Inspiration of Chanting Buddha 46 - Killing will Result In a Short Life 殺生要獲短命之報

(English and Chinese subtitles )念佛感應見聞記 , 一聲彌陀車停下來 written by venerable laywoman Kanzhi Lin 林看治居士 (1906-1992 AD)
Subtitles:
The ancient virtuous people said: "Mind can create karma, and mind can change karma." Literally, these words are simple, but it's not easy to carry out.
How does the mind create karma? How does the mind change karma? Here are a few facts for illustration.
In mid-February last year, there was a fellow practitioner named Kuan Jin who lived in this city. She is 68 years old. She came to the association one day and said to me: "While living in this world without learning Buddhism, people are prone to be baffled and upside down and often committed sin. In addition, they sinned and made karma unwittingly by creating evil thoughts all day long.
After reciting the Buddha's name and hearing the Dharma, I realized the truth that karma is created by the mind, and karma changes with the mind."
I asked her, "How did you realize these two sentences about the profound and subtle principles?"
Then she told me the story of living in her hometown of Wuqi 20 years ago.
”I had three boys, the second was twenty at the time. One morning, the second child went out for a walk, and when he came back, he joyfully presented a red fish, about a foot long, with both hands.
He said delightedly to me: 'Mom! I caught this fish in a shallow ditch. Hurry up and cook it with shredded ginger for me.'"
“Ordinary people have the habit of thinking that eating live animals is a blessing, and they don't know that once they stumble, it will cause eternal hatred.
After my second child ate the live fish, in his sleep that night, he saw a young woman about eighteen years old in red, who proposed to him: 'You have promised my marriage, and I will marry you.'
From then on, the female ghost haunted him every night, and he fell ill in bed.”
“Many doctors were at their wits' end and the medicines were ineffective. Unfortunately, he passed away within ten days at the age of twenty.” Sister Kuan Jin, recalling the tragedy of her second child's death at that time, spoke with sorrow: “We were pitiful to be born in a poor and remote countryside, there are no good intellectuals to preach the Dharma. Hence, we were extremely ignorant and didn't know that killing a living being would result in the retribution of a short life, so I did not teach my son to release that fish.”
“If he hadn't eaten the fish, he wouldn't have had a grudge against that female ghost, and the female ghost wouldn't have dragged him to the evil realm to suffer. This kind of stupid behavior is the karma created by my own mind. Because I did this evil karma before I heard the Dharma, I myself received the retribution of losing my son.”