As Gernet remarks, the idea of life as an endless burden of debt would surely have struck a chord with Chinese villagers, for whom this was all too often literally true; but, as he also points out, like their counterparts in ancient Israel, they were also familiar with that sense of sudden liberation that came with official amnesties. There was a way to achieve that too. All that was required was to make regular donations to some monastery’s Inexhaustible Treasury. The moment one does so, the debts from every one of one’s past lives are instantly blotted out.
