There once was a family of three. The man of the house was honest and good, while his wife was hardworking and clever. They had a 17-year-old daughter. It should have been a family that was admired by others. But just as the old Chinese saying goes: “Every family has its troubles.” The family told me the following story.
The wife told me that she and her husband grew up in the village, but didn’t know each other before marriage. When her husband was introduced to her, she felt he was a very timid and quiet man. But she thought he must be very reliable and agreed to marry him.
However, once they were married, she realized he had many bad habits that she could hardly bear. He never closed his mouth while eating; if he was eating noodles, all their neighbors upstairs or downstairs could hear his disgusting noise. Whenever it happened, she would be very embarrassed. But he didn’t care at all. Sometimes, she was so annoyed that she would call him the “elm pimple” — who cared about nothing and wouldn’t change for anything.
The wife was so ashamed of herself because she felt her husband was willing to be laughed at by their neighbors, and others looked down on her and her daughter. She fought for a divorce many times. But every time, she was stopped by her family and friends.
Whenever she saw him, she would feel upset, as if being suffocated. It was the same with her daughter, who always complained that her father didn’t care about her. He never took her out or even hugged or kissed her. She seldom communicated with him. Though they were father and daughter, they felt more like strangers.
Sometimes, the mother and daughter talked joyfully at home, but once the father entered the room, there would be a very embarrassing silence. The mother and daughter didn’t know what to discuss with the father.
The wife and daughter become Buddhists
The mother and her daughter later converted to Buddhism and could quickly deal with many things. But whenever her husband was mentioned, she still became annoyed. She had hoped, via cultivation, to forget and relieve all the sadness this marriage had brought her. However, since converting to Buddhism, she could hardly bear the smell of her husband. So they separated and refused to say a word to each other.
After three years of separation, she divorced her husband once her daughter finished her college entrance examination. Because of all the sadness and trouble, she had recurrent headaches. A friend called a monk who could know a person’s fate and could tell past-life relationships between people. After listening to her story, he told her what he saw with his third eye—the past relationship between her and her husband.
He said she was an impoverished man in one previous life, and he earned his bread by digging and collecting herbs from the forests and mountains. Once, he went to sell herbs at the pharmacy at the foot of the hill, and the shopkeeper told him: “Do you know there is a millennium elm on the mountain whose bark can be used for medicine? However, nobody dares to get it because it hides at the top of the mountain. You will be wealthy if you can peel all the bark off the elm and sell it to our pharmacy.”
The poor man was pleased; after he had earned the money, he would have enough to take a wife. So after much time in preparation, climbing the mountain, and wading the rivers, he finally found the millennium elm.
It was such a big tree that even three people couldn’t encircle it. Overjoyed, he started peeling the tree bark with his axe. But he soon fell asleep owing to his tiredness from looking for the tree and climbing the mountain.
In a dream, he saw a young man in green who knelt in front of him, saying: “I am the old elm who has cultivated for a thousand years. I can obtain the Dao and be a God in three more years. If you peel off all my bark, all my effort will be in vain. Please wait for three more years, and then you can come here to peel the bark from me. If you can follow my instruction and change your mind about peeling my bark, I will pay you later with my gratitude.”
But the man shouted in his dream: “No, I can’t do that. I want a wife and can’t wait for three more years.”
When he awoke, he looked around, but didn’t see anybody in green. So he kept on peeling the bark of the elm. Carrying the heavy elm bark, he went back to the pharmacy. The shopkeeper of the pharmacy was delighted to see him again and immediately put the bark on the scales to weigh it.
The poor man couldn’t read the scales and said: “Don’t deceive me with your scales, as it took me so much effort to get all this elm bark.” The shopkeeper promised: “Of course, if I deceive you with the scales, let me be your son in the next life.”
The old monk said she was the poor man in that life, her husband was the poor old elm whose bark he peeled off in that past life, and their daughter was the shopkeeper who deceived him. So just as the lady scolded her husband for being an elm pimple who cared for nothing, he was indeed the elm tree whose bark she peeled off in another life. So she was forced to suffer so much from him.
The old monk also said the temper and habits of a person can be traced back to experiences from a previous life. As the shopkeeper of the pharmacy deceived the poor man, though he didn’t reincarnate as his son, he became the daughter in this life.
Because of the shopkeeper’s inducements, which ruined the old elm’s cultivation, he reincarnated to be the family’s daughter in this life. But her father, the reincarnation of the old elm tree, didn’t care for or love her at all. This was the reason for the indifference between the father and daughter.
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