Spirit
possession may cause a person to feel lethargic, sleepy, feeling cold and
shiver, fainting, loss of consciousness etc. The treatments are of course,
varies amongst traditional medicine, modern medicine or the spiritual methods.
There are
many reasons for spirit possessions according to theory of karma:
1.
Revenge (報仇)
a.
When
a person has done injustice and wronged another person, the wronged ones may
possess this person after he/she dies; depending on the degree of hatred.
2.
Repaying
karmic debt (報恩)
a. If
a person felt extremely in debt to his/her benefactor in this life and no ways
to payback; after this person dies, his/her spirit may attach to this benefactor
by providing this benefactor with sixth sense or other abilities. For example,
this spirit may help its benefactor to get boon in his business.
3.
A
mixed mode of repay & redeeming karmic debts (討債還債)
a.
Spirits
may possess a person just briefly to repay and redeem whatever karmic debts and
leave.
It is not
easy to treat spirit possessions due to karmic reasons. While the simple cases
of repaying karmic debt can be dealt by religious deliverance services, food
and burnt offerings; the one specifically return for revenge is the most
difficult to handle.
Basically,
the normal spirit medium and Taoists would hands off such cases as it is said
that these vengeful spirits have obtained permissions from the Lord of Hell (領牌), so no deities
can interfere.
In the
perspective of Buddhism, delivering the spirit to pure land would be of the top
choice as tempering with this vengeful spirit’s karma would directly pulling
the master into this spirit’s karmic cycle. If this spirit denies any
deliverance offerings, then any masters should hands off.
That was
the case with Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. The Tantric Buddhists have very
extreme way of treating these stubborn spirits, but such method should not be
used simply especially when the situation is not life threatening. Such method
is known as “deliverance by killing” (殺度) available only to the Hayagriva,
Vajrakilaya and Shri Heruka practitioners. This method kills the spirit and
transfers its consciousness to the pure land. Needless to say that this type of
deliverance cannot be accepted by general folks as there is nothing like kill
to deliver. We shall look into this type of deliverance method in due time.
No comments:
New comments are not allowed.