(Mahā) Karma-Vibhaṅga: The Analysis of Deeds
181 pages
A composite text bringing together many Buddhist stories about karma and its ripening into a comprehensive index of pedagogical snippets.
In the original teachings deeds and their results are presented quite subtly, as everyone, of course, produces many millions of intentional deeds, both good and bad, over the course of their lifetime. And the deeds themselves are often motivated by a mixture of good and bad intentions, which are not purely one or the other.
In the later teachings these subtleties were often obscured by the didactic need to present the message in a clear and unambiguous way, and we find what is in essence a very complex teaching reduced to something rather simplistic: do this bad deed in this life, get a complimentary bad result in the next; do this good deed, get this good result.