The Weight I Carry

THE WEIGHT I CARRY

A memoir of one ordinary life

and the questions it could not stop asking

by Zheng Wen De — Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia

Chapter Zero

Before You Begin — What This Book Is and What It Is Not

WHO WROTE THIS BOOK

My name is Zheng Wen De. I am Chinese-Indonesian. I was born and raised in Medan, North Sumatra. I am Buddhist. I am in my fifties. My joints hurt in the morning. My mother sleeps in the next room.

I am not a writer. I am not a scholar. I am not a religious teacher or a philosopher or anyone with credentials that would make my opinion matter more than yours. I am a man who has lived a life — an ordinary life, with ordinary good things and ordinary failures and at least one thing I am not ordinary about: I did something I cannot take back, and I have been carrying it ever since.

I wrote this book because I had questions I could not stop asking. About karma. About whether the universe notices what we do. About what happens after death. About whether the corrupt official who was never caught by any earthly court will ever face any accounting at all. About whether there is actually something there — in the temples, in the churches, in the mosques, in the places where people worship trees and rocks — or whether we are all just talking to the air.

I went looking for answers everywhere I could find them. This book is what I found.

I am sharing it because I think other people are asking the same questions. That is all. Nothing more than that.

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HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN — THE AI DISCLAIMER

IMPORTANT: Parts of this book were researched and written with the help of Claude AI, an artificial intelligence made by Anthropic. AI can be wrong. AI can make mistakes. AI can present information with more confidence than the evidence actually supports. Every reader has the responsibility to check any specific fact, case, or claim that matters to them. Do not accept anything in this book — or in any book written with AI assistance — without your own verification. This is not a limitation of this book alone. This is true of all AI-assisted work. I am telling you this at the front, not hiding it at the back, because that is what honesty requires.

What the AI did: research across religious traditions, documented historical cases, scientific studies, court records, and news sources. It organized the research into chapters. It helped me find words for things I knew but could not articulate.

What the AI did not do: live my life. The memories in Part One are mine. The questions are mine. The failures are mine. The thing I carry is mine. No AI invented those. They are the truest parts of this book.

What you should do: if something in this book moves you, challenges you, or disturbs you — follow that feeling and do your own research. Every tradition referenced here has its own primary texts. Every historical case mentioned here has its own source. Go find them. Read them yourself. Do not take my word, or an AI's word, as the final one on anything that matters to your soul.

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WHAT THIS BOOK CONTAINS — THE PARTS

This book is organized into parts. Each part has six chapters. New parts will be added as the book continues. This glossary will be updated each time a new part is completed.

PART ONE — The Life [Ongoing]

Six chapters of memoir. Real events from a real life in Medan. The bracelet that was taken. The school that changed the score. The marriage that broke. The moment something snapped. The morning that followed. This part contains things I am not proud of alongside things I am. I have not hidden the things I am not proud of. A memoir that only shows the good parts is not a memoir. It is a performance.

PART TWO — The Search [Ongoing]

Six chapters of questions. What are the divine judges of karma — who keeps the record? What do 25 million people who died and came back say about what they saw? What is the karma of sacred trees? Am I repaying karma from a past life? What happens to the shepherd who eats the sheep? Does the universe notice a good man? These are the questions I could not stop asking. This part is where I started looking for answers.

PART THREE — Conversation With Claude AI [Ongoing]

Twelve chapters of research. Everything I asked Claude AI about karma, moral consequence, and the afterlife across every major tradition on earth. Eastern traditions. Abrahamic traditions. Ancient civilizations. Indigenous traditions. 100+ documented cases of karma returning in this lifetime. The Ten Courts of Diyu. Bao ying. What Chinese tradition says about religion used as a weapon. The final answer to whether the universe notices a good man. This part is the longest and the most researched. It covers every tradition so that no reader can say: that is not my religion, so it does not apply to me.

PART FOUR — The Questions I Still Carry [Ongoing]

Six chapters of deeper questions. Questions that Part Three could not fully answer. Questions about the real court — the one that cannot be corrupted, bribed, or distracted by a manufactured war. Questions about the shield — the innocent man sacrificed to protect the guilty one above him. Questions about silence — those who knew and said nothing. Questions about powerful men who wear religion as armor. And the deepest question of all: is there any escape from the accounting? This part is written as a real conversation — my voice asking, Claude answering. Because that is what it actually was.

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WHY THIS BOOK EXISTS

One Chinese man in Medan, Indonesia wanted to share what he found when he went looking for the truth. That is all this book is. Not scripture. Not authority. Not the final word on anything. Just one man's search, documented honestly, offered to whoever needs it. If something here helps you — good. If something here disturbs you enough to make you go look for yourself — even better. If you disagree with something here — go check. Find the primary sources. Read the traditions in their own words. The truth does not need this book to protect it. It only needs people who are willing to keep looking.

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A NOTE ON THE TITLE

This book was originally going to be called The Weight of An Honest Man.

I changed it.

Not because the research is wrong. Not because the questions are wrong. But because I am not an honest man in the simple sense that title suggests. I am a man who tried to be honest and sometimes succeeded and at least once failed so completely that the failure cannot be undone. I beat my wife and my children on a night when I found out what I found out. My hands did what a man's hands should never do to people weaker than him. I have carried this every day since. I will carry it to the grave.

The Weight I Carry is the honest title. It holds the good mornings and the massaged feet and the honest transactions. And it holds that night too. Both. Without hiding either one.

That is the only kind of book worth writing.

— Zheng Wen De, Medan, 2026

The book begins on the next page.