ལས་བརྒྱ་ཐམ་པ་པ 9.17

9.17

and said, “Something to drink!” Then, due to his past actions, human beings appeared and began dumping ashes into the bowl.

When he saw this, he thought, “All that I am experiencing certainly comes from the actions I myself have committed and accumulated. There is no doubting their arrival, for I have put the conditions in place and accumulated the causes. Therefore they cannot ripen or be experienced in the aggregates, elements, or sense bases of another.”

With that he quaffed the ash-gruel, and on that basis he passed into parinirvāṇa amid a miraculous display of fire and light, rain and lightning. Afterward, his fellow practitioners of the holy life venerated his remains. They built a reliquary stūpa and venerated it with flowers, burning sticks of incense, incense powders, and incense cones.

The monks inquired of the Blessed One, “Lord, what action did Venerable Small Person with a Curving Spine take that ripened into his being hungry and bereft, that he went hungry for seven days, and that upon eating ash-gruel he passed into parinirvāṇa?”

“Monks,” the Blessed One explained, “in his previous lives he himself collected the causes and put the conditions in place. The actions he committed and accumulated are now returning as certainly as the tides. Since it was he himself who committed and accumulated them, who else is there to experience them?

“Monks, the actions he committed and accumulated did not ripen in the external element of earth. They did not ripen into the element of water, nor the element of fire, nor the element of wind. The actions he committed and accumulated, both virtuous and nonvirtuous, ripened into nothing but his own aggregates, sense bases, and constituent elements.

“When the time arrives—and even if
A hundred eons pass—
Fruit is born of every act
That sentient beings amass.

“Monks, in times gone by,