Markandeyapurana 14.23

14.23

anekaśatasāhastra-janmasaṃcayasañcitam /
puṇyāpuṇyaṃ nṛṇāṃ tadvat sukhaduḥ khāṅkurodbhavam //

“Thus men’s merit and demerit are amassed in the sum of many hundreds of thousands of lives: they spring from the germs of pleasure and pain. For as the seed, O king, awaits the water, so do merit and demerit await him who acts otherwise than at the right time and place. A trifling sin committed by a man, when it reaches the place and time, inflicts the pain produced by a thorn, when the foot is planted down heedlessly. Then it inflicts the acuter severe pain that is caused by pins and wedges, and likewise scarcely endurable headaches and other pains. It causes the pains engendered by eating unwholesome things, by cold, heat, fatigue, inflammation and such like. Moreover sins have regard to one another amid the confluence of their results. In this way heinous sins have regard to the deteriorated state of protracted illness, &c; and they verily tend to the consequences produced by weapons, fire, calamity, pain, imprisonment, and so forth. A trifling good deed confers at once a pleasing fragrance, or touch, or sound, taste, or shape; more marked likewise after a long time, and great when arising at the proper period. And in this way pleasures and pains spring indeed out of good and bad actions. A man stays here consuming the productions of numerous mundane existences. And the results of knowledge or ignorance are checked by race and country, and remain there united merely by outward sign to the soul.