Chapter 13 - A Rescue By Kuan Yin

This incident happened about twelve years ago when I was eighteen. My family was then living in Kaohsiung, and I was attending the Kaohsiung vocational school. One evening a classmate, Huang Hsin Ch'ing, and I visited the night market behind the Wanlung Theater. There were so many vendors in that night market, that the stalls filled with food, clothes, herbs, plasters and other daily necessities continued for a distance of two kilometers. Jam-packed with people who jostled each other and filled with all kinds of riotous sounds and lights, the night market was an extremely lively and exciting place in which to have some fun.

We walked and looked. We passed by a fortune teller's booth near the entrance of an alley. The old fortune-teller, who was sitting alone at one corner with a dull look on his face due to lack of business, saw the two of us and called out,

"Young men, come over here and let me do a reading for you. It won't cost you anything. The King Wen Divination Method that I use is extremely effective in predicting fortunes and disasters. I know you young men don't have much money, and that's quite all right. It'll be completely free of charge to you!"

As soon as we heard that it was free, we thought to ourselves, "Why not give it a try?" and walked over to him.

Naturally, after the old man started to give us a reading, the booth soon began to attract a small crowd of people around it.

Although the fortune-teller was quite old, his eyes were very bright and shiny. He first took a look at Huang Hsin Ch'ing's face and then examined the lines on his palms. After obtaining Huang's full name, he asked him to pick out a divination hexagram, which he placed behind a censor. Through the smoke rising from the sticks of lit incense, the old man studied the hexagram, then glanced at Huang and asked, "Are you a Hakkanese from Meinung?" To which Huang gave an affirmative reply.

The old man continued, "Judging from your facial features, you are of average intelligence and educational level. Your palms tell me that your life is a difficult one that requires hard work. The King Wen hexagram says that the best career for you will be a steady post in the civil service. You will not be receiving much help from your family, as you must rely on yourself and build up from nothing. To find people who can be of help to you, you have to travel to the north. Your family burial site, and therefore the feng-shui that can affect your family's fortune, has undergone some major changes. Are you aware of this?"

"Yes, I know," Huang said. "It happened just at the beginning of this year when the burial site of my grandparents was relocated and its feng-shui readjusted."

"If my reading is correct, this new site was selected by your oldest brother. He has placed a Fu in the burial site that is going to divert all the riches in your family to the first born. This has caused a color of impoverishment to appear on your forehead, and you are going to have quite a hard life. My child, your chance of making a great fortune will be very slim even though there won't be any great disasters in your future."

"You are right. The new burial site was picked by my oldest brother," Huang Hsin Ch'ing concurred with the old man. The people surrounding us gasped at the accuracy of the reading.

The old man then turned to look at me. I was short, skinny, and quite shy then. He pulled me closer to him, carefully studied my face and palms, and told me to select a hexagram just as Huang had done. After looking at the symbol, he knitted his brows. Shaking his head once, he asked,

"Are you the eldest son in the family?"

I replied, "Yes."

The old man continued, "You have a very complex physiognomy which means that you have a unique personality, and your future is not yet fixed but remains to be seen. What is peculiar is that the 'gold reserve spot' of your palms is very fleshy, indicating a life of riches and honor. At the same time, the literary line here is so long that it even runs through the 'gold reserve spot. ' I suspect that in the future you won't need to use much of what you are now studying in school. Since your family origins are only average, that means you also will be building your life from scratch. As for the King Wen hexagram, I hope what I am going to tell you won't shock or frighten you."

"Go ahead, it's all right," I answered calmly.

"According to the King Wen hexagram alone, you belong to the realm of heavenly beings, which is not bad. However, in combination with your face and palm readings, it indicates that, at the age of twenty eight, you will meet a great disaster and die. I think you'd better pray and worship more to the gods and Buddhas!"

"But I am a Christian!" I protested. At that time, I had already been baptized at the New Presbyterian Church and had become a Christian. In fact, the church that I attended was in the vicinity of the night market.

"Christian? Then there is nothing I can do," the old man said. All around, people were sighing, "This child has some quite fine features. Too bad he will meet an early death." After that, many people requested to have their fortunes read by the old man, and Huang and I both stayed behind to listen. Strangely, the old man's fortune reading was pretty accurate, as attested by the people being analyzed. Yet, the more accurate he proved to be, the darker the shadow left on my mind grew. My heart became extremely uneasy.

During the sixtieth year of the Republic of China ( 1971), when I was twenty-seven years old about to turn twenty-eight, I still had not forgotten the fortune-teller at the night market ten years before. One night, I asked Mr.Three-Peaks-Nine-States,

"Spirit Master, a fortune-teller in the past predicted that I shall die next year. I wonder if it is going to happen."

"Lian-shen, one should not slight the art of divination. The various divination methods such as the Four Pillars Prediction, the Huang Chi Divination, the Yuan T'ien Kang Calculation, and the King Wen Hexagram are outstanding methods. Since the fate of a heaven can change from its predestined course. So can the fate of a single human being. Death at twenty eight was an accurate reading, but the King Wen Hexagram was not able to divine that a bridge of rescue had already been built to save your life. Do you remember way back when you first enshrined the Kuan Yin statue that you purchased from the ceramics store? I told you that, by paying homage to the Kuan Yin, she would one day save your life. The merit in paying homage to the Bodhisattva is truly great!"

Around Christmas in 1971, I was having lunch at home one day. At that time I was not a vegetarian and enjoyed eating meats and fish. Suddenly a dizzy spell came over me, and my stomach started rolling. I became so nauseated that I vomited all over the floor the fish and rice I had consumed. The room was filled with its foul smell. I kept on vomiting until my stomach was completely cleaned out. My family thought that I had become ill, but they noticed no fever when they touched my head. Later I went to see a doctor, but nothing was found to be wrong with me. It was rather strange! That same evening, my mother prepared a fish head stew which was my most favorite dish. I took a few mouthfuls of rice and sipped some soup from the fish stew. In a few moments, the same trouble returned, and I started throwing up again. This time the dizzy spell was so severe that I was seeing stars spinning around me and almost could not hold myself up. Finally, the vomiting stopped. My face had turned green, and I was wondering what in the world was happening to me.

Eventually I discovered that only when I restricted myself to vegetarian foods would I be safe. If by accident I ate any meat, even if it was a minute quantity, I would begin throwing up violently. The pain was beyond words. Perhaps some readers might entertain the idea that my strange reaction to meat was totally psychological, but it was not so. One time my sister, Yu Yi, placed some leftover fish on top of the dinner rice to warm up. I did not know about it and ate the rice. After dinner, I started vomiting violently again. When I looked into it, I realized that even food warmed up with fish had to be ruled out from my diet. Therefore, I continued to be a vegetarian. During that period of time, there were at least ten different occasions when I had accidentally tasted meat and suffered severe and extremely painful vomiting.

I asked my Spirit Master why this was happening to me? The Spirit Master gave me this answer, "What a wonderful rescue! This is to substitute a life with another life. The great disaster predestined in your life will naturally be eliminated."

I was a vegetarian from December 1971 to December 1972.

One day in December 1972, Yu Yi stir-fried some vegetables with oil that she had previously used to fry some sausages. I ate the vegetables and found that I did not have to vomit and there were no more dizzy spells. It was indeed a peculiar case. I looked at the calendar and realized that it had been exactly one year since the whole episode started. I again asked my Spirit Master for an explanation. He said,

"The day of your predestined death has come and gone. With the karma neutralized, your life has been rescued by another life. You were forced by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to be a vegetarian for your own sake. During the past year, you were being guarded by the gods of precepts to make sure that you stuck to a vegetarian diet. With the mission completed, the gods of precepts have departed, and you have become your old self again. It really does not matter from now on whether you stay a vegetarian or not, it is completely up to you! If you don't believe me, take a look at the Kuan Yin statue you have enshrined at your altar. Then you will understand."

After hearing the Spirit Master's words, I carefully examined the Kuan Yin statue and discovered that fracture lines had appeared all over the porcelain statue from head to toe.

The fracture lines were like a net, distributed-evenly all over the body. This was completely different from the condition of the Kuan Yin statue that I had enshrined three years ago. The originally compassionate face had become broken in multiple places. Why had this happened?

Later I learned that I was supposed to have met with a traumatic experience which would have broken my body completely. The merit engendered from the one year of abstinence from meat, together with the Kuan Yin sacrificing her body, had helped to save my life. I had enshrined the Kuan Yin and paid homage to her, and she had become broken (with the appearance of fracture lines all over the body, from no apparent cause). What could I do to repay the great compassion of the Bodhisattva? This Kuan Yin Bodhisattva statue is still enshrined at my altar, and I continue to pay homage to her. She is the first Great Bodhisattva of my Lei Tsang Temple.

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