Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 44
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). A striking contemporary account — a séance in Yunnan reveals that a respected official who had just died in another province had simultaneously taken up a post as a judge of hell — becomes the occasion for Zhuhong to insist that even a person of genuine, celebrated virtue is never entirely free of subtle karmic debt.
121. 趙定宇作閻王 — Zhao Dingyu Becomes a Judge of Hell
A striking contemporary account — a séance conducted in distant Yunnan reveals that a respected official who had just died back in his home province had simultaneously taken up a post as a judge of hell, confirmed only later when news of his actual death arrived — becomes the occasion for Zhuhong to insist that even a person of genuine, celebrated virtue is never entirely free of subtle karmic debt.
少冢宰定宇趙公，與雲南巡撫陳玉台同年。公以萬曆丙申三月望日捐館。時玉台在任，因內人病，扶乩請神，神判以死，因懇乞救援。神云：「五殿閻君方新任，其人剛正，不可干以私，無以為也。」問：「新任何人？」曰：「常熟趙某耳。」俄而訃至，則任期與訃期吻合，陳大驚異。或曰：「閻王帶福帶業者為之。定宇盛德士，亦有業乎？」噫！地藏菩薩言：「我觀閻浮提眾生，舉足動步，無非是罪。」焉得無過？昔聞一僧有天符召作閻王者，僧懼，大起精進，一心念道，符使遂絕。嗟乎！古稱韓擒虎生為上柱國，死作閻羅王；又近代傳聞鄭澹泉司寇死作閻王，杭太守周公死作城隍，此常事也。古德有言：「僧雖有行，不了道者，多作水陸諸神。」豈徒言哉？
Vice Minister Zhao Dingyu and the Governor of Yunnan, Chen Yutai, had passed the imperial examinations in the same year. Lord Zhao passed away on the fifteenth day of the third month of the year bingshen in the Wanli era. At that very time, Chen Yutai, still serving in his post in Yunnan, consulted a spirit medium through planchette writing on his own wife's behalf, since she was gravely ill, hoping to beg the spirit's intervention to save her. The spirit responded: "The judge of the fifth court of hell has only just newly taken up his post, and he is a man of unbending integrity — one cannot approach him with any private request, and nothing further can be done." Chen asked: "Who is this newly appointed judge?" The spirit answered: "A certain Mr. Zhao of Changshu." Not long afterward, news arrived of Lord Zhao's death, and the timing of his new appointment matched precisely with the date recorded in the announcement of his death — Chen was utterly astonished.
Someone remarked: "Only those who carry both merit and karmic debt are appointed as judges of hell. Lord Zhao was a man of celebrated virtue — did he too carry some karmic debt of his own?" Ah! The Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha himself said: "When I observe the beings of this Southern Continent, I find that with every step they take, with every movement they make, there is nothing that is not offense." How, then, could anyone be entirely free of fault?
I once heard of a monk who received a celestial summons appointing him a judge of hell; the monk, terrified, threw himself into intensive practice with singular devotion, and the summons was subsequently withdrawn entirely. Ah! It has long been said that the famous general Han Qinhu, honored in life with the rank of Grand Pillar of State, became a King of Hell after his death; and more recently it has been reported that the Minister of Justice Zheng Danquan became a judge of hell after his own death, and that Prefect Zhou of Hangzhou became a City God after his — such occurrences are, it seems, entirely ordinary. The ancients had a saying: "Monks who possess genuine conduct, yet fail to fully realize the Way, most often become deities presiding over water-and-land rites instead." How could this saying possibly be an empty one?
Zhao Dingyu, Chen Yutai, and Zheng Danquan were all genuine Ming-dynasty officials of Zhuhong's own era, and the practice of consulting spirit mediums through planchette writing (扶乩), in which a suspended stylus traces characters in sand under two mediums' guided hands, was a widespread and well-documented form of divination in late-imperial Chinese religious life, independent of any particular sect; the line Zhuhong quotes from Kṣitigarbha, that the beings of this world commit offense "with every step, with every movement," is drawn from the Sutra of the Past Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, and its citation here — to argue that even a widely respected official retained some subtle karmic debt requiring repayment in the afterlife — extends the same principle already developed at length in this collection's earlier discussion of King Yama's own mixed fortune in entry 104 above.