The governor said, “You flattered spirits by killing living creatures, so you are guilty of a crime for which you deserve to be put on a hot grill.”35
The governor had an official lead Shu to the place featuring the hot grill. There he saw a creature with an ox head and a human body. The creature held an iron fork, pierced Shu with it, and placed him onto the iron grill. After tossing and turning on the grill, his body was scorched and mashed; he pleaded in vain for death. Tortured for two days and one night, he experienced the most intolerable suffering.
The governor asked the supervisor [of record keeping], “Should Shu Li’s life be ended? Or did someone deprive him of the rest of his years?”
They checked the record, and it turned out that eight years still remained in his life span. The governor said, “Bring him over here.” The man with the ox head skewered Shu again with the iron fork and placed him by the side of the grill.
The governor said, “Now I will send you back to live out the rest of the years in your life span. Never again kill creatures and engage in licentious sacrifices!”
All of a sudden, Shu Li was revived, and subsequently he did not work as a shaman anymore.
(GXSGC #82. 376; FYZL 62. 1849–50; TPYL 735. 3259a; TPGJ 283. 2253–54)
171. KANG ADE
Kang Ade had been dead for three days, and then he returned to life. He said, “When I first died, two people supported me with their hands under my armpits, and an official on a white horse ran after us.
“Not knowing how many li we walked, I saw a black gate facing north. Entering from the south, I saw a black gate facing east; entering from the west, I saw a black gate facing south; and entering from the north, I saw more than ten tile-roofed houses. There was a man wearing a black garment and towering cap, with more than thirty officials by his side, all calling him governor; to the southwest there were also forty or fifty officials.”
Then Ade went forward to greet the governor. The governor asked, “What did you do to serve?”
Ade replied, “I built a Buddhist tower and a monastery at home to support Buddhist monks.”
The governor said, “You achieved grand fortune and merit.” Then he asked the Emissary of Record Keeping: “Is this man’s life span exhausted?”36
Ade saw an official holding a book and lowering his head to the ground to check the records; the words were very small. The official said, “There are still thirty-five years left.”
The governor was furious, saying, “How could you, a minor official, dare to suddenly deprive others of their lives?” Then he had the white-horse officer tied to a pillar and punished him with one hundred blows until his blood overflowed.
The governor asked Ade, “Do you want to go back home?”
Adereplied, “Yes.”
The governor said, “Now I’m going to send you back home, yet I intend to let you travel in hell right now.” He gave Ade a horse and an attendant, and they went out from the northeast.
Not knowing how many li he had passed, Ade saw a city that was several square li in area. There were numerous earth houses. Then he saw his deceased elder uncle, elder aunt, younger uncle, and younger aunt, who had died before he began to worship Buddha. All of them were wearing fetters and rags. Their bodies were covered with mucus and blood.
While going forward farther, he saw a city in which someone was lying on a burning metal bed, which was just becoming red. In total he saw about ten hells, and each had its own horrible torture. The names of the hells were Red Sand, Yellow Sand, and White Sand, a total of seven; and then there were Knife Mountains, Sword Trees, and Red Bronze Pillars for people to embrace. Then they returned.
Further, he saw seventy or eighty houses roofed with tube-shaped tiles, both sides of which were planted with Chinese scholar trees. They were called The Houses of Good Fortune. Various disciples of the Buddha lived inside. Those who had more blessings would ascend to heaven, and those who had fewer blessings stayed in these rooms.
From a distance Ade saw more than twenty big palaces, and a man and two women coming down from one of them. They were his father’s elder brother and younger brother, each with his wife, who had died after Ade started worshiping Buddha.
In a moment a Buddhist monk came and asked Ade, “Do you know me?” Ade replied, “No!” The monk said, “How come you don’t know me? You and I have been the host of Buddha.” Thereupon Ade remembered it.
When they returned to the governor’s office, the governor dispatched the two men to send Ade back home, and suddenly he revived.
(GXSGC, #264. 434–35; annotation in Bianzheng lun 辯證論, 8)
172. SE LUZHEN’S EXPERIENCE IN THE NETHERWORLD
Se Luzhen, the Attendant of the Mansion of the Northern Palace, was originally a clerk of Xun Xian (322–359), the Inner Gentleman.37 In the middle of the sixth month during the fifth year of Taiyuan of the Jin, he died of an illness. After one night he awoke, saying that he had met Cui, Xian’s son.
Cui said to him in happy astonishment, “The years of your life span are not yet up, but this bureau needs to get three generals. For this reason I cannot let you go. If you know someone who is as capable and efficient as you are, I will replace you with him.”
Luzhen recommended Gong Ying immediately. Cui asked, “Is Ying capable of shouldering the task?” Luzhen replied, “Ying is not inferior to me.”
At first, Cui asked Luzhen to write down his name, but the words he wrote could not be used by ghosts. Then Cui found a pen and wrote it down himself. Thus Luzhen was able to come out.
Suddenly he saw a former neighbor, who had died seven or eight years earlier and was then a gatekeeper of Mount Tai. He asked Luzhen, “Is Inspector Se the only one who is able to go back?” Then he entrusted Luzhen with this: “After you go back, please tell my wife that before I died, I buried fifteen thousand coins under the large bed in our residence. I originally intended to purchase bracelets for my daughter, yet I did not expect that I would die suddenly and so was not able to tell my wife.” Luzhen promised him.
Right after he was revived, he sent someone to report to his neighbor’s wife, but she had already sold the house and moved to Wujin.38 Then he went there to tell her, and also told the owner of the house and asked him to dig the cash up. As expected, they found as much money there as they had been told they would. Se Luzhen urged the gatekeeper’s wife to purchase bracelets for her daughter.
In a short while, Gong Ying also died. People of that time all took the story as a marvel.
(GXSGC #123. 388–89; TPGJ 383. 3050)
173. EXCHANGING FEET
During the reign of Emperor Yuan of Jin (317–322), a certain man from a noble clan died of a sudden illness. He saw a man who brought him up to heaven, and visited the Controller of Fate. The Controller of Fate double-checked his records; his life span was not up yet, and he had been summoned by mistake. The supervisor sent an order to let him go back.
The man’s feet were still painful. He could not walk and thus had no way to return to the mortal world. Several supervisors became anxious. They said to each other, “If this man cannot return in the end because of the pain in his feet, we will be punished for detaining an innocent person.” Consequently they told the Controller of Fate one after another.
The Controller of Fate deliberated for quite a while, then said, “By chance there is a newly summoned foreigner, surnamed Kang, who is outside the western gate. This man deserves the punishment of death right away, yet his feet are extremely healthy. Exchange them, it wouldn’t hurt any of them.”
The supervisor accepted the order and went out, and was about to exchange them. Yet the foreigner’s body was extremely ugly and his feet were awful, thus the man was reluctant to accept them. The supervisor said, “If you do not exchange, then you have to choose to stay here forever.”
Having no other choice, the man obeyed him. The supervisor asked both of them to close their eyes. In a moment, their feet had been exchanged.
Then they
sent the man to return home, and he was suddenly revived. He told his family everything. He exposed and looked at his feet; they were truly the foreigner’s feet, which were all covered with hairs and emitted an unpleasant odor. The man was a scholar, who was fond of embellishing his fingers and feet. However, he now suddenly had such feet. He did not want to see them at all. Even though he was able to be alive again, from time to time he became melancholic and almost suicidal.
Others saw the foreigner who was dead but not yet encoffined, and his home was at the Eggplant Riverside. The man went there himself to see the foreigner’s corpse, and he saw that his feet were attached to the foreigner’s body. When the foreigner was encoffined and sent to the graveyard, the man faced him and wept.
The foreigner’s sons all possessed the natural disposition to love their father. Whenever it was a festival or first day of a month, all his sons missed their father sadly. They ran to the man and embraced his feet to cry loudly. When they suddenly met on the way, they would hold his feet and wail. Because of this, every time he went out or came in, he asked people to guard the gate against the sons of the foreigner.
He hated the dirty feet for the rest of his life and never looked at them. Even during the three hottest ten-day periods of the year in the midsummer, he always covered them with multiple layers of cloth, not allowing them to be exposed at any time.
(GXSGC #70. 372–73; TPGJ 376. 2993–94)
174. SHI CHANGHE
Shi Changhe died, yet four days later he revived, saying that when he first died he walked toward the southeast. He saw two people fixing the road ahead, who always kept fifty steps away from him; when Changhe walked faster, they walked faster as well so that the distance between them remained the same. On both sides of the road were shrubs with thorns, all of which were like falcon talons. He saw a crowd of people, old and young, walking in the thorn bushes, as if they were being pursued. Their bodies were wounded by the thorns, and congealed blood was seen on the ground.
Seeing that Changhe walked alone on the smooth road, the people in the thorn bushes sighed, saying, “Only the disciples of Buddha are happy—they can walk on the main road.”
Walking forward, Changhe saw seventy or eighty tile-roofed houses; among them there were more than ten attics with windows. A man with a face three feet wide, wearing a long-sleeved black gown, was sitting by the window. Only the upper part of his gown could be seen.
Changhe bowed to the man. The man said to him, “Worthy Shi, you have come? It has been more than twenty years since we parted.”
Changhe replied, “Yes.” Then, in his mind, it seemed that he recalled the moment of parting.
Meng Cheng, Governor of Pingyi Commandery,39 and his wife had died previously. The man in the attic asked, “Worthy man, did you know Cheng?”
Changhe replied, “I knew him.”
The man in the attic said, “When he was alive, Meng Cheng did not make a great effort [in religious pursuits]; now he is constantly doing the cleaning for me. His wife made a great effort; now she lives leisurely without being bothered by affairs of the government authority.”
He lifted his hand and pointed to a house to the southwest, saying, “Now Meng Cheng’s wife lives there.”
Right then Meng Cheng’s wife opened the window and saw Changhe. She asked, “Worthy Shi, when did you come?” Then she asked about each of his sons and daughters by name, old and young, and if they were doing well. Finally she said, “Before returning home, please drop in. I rely on you to bring a letter to them.”
In a moment, Changhe saw Cheng coming from west of the attic with a broom and a manure basket in one hand and a walking stick in the other. He also asked about his family. The man in the attic said, “I heard that Yulongchao is making a great effort in his practice. Do you believe? What do you practice?”
Changhe replied, “I don’t eat fish or meat, never drink wine, constantly practice chanting the honorable sutras, and save those who experience various illnesses and sufferings.”
The man in the attic said, “It looks like what others have said about you is not false.” Then he asked the Supervisor of Record Keeping,40 “Is Worthy Shi’s life span exhausted, or did someone absurdly deprive him of his life?”
The supervisor replied, “According to the record, there are still forty years left [in his life span].”
The man in the attic ordered the supervisor: “Please prepare one carriage, two horses, and two officials to escort Worthy Shi home.”
Just a moment later, from the east the carriage, horses, and attendants came, and the number was exactly as dispatched. Changhe kowtowed, bid farewell, mounted the carriage, and started the trip home. By the side of the road he had previously passed, there were post houses with beds, couches, and cooking and dining utensils used by the officials and commoners.
Abruptly, they arrived at his home. Walking forward, Changhe saw his parents sitting by the side of his corpse.
Seeing his corpse as big as an ox and smelling the bad odor from it, Changhe was reluctant to enter it anymore. He walked around the corpse three times and sighed. When he passed by the head of his dead body, he noticed his late elder sister pushing him from behind. He fell down onto the face of his dead body and, due to this, revived.
(GXSGC, #265. 435–36; annotation in Bianzheng lun, 8)
175. ZHAO TAI TRAVELS IN HELLS41
Zhao Tai, styled Wenhe, was a native of Beiqiu of Qinghe.42 The government summoned him to take office, but he did not accept. He devoted himself to the study of books and documents and became famous in his village. At the age of thirty-five, Zhao Tai suddenly felt a pain in his heart and died at midnight on the thirteenth day of the seventh month in the fifth year of the Taishi reign of the Jin (265–274).43 His heart remained somewhat warm and his body flexible. After the corpse had been kept for ten days, a breath that sounded like thunder erupted from his throat. Opening his eyes, he asked for water to drink. Having finished drinking, he got up right away.
He said that when he first died, there were two men who rode yellow horses and were followed by two soldiers. They simply said, “Catch him and take him away.” The two soldiers supported him under his arms from both sides and proceeded toward the east.
Not knowing how many li they had passed, he then saw a big city wall, which resembled tin and iron in color and was extremely tall. Entering from the western gate, he saw the official residence, which had a black double gate and included several dozen tile-roofed buildings. There were about fifty or sixty men and women. The major official, wearing black clothing, listed Zhao Tai’s name as the thirtieth. After a moment he was taken in. The prefect sat facing westward and double-checked his name and surname.
Then Zhao Tai was taken southward through a black gate. There was a man wearing scarlet clothing, sitting in a large room, calling out names in order, and asking the people what they had done during their lives: what crimes they had committed, what merits they had achieved, and what good deeds they had done. Each person replied differently.
The supervisor said, “Please make sure what you say is true. From the six ministries we always dispatch Emissaries of Record Keeping,44 who reside permanently in the human world, recording the good and evil one has done, so as to verify it. There are three bad realms for the dead, and killing creatures or using them as sacrifices results in a rebirth in the worst realm.45 Following Buddhist Dharma, observing the Five Precepts and Ten Virtues,46 and distributing alms with a merciful heart, one will be reborn in the House of Good Fortune and live peacefully without anything to do.”
Zhao Tai replied, “I did neither anything good nor anything evil.” 47
After all the trials had finished, Zhao Tai was assigned to work as the Inspector of Waterworks, taking more than one thousand people to transport sand and shore up riverbanks. He worked assiduously day and night, and wept with regret, saying, “I did not do good things, and now I have fallen into this place.”
Later he was transferred to the position of
Supervisor of Waterworks, in charge of the affairs of various hells. He was given a horse and sent east to inspect the hells.
Farther on, he arrived at the Nili hell,48 where six thousand people lived. There was a fire tree, fifty paces in circumference and ten thousand feet tall. All around the tree were swords, and fire was burning on the tree. Beneath it people in tens or in fives fell onto the fire swords, which pierced their bodies. [The prison official] said, “These people cursed others, robbed others, and by doing so hurt those who are good and kind.”
Tai saw his parents and a younger brother weeping in this hell, and also saw two men come with documents in hand. They ordered the prison officials, saying, “There are three people whose families serve Buddha. On their behalf,49 their families hung streamers and canopies in the temple, burned incense, chanted the Lotus Sutra, and promised to redeem the sins they committed when they were alive. Let them go out to live in the House of Good Fortune.”
Having dressed in ordinary clothing, those released headed to a gate named Great House of Opening Light. It was a black gate of three layers,50 each of which consisted of white walls and red pillars. The three men then entered the gate, and they saw in the palace the precious treasures dazzling under the sun. In front of the hall stood a pair of statues of crouching lions, shouldering a bed made of gold and jade.51 It was called the Seat of Lions.
They saw a great man, ten feet tall, whose face was golden-colored and whose neck radiated sunlight, sitting on the bed. Numerous Buddhist monks were standing by to wait on him. Noted Daoist priests and bodhisattvas sit all around him. The Governor of Mount Tai came to greet him.
Zhao Tai asked an officer, “Who is this great man?”
The officer said, “He is the Buddha, master of converting and saving people in heaven and this world.”
Then he heard the Buddha say: “Now I want to save beings in the evil paths of existence as well as those in various hells and let all of them out of the hells to accept salvation.”
Hidden and Visible Realms Page 19