S2 Special - Between Breaths (2/3) - Children with Memory

Some stories press against the edges of what we think is possible. We open with the quiet fear of speaking about death and move into the rituals that try to keep bonds alive, from Chinese paper money for the departed to Tibetan practices that treat consciousness as lingering just beyond sight. Then the ground shifts: two child cases—James Leninger in the United States and Shanti Devi in India—offer names, places, and details that investigators could test. You don’t have to accept reincarnation to feel the tug of specifics, the way terror can travel like a storm across time.

From there, we sit with a different frame: reincarnation as momentum. Rather than a mystical upgrade, it’s the return of habits, desires, and fears searching for familiar grooves. That lens explains why nightmares, phobias, and even birthmarks show up in so many accounts, and why a seasoned practitioner might steer the process with intention. The Live Buddha shares pieces of a lineage that includes a warrior’s death, a recurring chest scar, and a prophecy that led to his rediscovery after the Cultural Revolution. Whether you treat these as sacred history or provocative folklore, the theme is continuity that refuses to be neat.

The most intimate moment arrives close to home: a stubborn baby melting into a monk’s arms, as if greeting an old teacher, with small habits echoing a previous life. Over time those edges soften—names fade, tastes change, momentum slows—but the questions linger. What actually carries over: facts, pain, or patterns? If fear returns first, can compassion be trained to return sooner? We don’t offer easy answers. We map the terrain, weigh the strongest claims, and leave space for wonder and doubt to coexist. If you’re ready to think differently about memory, identity, and the space between breaths, press play, subscribe for part three, and tell us what detail surprised you most.

Please contact me at theunclewong@gmail.com

Transcript

Why We Fear Speaking Of Death

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to our special series, part two. I'm your host, Donko Wang. Now, since I said superstition is a fair game, let's talk about something familiar. And that is why people fear talking about death. In many Asian households, there is a fear that if you talk too much about death, well, you invite it. In Chinese families, in particular, you hear things like don't point at the moon, don't whistle at night, don't say death casually, and don't stare into mirrors in the dark. You could laugh at all you want, but these superstitions reveal something real, and that people feel like death is listening. The Tibetan practice you heard before. They speak to the dead because they think consciousness lingers. In other words, the death is listening. And it's interesting to note that the Chinese deal with this differently. Because the Chinese culture regarding death, we don't talk to the dead. We don't believe the dead is hearing us or next to us as we speak. Okay, they think there's a barrier. But instead, we worry about something even more interesting. And this goes to show how much Chinese people love money. As most of you may know, during Chinese New Year's, we say things like, meaning we wish you wealth and prosperity. But it doesn't end there because even after you're dead, we still worry that you're broke. So we burn you paper money as a way to connect us. We're not worried if you're resting in the kingdom of heaven or with Buddha, but if you have enough money to spend. And so you will see the Chinese burning a bunch of different types of paper money. That's the Chinese for you. We'll get into that culture in a separate season, but this action unconsciously signals that relationship between departed and the living doesn't end cleanly. The concept of death perhaps isn't just flipping off a switch. So the next time I had a chance to speak with Live Buddha, I asked him something I've always planned to ask. Why don't we remember our past lives? He didn't hesitate. He said, most people can barely remember what they did last week. Memory is limited by your brain. If you're a human brain, animal brain, it's different. But if that limit is broken, either through meditation or certain circumstances in life, then remembering or recalling your past life becomes possible. So I asked the obvious follow-up, ALB, do you remember your past life? And he smiled. He said, Of course I do. He said, of course I do. And after that conversation, I went down a rabbit hole. Not on near-death experiences like NDEs, but we could get to that too. But I started looking at documented cases of people who remember vividly their past lives. And what scared me was what scared me wasn't how many people there actually were, but how some of them were actually hard to refute. Because almost all of the strongest cases involved children, very young children. Kids saying things that made adults deeply uncomfortable. And there are two specific cases that always come up. Not because they're mystical, but because they're specific. Names, places, and verifiable details. So let's start with story one. Happens here, happened here in America. In a small suburban town in Louisiana, okay, there was a boy named James Leninger. And he began having nightmares around the age of two. They were violent ones. He screamed about playing on fire, about being trapped, and about crashing into the ocean. And he will wake up covered in sweat, shaking. Not like a child who had just had a nightmare, but almost as if like someone who's been there. Like a PTSD dream, you know? Then he started saying things a toddler shouldn't know. He said, airplane crash. He said, can't get out. My plane was shot down. But then the detail sharpened. James said he flew a Corsair. And that's a World War II fighter plane. He said he took off from a ship called the Toma. And he said the Japanese shot him down. And then he said something that made his parents stop laughing. He said, My name is James Huston. And then they checked. The parents went and checked everything he said. And there was a ship. It was called the USS Natoma Bay. And there was a pilot named James Huston Jr. He died near Iojima in 1945. And yes, he flew a Corsair. What was also insane is that James could recognize pilots in old photographs. He can talk about mission details, and no one had taught him. And so this case was investigated and documented by researchers connected to the University of Virginia. And there's a study there on children who claim past life memories. But here's the point. You don't have to believe in reincarnation to find this disturbing. The strange part isn't the idea of rebirth. The strange part is why a small child would lock onto these obscure, verifiable details with so much emotional terror attached. And LB simply said it's a memory of pain, not information, just memory. And now we go to India, 1930s. There's a girl named Shanti Devi began saying something that frightened everyone around her. She says, I'm not from Delhi. I'm from Mandura. I had a husband and I died giving birth. She was only four years old at the time when she said this. And she didn't just say it once, she kept insisting. She named her husband, described her home. She even mentioned where money had been hidden inside their old shop. And then family tried to stop her, of course. Because in that culture, this kind of talk isn't entertaining. It brings fear, gossip. But yet, Shanti didn't forget. Eventually, an inquiry was formed, and she was taken to Mandura. From there, she recognized people, found her old home, and privately shared details that were difficult to explain, even as coincidence. And this case became widely discussed and documented in India at that time. And again, you don't have to believe it. But if you're honest, it's hard to shrug off. But this doesn't this second story didn't get as much acknowledgement as the first. Why? Because Indians believe in rebirth. Hinduism believes in reincarnation. Americans don't, especially if you're from the suburbs of Louisiana. But both of these cases are very hard to dismiss. Why? Because most past life stories are too vague. I was a soldier, I died in water, or I lived in a big house. But these two were nothing alike. They included names, locations, verifiable targets, and a sort of an emotional continuity. That doesn't prove reincarnation, but it creates friction. And friction, I believe, is where real questions begin. And so now I gathered all this knowledge and all these questions to ask LB. And LB says something simple that felt true. Even outside the concept of Buddhism. He says when a person dies with so much fear, fear is the first thing they carry. So if anything comes back at all, it is a wisdom. It's unfinished terror. And not only that, some birthmarks represent how you died. And that's why so many reincarnation stories involve nightmares, phobias, and very intense emotional reaction. But still, these are just stories or news that we watch. I don't know James. I don't know Shanti. I can't verify it myself except read about it. But what I can verify is that I had somebody in front of me who can remember his past life. And that was the live Buddha. And I told you before, he's said to be the 17th reincarnation of a spiritual master. Normally they come back 21 times, so he came back 17 times already. So just take that as a side note. His first documented incarnation dates back to the 11th century. Okay, it's not rumored, it's written. Whether they share the same consciousness, I don't know, but it's still interesting. Because he was the brother of a famous general, Garçawama, the brother of the general. He himself was also a general. And in that life, he died violently. He was shot to the heart with an arrow. And before he died, he ordered his lieutenant to cut off his head and hang it on the enemy's wall. So when his brother saw it, he would avenge him. And this war was to unify Tibet. Okay, so Life Buddha didn't spend every lifetime in a temple. Sometimes he said he had to fight for his people. He laughed and said it was too long ago to remember clearly. But then comes the strange part. Because it's also documented that he has a scar on his chest to reflect that wound he suffered in his first incarnation. I asked him to show me. And he did. He did have a scar on his chest right where the arrow pierced his heart. And as documented, supposedly he had the same scar in every reincarnation. It became a way to identify him. And yes, and I kept asking stupid questions afterwards, like, so you got shot with an arrow and your head cut off. And he just smiled. But I know he might not just like he said, he does not remember clearly because it might have been his first life. Happened a thousand something years ago. So I want to fact check his last life there. And that's where things got really strange. And that's where things kind of got weird. Remember in mystic Tibet, those temples I visited where LB was at? Well, the one that I visited when I went to Tibet for the first time, his past life, he was also the head monk there. But he told me that he was captured during the Cultural Revolution, which happened in the 60s and 70s in China, and he was sentenced to death. And before he died, he told his squire who his parents will be, what birthmark he will have, and exactly where and when he would be born, and how to find. Years later, he was found and continued to lead the monastery to this day. And surprisingly, he remembers all the things from his past life, too. He told me there's no more need for him as a general. He's better off in the temple. But I could tell, you know, all these years I spent with him, this man knows way too much. And I can't keep anything from him either. It's almost scary. Yet he never scolds me or or says anything bad to me. He just listens. And he will always answer any question that I have. And part of the reason I'm sharing it with you is because I found it very interesting, right? Death, reincarnation, the different ghost realms, what heaven and hell will portray like. Those were those were some of my favorite topics. But also LB explained reincarnation as a simple momentum, not magic. Meaning desires return, habits return. The mind looks for familiarity. And Tibet Buddhism is brutally honest about this. Rebirth isn't beautiful, it's just a continuity. And the only difference between LB's rebirth and our rebirth is that he can choose when and where to come back or who to come back as. Well, we, like the scripture suggests, are forced to look for familiarity. So when the live Buddha says people come back, he doesn't say it with excitement. He says it with certainty. Look again at the photo from this episode. It's a picture of LB holding my daughter's hand as they walked away. I know, I know for a fact that my daughter remembers him. I know, okay, I know for a fact that my daughter remembers him from a past life. Because as a baby, my daughter, she was stubborn and she was mean as hell. No one could hold her or carry her except my wife. Not me, not the nanny, not her grandmother, no one. But the first time she met Light Buddha, she relaxed in his arms and fell asleep. I could not believe it. And when she woke up, she tucked on his prayer beads. It was as if they knew each other. And later, LB told me that she had indeed been one of the she she was indeed one of her disciples in a past life. And she passed several years earlier. And as a child, she refused to eat meat. That's very different. And LB says she was vegetarian in her past life too. So that habit carried on. Of course, as she got older, she adapted, seafood stake, habits fade. Memories fade. If you ask James now or Shanti now, they might not be able to remember their past lives anymore. Momentum slows. And still, none of this was ever easy for me to explain. It tested my faith. It tested what I thought about death. That's why I took the picture. Because it doesn't feel like they're walking down a short path. It feels like a moment between timeless dimensions. I'm Uncle Wong. This is Asian Uncle, and that's part two of Between Breaths. I hope you enjoyed it and didn't find it too creepy. But our next episode, we're going to talk about something different. We're talking about hell bureaucracy, judgment, Christianity, and the movie that broke my certainty.