In Buddhist teaching, the unseen realms are not matters of imagination, but fields governed by cause and effect. Throughout history, practitioners have encountered responses from yin realms, karmic echoes from past lives, and spiritual confirmations beyond ordinary perception.
This article records direct, firsthand experiences—not folklore, not speculation—revealing how karma spans past, present, and future, and how subtle realms silently bear witness to human conduct, intention, and faith.
Read not as superstition, but as testimony.
🕯️ “Subtle Realms Must Bear Witness”: The Invisible Proof of Spirits
👻 Yin Realms, Spirit-Response, and the Unseen Support Behind Our Practice
“‘Yōu xū guǐshén zhèngmíng’—‘In the unseen, spirits must bear witness.’”
“Ghosts and spirits bearing witness” refers to spiritual responses, and indeed, countless such responses occur. In my own life, I have personally experienced many of them, and the spiritual experiences of fellow practitioners have been abundant as well.
The study of Buddhism is simply the study of becoming a good person, a person of clarity and understanding—but it absolutely requires good roots, blessings, and proper causes and conditions.
Without these three, one will not encounter Buddhism in this lifetime; the very fact that you have met the Dharma proves that, in past lives, you have already cultivated these good roots, blessings, and karmic affinities.
🌟 A Buddhist in Dallas Encounters What He Never Believed
🪷 A Vision at His Father’s Passing That Changed His Faith
The president of the Dallas Buddhist Association in the United States, lay Buddhist Mr. Tsai Wen-Xiong, lived abroad for many years and did not believe in ghosts or spirits.
One year, when his father passed away, he returned to Taiwan for the funeral. Before his father’s death, he saw a Buddha statue inside the window—the window appeared like a Buddha shrine, with the statue standing right in the center.
He saw it clearly for at least fifteen minutes—long enough that there was no possibility of misperception—and the impression was extremely vivid and shocking. He asked others if they saw it; no one else could see it.
His faith in Buddhism began from this event—it was the Buddha coming to guide him.
Later, after he made some money in business, he once visited an antique shop and unexpectedly saw a stone Buddha statue—the very same statue he had seen in the window on the day his father passed away.
He immediately purchased it. At first, he enshrined it at home. Later, when he shared this story with me, I advised him to offer the statue to the temple, since he was the association president. This became the karmic cause of his deepening Buddhist path.
🌀 A Past-Life Memory on the Streets of San Francisco
🛣️ “I Have Never Been Here… Yet I Know Every Corner.”
He also told me another astonishing incident.
Once in San Francisco, while driving with a few friends, they took the wrong road and arrived at a small town he had never visited before. As the car approached the town, he suddenly felt very familiar with it.
He began describing the roads and buildings to the others in the car. When they drove into the town, everything matched exactly what he described. He was deeply shocked and puzzled for many years.
Later he asked me why this happened. I told him:
“In all likelihood, you lived in this town in your previous life, and for quite a long time. Otherwise, how could you possibly know its layout?”
He thought about it and agreed. It is highly possible that in his previous life he was a Chinese laborer working in the mines near San Francisco, living and dying in that place.
His present life turned out rather well—he was reborn human, succeeded in business, and encountered Buddhism again. This clearly confirms the karmic causes from his previous life.
🔄 “I Have Never Been Here… Yet It Feels Familiar”
🧭 Many Personal Experiences Point to Past Lives
I have encountered countless such cases. I myself have experienced it many times—arriving in a foreign region I had never visited, yet suddenly feeling deeply familiar.
Without accepting past lives, nothing can adequately explain these phenomena. You may say it is “a sudden flash of intuition,” but then why does such intuition not arise in other places?
Thus it becomes clear:
- Humans unquestionably have past lives.
- And since there is a past life, there must also be a future life.
- Karma spans past, present, and future—it flows through the three times.
🕯️ After the Victory of the War of Resistance
After the victory of the War of Resistance, I returned home but stayed only briefly—about two months. During that time, I heard of an incident that my younger brother told me about.
We had a cousin, Mr. Chen Guohua, from a large extended family. Their household owned an entire boatload of rice, all packed in burlap sacks. A sailboat departed from our hometown, passed through a small river near our village that connects to the Yangtze River, and transported the rice to Nanjing to be sold.
After all the rice was loaded onto the boat, someone saw something that looked like a weasel jump from the gangplank onto the boat. Everyone searched the boat thoroughly for a long time, mobilizing many people, but nothing was found. Thinking it might have been an illusion, they gave up and the boat set off.
When they arrived in Nanjing, the burlap sacks were still full and bulging, but not a single grain of rice remained inside. Only then did they realize that what they had seen was not imaginary. Somehow, that thing had moved an entire boatload of rice away—no one knew how or where it had gone.
With no other choice, they stayed in Nanjing for a few days and then returned home. After returning, they opened the warehouse doors, and the rice was there inside. Perhaps they had offended it—but not seriously. It was as if it had played a joke, sending them on a pointless trip. This is true—there is no exaggeration here.
🦊 Fox Spirits Witnessed Firsthand
I believe such things exist because I have personally seen them. What do people call them? Fox spirits. I have seen them. How old was I then? Seventeen.
During the war, we were in Hengshan, Hunan Province. About eight li away from Mount Heng was a village where we lived. The village belonged to a formerly wealthy household that had fallen into decline; only an elderly couple remained. The property had many buildings—three successive courtyard compounds connected together.
The upper floor had not been accessed for more than ten years; the staircase had been removed. A fox lived upstairs. That is true. Neither side harmed the other. The fox moved around upstairs, walking about; the sound of footsteps on the floorboards was clearly audible.
At the time, I was young, and my father was a soldier. I strongly wanted to go upstairs to see for myself, but my father strictly forbade it and firmly decided I was not allowed to go up. I even carried a pistol in my pocket and thought about going anyway.
Indeed, the fox would sometimes come downstairs, wearing a long blue cloth gown. Many people had seen this, but no one had ever seen its face. It was said that to cultivate into a fully human form requires about five hundred years, and it had not yet reached that level. Its features were blurry and indistinct, and it was male, not female—the fox spirit was male.
🌅 The Fox Shot and the Grievance That Followed
The landlord once had relatives and friends visit during the New Year, and they stayed for several days. One morning, just as the sun was rising, they saw a fox on the rooftop worshipping the sun. Some hunters shot and killed the fox.
From then on, a deep grievance formed, and the household was often left restless day and night. Because of this, the landlord was very fond of us living there, since soldiers could suppress such disturbances.
He had a daughter who was sixteen years old and did not dare stay in the house. Whenever she did, the fox would seek her out and attempt to harm her. The landlord and his wife told us about this.
👁️ A Direct Manifestation
I myself also saw the fox manifest. Truly. What others said was accurate. I saw it wearing a long blue cloth robe, walking from the corridor into an alley. I ran into the alley to look again, but it was gone—disappeared.
You only know it is real when you witness it yourself; it is not false.
From that time onward, I believed that books such as Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai) and Zi Bu Yu are truthful, not fabricated or superstitious rumors. Such things truly exist.
The world is vast, and nothing is impossible. One cannot say that something does not exist simply because one has not personally seen it. That is not acceptable.
✨ Coming Next...
🌱 Next Lesson Preview:
True practice begins with seeing one’s own faults.
In the next post, we will look at how to truly apply repentance in daily life—so that self-correction becomes continuous, natural, and effective.
Stay with us.
🙏 Amituofo 🙏
✨ Essential Questions & Takeaways
How many can you answer? Your score shows how well you've internalized the chapter.
🔍 1️⃣ Do unseen realms really exist, or are they just imagination?
Daily level: Not everything real is visible—don’t dismiss what you haven’t seen.
Inner level: Repeated, consistent witnesses across different people and situations point to “something beyond personal imagination.”
Fundamental truth: Whether you label it “spirits” or not, karma and causes-and-conditions function beyond the limits of the senses.
⏳ 2️⃣ Why do spiritual encounters often happen at critical moments like death or major life transitions?
Daily level: Big life moments often bring unusual experiences—stay calm and keep right mindfulness.
Inner level: At death and major transitions, the mind is highly sensitive, and karmic conditions ripen, making “responses” more likely to appear.
Fundamental truth: When causes and conditions mature, effects appear naturally—this is the law of dependent arising, not “random miracles.”
🧭 3️⃣ How can past-life experiences explain sudden familiarity that logic cannot?
Daily level: If you feel “I’ve been here before” with clear details, don’t rush to label it nonsense.
Inner level: When a place matches what you can’t logically know, it suggests stored impressions beyond current-life learning.
Fundamental truth: Consciousness and karmic seeds continue—so past-life traces can surface when conditions trigger them.
🪷 4️⃣ Are spirits and strange phenomena the main point of Buddhist practice?
Daily level: No—don’t chase experiences; focus on becoming clearer and kinder.
Inner level: Experiences can strengthen faith, but chasing them easily becomes attachment and distraction.
Fundamental truth: The core is liberation: seeing through delusion and aligning body, speech, and mind with the path—not collecting “special stories.”
🔁 5️⃣ What is the real lesson Buddhists should take from these accounts?
Daily level: Live as if your thoughts and actions matter—because they do. The unseen is not for fear—it’s a reminder that cause and effect never sleeps.
Inner level: These stories train a sober mindset: “cause and effect is real,” so we stop gambling with greed, anger, and deception.
Fundamental truth: Karma spans past–present–future; what you plant in mind and action becomes your future environment and destiny.
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📚 Source: Venerable Master Chin Kung’s lecture on The Four Lessons of Liao-Fan, delivered on April 16, 2001, on Phoenix TV