Now, I, Ayù, wish to share excerpts from Volume 56 of The Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra, Chapter 14, Part One: The Buddha’s Discourse on Entering the Womb. The Buddha taught: “According to the karma of past lives that determines where rebirth shall occur, the intermediate being takes form matching its next life realm. Intermediate beings destined for rebirth as heavenly beings have their heads facing upward; intermediate beings destined for rebirth as humans, animals or ghosts travel horizontally; intermediate beings bound for the hells have their heads facing straight downward. All intermediate beings possess spiritual powers, traversing through space. Like beings endowed with the heaven eye, they can see far-off places of rebirth.” “Only when parents and the child share mutually attracting karmic affinities may the intermediate being enter the mother’s womb. Furthermore, when the intermediate being is about to enter the maternal womb, its mind becomes inverted. If the future child is male, it develops affection for the mother and aversion toward the father. If female, it develops affection for the father and aversion toward the mother.”
Every life comes into being only after forming complete karmic affinities with both parents; no being enters a womb without affinity. When such affinity manifests, it ought to be cherished. Whether these karmic ties are good or bad, when conditions converge, each person must reap their own karmic fruits. May all sentient beings who have undergone abortion sincerely repent, recite the Buddha’s name and transfer the meritorious virtues to these pitiful infant souls. May they attain rebirth in the Western Pure Land at the earliest opportunity, liberated from all suffering!
21 / The Accusations of Infant Souls — King Yama’s Yellow Warrant Token
Grateful for the empowerment of the Buddha! I departed riding a white lotus flower.
“Amitabha!” I, Ayù, pressed my palms together in greeting to the Magistrate.
The Magistrate was handling cases of infant souls confined in the Wailing City of the Wrongfully Dead. I heard a female infant soul screaming loudly: “I hate you two, hate you to the core! I will never let you off. You shall never die a peaceful death, lifetime after lifetime. I will never forgive you, and I will come back to avenge myself without fail.” She kept crying out in agony. I was astonished that such a small infant soul held such immense resentment. This female soul looked a little bigger than the rest. The Magistrate told me she was more than six months into gestation when she was aborted. Her parents had decided to terminate the pregnancy after finding out she was a girl. This was the second time this female soul had suffered an abortion. Both terminations had occurred more than six months into pregnancy. Tormented by this repeated calamity, she had brought a complaint before Yama King of the Netherworld. Yama King had permitted her to enter the womb again to collect the debt owed to her.
I went over to speak with the female infant soul. I uttered “Amitabha” to the spirit and asked why she harbored such bitter hatred for her parents. I advised her to release the enmity. Seeing that they did not want a daughter, they would not treat her well even if she were reborn to them; there was no need to cling to this hatred.
At my words, the female infant soul burst into violent weeping. She insisted that she would pursue this revenge to the ends of the earth and never pardon the couple who had aborted her.
Overcome with anguish and rage, she recounted that this pair of parents had murdered her twice. During the second abortion, even the doctor had warned that it would be dangerous. Yet her parents said that protecting the mother’s safety was what mattered most, and they wanted nothing of the child. They asked for the method most favorable to the mother.
The female soul sobbed that inside her mother’s womb, she had kicked with all her strength, hoping to come out earlier. But the doctor held her head down and gave her an injection. All at once, she felt dizzy, achy and powerless all over. Afterwards, the doctor cut her right hand into two pieces and pulled them out with forceps. Then her legs were sliced into four parts and drawn out using suction cups. She suffered unbearable agony and piercing cold, and the rest of her body underwent the same torment.