PureInsight | April 9, 2006
[PureInsight.org] I have been practising Dafa for less than a year though previously I practised both Zen and Shin Buddhism.
I have always had an affinity with the Japanese People whose language
and culture have somehow seemed familiar to me. Strange, as I am a
western male whose father was captured by the Japanese during WWII and
who suffered greatly at their hands.
From an early age, though at the same time loving and funny, my father
was quite brutal with me (he was, after all, a traumatised war veteran)
and I thought for a long time that my love of the Japanese was simply a
reaction to this.
However during Zen meditation and more recently in a state of Ding I
have had the occasional inexplicable flash back. A woman in a red
kimono, kneeling with her back to me, before a shrine in the snow.
Another, this time in a pink Chinese style dress, handing me a pistol,
with a background of craggy limestone mountains. In both cases I
appeared to have held some sort of military office.
Could these be images of a past life in which I knew and possibly even
persecuted my own father as a member of the Japanese Imperial Forces?
And was it therefore my karma to suffer at his hands during this life.
It is also possible that at some level he recognised this and reacted
accordingly.
The search goes on, but as my Dafa practice deepens, so does my clarity of vision.
