
