debt, pay it back, pay up, promise, punishment, qianlong period, qing dynasty, reincarnation, vow, your word is your bond

If You Owe It, You Must Pay It Back

There is a saying: “Your word is your bond.” If you owe something, you must pay it back. One of the first lessons we all learn is that when we make sacrifices for what we want in life, we must pay back what we owe. There were two good friends, Lan and Qiu, who lived ...

Michael Segarty

Chinese landscaped gardens.

How a Poor Man’s Greed Cost Him Everything

Greed can cost a man everything. During a war, with more and more people fleeing the famine, Wang Laoliu picked up all his worldly possessions — a bag of sweet potatoes — and joined the departing villagers. Halfway to his destination, he came across a man and his son who were starving. The man was carrying a heavy bag.   When the man saw that ...

Emma Lu

A migrant worker from Nanjing, China, uses a tricycle to tow abandoned steel frames.

Love Affairs That Transcended the Centuries (Part 2)

After their wedding, Songlin, a small-town doctor, and his new bride, Xiaoxue, settled down to married life. Songlin’s parents and relatives were all opposed to the marriage because Xiaoxue only had the intelligence of a 7-year-old. But Songlin remembered past lives and the past love affairs between the two of them. So he continued to ...

Helen London

A red and white water lily.

A Fool’s Blessings

There is a well-known folk story told by Chinese people. The protagonists of the story are a rich man, a fool, and an old monk. The rich man was cheap and stingy and the fool did not care much about little things. The rich man hired a field hand named Zhang, who was honest and ...

Helen London

The words 'cow' and 'oil' in Chinese sound similar.

The Reincarnation of a Loving Pet as a Baby

Queena Hsiao from Taiwan lost her cat Biebi over a year ago. At the last minute, she told Biebi that she wanted to continue to love him and asked him to come back to her as a baby with a red birthmark. Sanli News Net reported in March that Biebi was a homeless cat more ...

Helen London

An orange cat.

Reincarnation According to Ancient Greeks

Though the idea of reincarnation might seem new to the Western world, a look into the history of Greece shows us that it is not so. Ancient Greek philosophers used to speculate about reincarnation and held some interesting notions about how it happened. Greek reincarnation The belief of reincarnation apparently came into prominence in Greece ...

Armin Auctor

Artist's rendering of a body floating in the void approaching the light.

Chinese Woman Known for Recalling Past Lives

There is a story on a Chinese news site known as Fenghuang Net about an elderly lady named Niu Wenqi from Shilou County, Shanxi Province, who is quite famous locally. While Niu never had a day of schooling, she could remember three of her previous past lives over the last 158 years, and every one ...

Nspirement Staff

Does Reincarnation Exist?

The concept of reincarnation is an open-ended topic. While many in the East believe in reincarnation, it is not a widely accepted phenomenon in the West. Reincarnation challenges one’s knowledge based on science. If you limit knowledge to what “science” allows you to see, then you are restricting yourself to a single dimension of reality. ...

Armin Auctor

Statue of a Lord Shiva.

Reincarnation: The Case of Luke Ruehlman

How are we to view reincarnation? Children have a wild imagination and can be very creative when telling stories to describe their perception of things or events in their worlds. But what if the stories they sometimes tell weren’t made up? What if some children could somehow access their soul’s memory and remember scenes from ...

Hermann Rohr

Three heavenly figures.

Has Bruce Lee Reincarnated as a Japanese Boy?

Bruce Lee, the famous Chinese actor and kung fu master from the 1970s, remains the pride and joy of Asians up to this day. Recently, a Japanese boy became the talk of netizens for his resemblance to Bruce Lee. The 7-year-old, Ryusei Imai, with his distinctive yellow jumpsuit, skill with nunchucks, and the way he ...

Nspirement Staff

Statue of Bruce Lee.