Chapter 35 - The Old Man Who Owned An Orchard

A beautiful young girl brought her sixty-three year old grandfather to see me. The young girl was eighteen, extremely vivacious, with the ruddy complexion of a ripe apple. In a stark contrast, there was a marked weariness on the grayish face of the grandfather.

The young girl said, "I have heard that Mr. Lu can do spiritual readings to help people with their problems. That is why I have come here with my grandfather. My grandfather has had a really bad year. Do you know when his luck will change? His name is Kuo Ju Feng, and he is sixty-three years old. Our family lives in Feng Yuan, and we have especially made the trip here in a taxi cab." The young girl was very articulate, but her grandfather did not make a single sound.

I lit three sticks of incense for them. The young girl took over the three incense sticks, and after making several bows, she placed them in the censor. When I joined my palms to pray for guidance, suddenly a huge mountain appeared in front of me. It was a landscaped mountain that seemed to have been cultivated for use as an orchard. I turned to the old man,

"Are you the owner of an orchard in the mountains?" The old man was taken aback when I asked him, and he tried hard to show a slight trace of smile on his steel gray face.

"Yes, I have quite a large crop of papaya trees in the mountains. But, can you do a reading to find out what kind of illness I have? How can this illness be treated? If I become well, I will definitely be grateful to you. I have already been seen by all kinds of doctors, treated with injections and medicines, but nothing has helped".

After examining his fingers and looking at his gaunt face, I told him that he most likely had a stomach illness. This old man said,

"You are right again. I do have a problem of stomach ache, but it is a very strange kind of stomach ache. It only hurts at a certain hour. During the day, it is fine, but every night at 3:00 a.m. sharp it starts to hurt, and the pain goes on until 4:00 a.m. sharp; then it stops. After 4:00 a.m., I am fine again and can eat and work like everybody else. Nothing is wrong until 3:00 a.m. the next night, then it hurts all over again until 4:00 a.m.. It is unbearable to go through the pain night after night. It is such a living hell that I have contemplated killing myself. I have seen so many doctors. Every 3:00 a.m., I have to take a pain shot to relieve the pain. Really, I have never believed in ghosts or spirits in my whole life, and this is a first for me to come to see you for spiritual help."

"It is indeed strange that a stomach ache would last from 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. every day! I have never before heard of a pain being so timely."

I prayed to the higher beings for guidance, and again I saw the mountain with papaya trees planted all over it. This time amid the papaya groves, a grave appeared and on the tombstone were the words, "Hsian Pi Su Hung." So I asked the old man,

"Is there a grave on your mountain?"

"Yes, the grave had been there when I first purchased the mountain. There was a crack on the grave, and no one had fixed it. All these years I have not seen any descendants of the buried visit the site."

"Was the buried man named Su?"

This question gave the old man a start, "How do you know?"

"This is Spiritual Divination." I smiled faintly.

This is the result of my Spiritual Divination: The old man has been growing papayas in the mountains, and over the years the papaya trees grew tall. Too many papaya trees were planted around the grave, and eventually their thick roots extended into the grave, rupturing the cement. At the same time, the roots extended into the coffin and became entwined with the skeleton. The deceased, Mr. Su, had died of a stomach ulcer. After finding out the cause of his stomach pain, the elderly gentleman, Mr. Kuo, was not sure if he believed it. This was the prescription I gave him: Prepare some fruit and tea to bring as offerings to the grave site and admit one' s mistakes to the deceased. Also dig up the bones and re-bury the bones in a new container after the grave is repaired. This way Mr. Kuo's stomach pain will be cured without any more medical treatment. Mr. Kuo had had such long medical treatment without any improvement that he decided to follow my strange prescription. After all, he had already spent ten thousand dollars on medical treatment. Since the repairing of the tomb would only cost several thousand more, he decided to follow my recommendation.

The undertaker who dug up the bones discovered that the roots of the papaya trees had indeed become entangled with the bones of the deceased. After the bones were unsealed in a new container and reburied in the new grave, Mr. Kuo's stomach pain went away, and he was able to sleep normally. The day the pain stopped was the same day the bones were dug up and put into the new container. Since that day, he became well again and gradually gained back his ruddy complexion.

He had always been a healthy person and rarely got sick prior to this strange illness. When he was healed, he and his beautiful granddaughter came to see me again.

"How would you like me to pay you? Just tell me, and I will do it," he asked.

"All right. If I let you know, you have to keep your promise."

"Of course, just let me know how much money you want. I won't mind!"

"I don't want any of your money. My only request is that you chant one hundred times each morning Namo Amitabha."

I smiled.

"Chanting the name of the Buddha! Well ....you don't want any money?"

His granddaughter said to him, "Grandfather, chanting the name of the Buddha is quite a simple request. Why don't you just agree to it? Mr. Lu only wants to help people. He did not do the spiritual reading for money. It would be an insult to him to insist on giving him money!"

"That's right. There is great merit in chanting the name of the Buddha. We should accumulate merits that we can use in the heavens," I concurred.

After listening to me, the old man finally bowed down at the shrine to pay homage to the Buddhas and agreed to do the chanting. Then he reiterated his gratitude before leaving.

Perhaps in this scientific age, many people would not believe such a story as that I have written here and would rather consider it as mere coincidence. I myself do not demand that everyone believe in it; it is totally up to each individual. However, if these are coincidences, then there are just too many cases of coincidences of Spiritual Divination happening to me!

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