ཟས་ཀྱ་འཚ་བ་རྣམ་པར་དག་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད 3

3

“The ripening of merit is like an echo or a reflection. It is in this way that starving spirits were initially humans. At an earlier time, they handled the saṅgha’s clean food with unclean hands, dug their unclean hands into the saṅgha’s clean food, or mixed unclean food into clean food and offered it to the saṅgha. Later, they fell to the state of a starving spirit for five hundred lifetimes, and they constantly consume filth and eat toilet waste. When they consume toilet waste, the toilet protectors run them off with iron clubs and disparage the starving spirits as receptacles of filth. They consume filth such as people’s pus, blood, mucus, snot, and dirty bathwater. They guard such filth and consume the unclean blood that drips from women after childbirth.

“After five hundred thousand years, they are reborn in the body of a dog, pig, insect, or something similar and continuously reek and consume feces and filth. They experience this sort of suffering for ten million eons, without any escape. To fully free themselves from this state is extremely difficult. Their utterly unbearable suffering is all but indescribable.

“If you touch your penis or vagina and then touch the clean food of the saṅgha with your unclean hands, introduce filth into the food for the saṅgha, or allow the saṅgha to partake of unclean food, this sort of misdeed will ripen as infectious eye diseases that afflict everyone, a misdeed no one will be aware of. Henceforth, handling the saṅgha’s food hygienically, using clean hands to carry the containers of the saṅgha’s food, washing millet with clean hands, and offering clean foods will lead to the attainment of inconceivable merit.

“Let this be well known and swiftly internalized.”