So It Was Said 22

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1. So It Was Said 22
2. The Book of the Ones
3. Chapter Three
4. The Benefits of Love
5. This was said by the Buddha, the Perfected One: that is what I heard.
6. “Mendicants, don’t fear good deeds.
7. For ‘good deeds’ is a term for happiness, for what is likable, desirable, and agreeable.
8. I recall undergoing for a long time the likable, desirable, and agreeable results of good deeds performed over a long time.
9. Having developed a mind of love for seven years, for seven eons of the cosmos contracting and expanding I didn’t return to this world again.
10. As the eon contracted I went to the realm of streaming radiance.
11. As it expanded I was reborn in an empty mansion of divinity.
12. There I was the Divinity, the Great Divinity, the vanquisher, the unvanquished, the universal seer, the wielder of power.
13. I was Sakka, lord of gods, thirty-six times.
14. Many hundreds of times I was a king, a wheel-turning monarch, a just and principled king. My dominion extended to all four sides, I achieved stability in the country, and I possessed the seven treasures.
15. Not to mention regional kingship!
16. Then I thought,
17. ‘Of what deed of mine is this the fruit and result, that I am now so mighty and powerful?’
18. Then I thought,
19. ‘It is the fruit and result of three kinds of deeds:
20. giving, self-control, and restraint.’”
21. The Buddha spoke this matter.
22. On this it is said:
23. “One should practice only good deeds,
24. whose happy outcome stretches ahead.
25. Giving and moral conduct,
26. developing a mind of love:
27. having developed these
28. three things yielding happiness,
29. that astute one is reborn
30. in a happy, pleasing world.”
31. This too is a matter that was spoken by the Blessed One: that is what I heard.