(Minghui.org) Lu Qing was a man who lived in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). He was an inveterate peeping tom, and would often indulge himself in obscene topics. As a result of his deviant desires, his family lived in poverty, and both his sons died when he was in this thirties.
One day, Lu died and went to the underworld. There, he saw his grandfather, who appeared very cross with him.
“For two generations, our family has accumulated good karma by doing good deeds and helping others. You should have been very fortunate as a result of this. But your insatiable lust created so much bad karma that it exhausted all of your good fortune,” said the grandfather. “I was afraid that you would commit adultery. If you had done so, our Lu family would have been completely doomed. So I begged the god of the underworld to bring you here ahead of your time to see what punishments await those involved with sexual misconduct.”
“I was told that if someone has sex with other people's wives, he would then have no children of his own,” said Lu Qing. “I don't dare to commit adultery, Grandfather.”
Hearing this, a guard of the underworld chimed in.
“Cutting off a family line is the lightest punishment that people get for adultery,” he explained. “As a matter of fact, falling for another's seduction is already enough to warrant this consequence. If a person repeatedly seduces other people's wives, or aborts the children from these liaisons – or even worse, kills the wife's rightful spouse – the consequences would be much more severe.”
“The laws against adultery in the human world are too lenient,” continued the guard. “People created karma as soon as they even think about adultery. Even the gods in charge of punishing adulterers would be in trouble if they didn't report on people's wayward thoughts and assign punishment accordingly. Soon, you'll get to see how these adulterers get punished.”
As the guard spoke, other guards were bringing in dozens of adulterers to the court. They were all shackled and made to kneel down.
The god of the underworld began to announce their verdicts sternly, one by one. The first adulterer would become a mentally challenged and mute beggar in his next life. The second adulterer would be reincarnated into a prostitute who eventually goes blind. The third one would become a cow for two lifetimes, and a fourth one would be a pig for ten lifetimes.
After all the verdicts were read, the guards took the adulterers on their path to reincarnate into their next life. Lu Qing was horrified by the scene.
“That's not even the worst of it,” said the guard. “But I hope you understand now. You shouldn't chase after short moments of pleasure; it will wreck you for entire lifetimes to come. Avoid lust as you would avoid arrows being shot at you. You should write down everything you've seen so that you can warn the rest of the people.”
And that's exactly what Lu Qing did; he was miraculously revived, and wrote Tour to the Netherworld shortly after. Ten thousand copies of the book were published, in order to warn of the dangers of lust.
When he was forty years old, Lu was rewarded with two sons. His family also became wealthy again.
Lu Qing eventually decided to seclude himself from the ordinary human world, and went to the South China Sea to become a monk.
Category: Traditional Culture
