The Bhikṣuṇī Maṇimēkhalai

241 - Good and Bad Deeds
‘Venerable Sir, that you should have come with the faltering steps of
age, could be due only to our good fortune. While it is undoubtedly
true that your tongue has remained steady all the while, may this body
of yours, though it has suffered very much from the ravages of age,
keep on for many a year to come.’
The sage said in reply,
‘Good queen, though born in this body as a result of good deeds, I am
still rather like the setting sun. It is but in the course of nature that we
hear of birth and growth, of disease and death. If people but
understand the real character of the causes and conditions of
existence, namely the twelve nidānas, (1) ignorance, (2) action of the
mind, (3) consciousness, (4) name and form, (5) the organs of sense, (6)
contact or feeling, (7) sensation, (8) thirst, (9) attachment, (10)
becoming or existence, (11) birth, (12) decay and death, they will
know ultimate happiness. If they do not understand it correctly, they
are doomed to suffer in hell.
By ignorance is to be understood the failure to understand what was
stated above, and subjecting oneself to believing that which is heard
from others. Among the three [179] worlds, this world of life is
limitless, and living beings in this world fall into six classes, human
beings, divine beings, the Brahmas, the Nāgas, the world of lower
creatures, and that of evil spirits.
As a result of good and bad deeds, beings come into existence in the
form of embryo in one or other of these classes, and when the deeds
work themselves out, they feel either happiness or the reverse. Evil
deeds consist in killing, stealing and giving way to passion, these three
showing themselves in the body. Lying, evil-speaking, harsh words
and idle words, these four show themselves in speech-Desire, anger
and intolerance show themselves in the mind. These ten are the deeds