Stories from Ancient China: Faith in Buddha Leads to Numerous Miracles

In the Tang Dynasty, a book entitled Record of Retribution for Sin recorded many stories about how people's sincere worship of Buddha resulted in their being free from dangers and disasters.

The first story is as follows:

Near the end of a year in the Dong Wei Period, some people from Ye Xia town went to the West Mountain to mine silver sand. They finished the work and were leaving the cave, but before all of them completely got out, the cave suddenly collapsed. The man who was walking last was totally buried inside the cave. Luckily, he was not injured. There was a very small hole in the collapsed cave so he could manage to see through to the outside. He shouted for help, but nobody could hear him. He had no choice but to pray to Buddha.

His father was told that his son was buried in the cave and the body couldn't be found and so he wanted to do something to release his son's soul from purgatory. He was very poor but managed to obtain a bowl of simple and plain rice. He went to a temple and offered the bowl of rice to the monks. He asked the monks to pray to expiate the sins of the son. However, most of the monks had been offered the best food and were living in luxury so they disdained this bowl of rice. The father was so desperate that he cried in sadness. Upon witnessing this one of the monks sympathized with him and accepted his offering. After eating the rice, the monk prayed for the son. Then the father left in ease.

At this moment, the man who was buried in the cave suddenly saw, through the small hole, a monk holding a bowl of rice walking towards him, which he then offered to him. Since then, he never felt hungry. The only thing he did was to sit up and worship Buddha.

More than ten years passed. In the year when Emperor Qi Wen attained the throne, he ordered the building of a pavilion on the West Mountain. It just so happened that as the workers dug they came across the cave. They found the buried man and pulled him out. The man simply returned home and was reunited with his parents. Everybody gasped in surprise over the miracle.

The second story is as follows:

Zhang Liang was a high ranking official of You Zhou city. He always believed in Buddha. One day, he went to a temple to worship Buddha and saw some dust on the tall Buddha statue. He immediately cleaned and wiped the Buddha statue and began to worship.

One day, Zhang Liang was sat in the den at home when two female servants stood beside him. The weather suddenly changed to that fo a great thunderstorm, which Zhang Liang had always feared in the past. So he focused on praying to Buddha to reduce his fear. After a while, a thunderstorm hit a wooden support beam in the den and a thunderbolt struck one of the female servants as she passed by the beam on her way out to check what was happening. Zhang Liang was hit by a piece of timber right in the middle of his forehead. But he did not fell any pain, although the piece of timber broke in-two from the force. Zhang Liang carefully checked his own forehead and found a red scar.

The day after, he went to the temple to worship the Buddha as usual and was shocked to see a big scar on the forehead of the Buddha Statue, as if the forehead had been hit by an object. This was in the same position of the forehead where Zhang Liang had been hit by the timber. Zhang Liang realized that it was Buddha who had saved him from the danger fro his past good deeds. All those who heard of this sighed in astonishment.

The third story is as follows:

Lu Wen Li was a high ranking imperial official in Fang Yang City. Once upon a time, when he was still a low ranking official and was under an order to serve on an imperial mission in Jin Zhou City. He was suffering a serious illness when he arrived in the region of the South Yangtze River. His abdomen swelled turning as hard as stone and making it impossible for him to eat. He soon found that no medicine could solve his problem and so he thought there was nothing to do but to wait and die. The only thing left was to concentrate on praying to Mother Buddha.

After a few days, Lu Wen Li had a dream and saw Mother Buddha. The Mother Buddha said to him, "I came to save you because of your devotion towards worshiping Buddha. Now I'll remove the illness in your abdomen." The Buddha held a large wooden spoon, stretched into his abdomen and fetched out three liters of dirty stuff. Mother Buddha then disappeared in a flash. Lu Wen Li woke up with a startle. He found his abdomen was flat and his illness gone. After that, he lived in good health for the rest of his life.