ABSTRACT
Within this framework, all deeds have specific consequences on various levels: individual, family, community, and world. Both rewards and punishments are executed out by the powers of cosmic balance—qi reverberations, karma, and the gods. They that bring both good and evil back to the perpetrator without fail, consisting of increasing good or bad fortune, health or disease, an extended or shortened life expectancy, and ascension into heaven versus tortures in the underworld prisons or hells. To prevent such fate, people not follow divinely sanctioned virtues and precepts, but also calculate their cosmic standing by counting their transgressions and good deeds, and perform rituals of repentance and pardon to expiate their misdeeds. This aspect of Daoist ethics closely relates to Buddhism, but also exhibits a number of unique features, such as the so-called ledgers of merits and demerits and the specific assignation of certain forms of retribution for certain numbers of deeds.
