Cursed Of Blessed? (祝福或诅咒)

A few years ago, Lisa and her husband together with some business friends went to Lhasa for pilgrimage. There were around 20 odd people then.

Once they entered a temple, their tour guides were all pretty ladies and handsome men said to be from religious studies graduate from Tibetan universities. 

Each person was then advised to make offerings of 9 pieces of incenses. Of course, those incenses were not free... The price for one piece was around RMB200. Everyone MUST made those offerings or else he will not be blessed by the Buddha.

After the incense offering or RMB1800 (of ransom money), the tour guides then suggested that the His Holiness Rinpoche has just returned from India bring a lot of precious and powerful amulets.

When asked, the price for an amulet plus the empowerment by HH Rinpoche would cost around RMB1000 at least.

Of course those loaded and faithful businessmen and businesswomen didn't ask too many questions and bought those blessed amulets. Some even purchased a few for their family members.

When those tour guides saw those loaded tourists could spend willfully, they started to push out more expensive items. It was only at that time that Lisa and her group found that they had fallen into spending traps and at least guarded the rest of their money more carefully. But then most of the folks had nearly exhausted their money.

Later, Lisa met with a tourism reporter and he told Lisa that what Lisa and her friends experienced was the techniques used by local tour guides to fish money from tourists. Their targets were mainly Chinese tourists from Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong because tourists from these places are more willing to spend. On the other hand, those cunning guides would not approach westerners as westerners would not buy in with their tricks.

Upon returning from Lhasa trip, Lisa's husband kept wearing the amulets blessed by HH Rinpoche but her husband was not blessed as expected for he died of heart attack three months later.

Most of those businessmen and businesswomen were either lost a lot of money or even experienced business closures due to recessions.

So Lisa sighed: "After we have spent so much money and to have experienced such a consequences... If it was not due to the mindset of wanting to create merits, we would not have been cheated all those money!"