Karmic Accounts from Yuewei Caotang Biji 👻
he account below is adapted from Yuewei Caotang Biji (閱微草堂筆記), a renowned Qing-dynasty collection by the famous Chinese scholar Ji Xiaolan (紀曉嵐) 📚. Written in 18th-century China, about 250 years ago, this remarkable work preserves unusual accounts, karmic warnings, and moral encounters that blur the line between the seen and unseen worlds.
What gives these old accounts their enduring power is not merely their eerie atmosphere, but the truths they press upon the reader: cruelty has consequences, suffering is not confined to human beings alone, and the moral order of life may run far deeper than appearances suggest.
The Old Monk’s Warning 🧘
A Haunting Buddhist Account of Karma, Cruelty, and Awakening
One day, an old monk passed by a slaughterhouse and suddenly burst into tears. 😢
The people nearby were startled. Someone asked him, “Why are you crying?”
The old monk sighed and said:
“It is a long story. I remember my two previous lives.”
And then he began to tell a story so chilling, so vivid, that even the butcher standing there could not walk away unchanged.
The Monk’s Former Life as a Butcher
The monk said that in one of his past lives, he had been a butcher.
He had spent his days killing animals, and by the time he died in his thirties, the karma of slaughter had already become terribly heavy. After death, he said, several beings bound his soul and dragged him away. In the underworld, the officials rebuked him for the grave karma of killing and sent him into rebirth to undergo its bitter result.
He described what came next like a nightmare:
He felt dazed, as if drunk, as if dreaming. There was unbearable heat all around him. Then, suddenly, a moment of coolness.
But when he came to his senses, he found himself no longer human.
He was lying in a pigsty. 🐖
Reborn as a Pig
At first, he drank the sow’s milk like the other piglets. Later, after being weaned, he saw the foul pig feed placed before him.
He said:
“In my mind, I knew it was filthy and disgusting. But my hunger burned like fire. My insides felt scorched. I had no choice but to eat.”
As time went on, he even came to understand the language of pigs.
The pigs around him could communicate with one another. Many, he said, still remembered their former lives. But none of them could speak to human beings. Most of them knew, in a dim and dreadful way, that slaughter awaited them.
Because of sorrow, they groaned.
Because of fear, their eyes were often wet.
Because of helplessness, they could only wait.
The monk recalled the misery of pig-life in painful detail:
- In summer, the body was heavy, clumsy, and tormented by heat. Only a patch of mud could bring relief.
- In winter, the sparse, stiff hair gave almost no warmth, and the cold felt unbearable.
- Looking at sheep or dogs with their thick, soft coats, he thought they looked like blessed creatures.
Even in the body of a pig, the fear of death was real.
The Terror Before Slaughter
Then the monk described the moment every pig dreaded most.
When the butcher came, the pig knew there was no escape. And yet it still struggled, still leaped, still fought desperately for even one moment more of life.
Once caught, the pig’s head would be pinned down underfoot. Its legs would be twisted backward and bound tightly with rope. The pain, he said, felt as if it cut into the bones themselves.
Sometimes pigs were loaded onto carts or boats, thrown together in heaps, crushed beneath one another until their ribs felt ready to snap and their bellies ready to burst.
Sometimes they were carried on poles, hanging in agony.
And when they finally reached the slaughterhouse, they were thrown heavily onto the ground, so hard it felt as if their insides would shatter.
Some were killed that same day.
Others were tied up and left there, waiting.
And the waiting, he said, could be even worse than death itself.
On one side stood the chopping block.
On the other, the boiling cauldron.
And all the while the pig trembled, knowing its turn was coming. 🩸
He said that he would often look back at his own body and think:
“Soon this body will be cut apart, chopped to pieces, and turned into meat in someone’s bowl.”
That thought filled him with unbearable grief.
Under the Knife
When the moment of slaughter finally came, the monk said he would be so terrified that his body went limp.
His heart pounded violently in his chest. His spirit seemed almost to fly out through the top of his head, only to fall back again.
Seeing the knife flash in the light, he dared not look. He could only shut his eyes and wait.
Then the butcher stabbed the throat and twisted the blade so the blood would pour into a basin.
The monk said:
“That suffering cannot be described.”
He could not die at once. He could only howl.
Only after the blood had nearly drained away did the butcher stab the heart. By then, the pain was so great that even sound could no longer come out.
Then everything became blurred again—dreamlike, drunken, fading into darkness.
Human Once More
After a long time, he slowly awoke.
And when he looked at himself, he had become human again.
The monk explained that in that earlier life, though he had committed grave killing, he had also done some good deeds. Because of that remaining merit, the officials of the underworld allowed him to be reborn once more as a human being.
Then he said quietly:
“That is who I am now.”
At that moment, the people listening were stunned.
The monk went on:
Just now, when he saw the pig in front of him, he felt deep pity for the suffering it was about to endure. At the same time, he remembered the torment he himself had once suffered in exactly the same way. And seeing the butcher standing there, knife in hand, he felt sorrow for him too—because one day, he said, the butcher would surely suffer the same fate.
These thoughts became entangled together in his heart.
That was why he had begun to weep.
The Butcher’s Awakening
When the butcher heard the monk’s words, something inside him broke.
He threw his knife to the ground. 🔪
And from that day on, he gave up killing.
He changed his trade and made his living selling vegetables instead. 🥬
Final Reflection✨
This old Buddhist account is frightening not because it is strange, but because it is morally clear.
It reminds us that animals fear death.
It reminds us that habit hardens the heart.
It reminds us that karma does not forget what we train ourselves to become.
The monk wept not only for the pig, but also for the butcher—and for all beings trapped in cycles of harm, fear, and ignorance.
That is what gives this story its power.
It is not merely a ghostly tale from the past.
It is a warning.
It is a mirror.
And perhaps, for some, it is also a chance to turn back before it is too late.
Amituofo🙏🙏🙏