This is a story told by a manifestation of a human being who had died

and reincarnated as a chicken in the temple of Tao of Heaven. In the

teachings of Tao, humans can become animals and animals can become

humans. It is quite difficult for non-believers to understand why so and

under what circumstances. This story was emailed to me by a Tao devotee

and I would like to share with readers as follows:

“There is a man in ancient China who was born into a poor family. As he

was one of the eldest in the family, he had to shoulder the burden of

supporting his family. Through a coincidence, he was introduced and

had the opportunity to learn cooking by a Chef whom he worked with

inside his master house. The chef saw that this man had special talents

in cooking and hence decided to impart all his secret recipes and skills to

him. Soon, this poor man started his career as a chef and became richer

and richer as his dishes were very popular among the rich families when

he cooked inside a restaurant.

He ended his career after 30 years. Within these 30 years, he faced

much hardship and he bored 6 children who were all handicapped or

not complete healthy children and soon all his children died at young

age. He died at age 54 with a serious illness and when he died, his soul

was sent to Hell and became aware that his killing deeds in cooking

resulted his children to become handicap or born with defects. He himself

also died of illness due to his killing of animals as a livelihood in his Chef

career. King of Hades passed a judgement on him and he was sentenced to

100 lives time of reincarnation as animals.

The first sentence as animal was as a chicken for over a period of 100 years.

He revealed that he was reborn as a chicken in Guang Dong province of

China in a chicken farm where he was slaughtered and eaten by human

beings. After the ending cycles of chicken lives, he will be reborn as a pig,

fish, cow and lamb….. to repay his debts for cooking all these animals as

dishes during his career.

As he manifested in the Temple, he revealed that he had been a Chicken

for already 100 years. He calculated that he had an estimation of 3000

years of animals reincarnation.................(100 lives x 30 years of average

life-span). He felt very miserable and upon his full redemption of debts,

he will reincarnate as a human being again...............”

Once I met a very old acquaintance with his two children and immediately

I rushed towards him. Thinking that I would be able to share with him

about Tao, my very first few words caught him off guard. I did not know

that he was a Christian and I was not skillful in the propagation of Tao at

that time. Sadly to say, he indirectly and sarcastically told his children that

they do not want to become cats and dogs……..I stopped and realized my

mistake in telling him about reincarnation which Christian do not believe.

A lesson well learned that I should be more skillful next time when I meet

Christian if I wanted to talk to them about Tao.