Read, reflect, pray
Taishang Ganying Pian 20: A warning against unjust taking
English rendering of the Japanese reader’s section 20. The 24 divisions are this site’s editorial divisions, not original chapters.
English rendering
Those who forcibly take others’ property have even the lives of spouse, children and household counted toward repayment, gradually suffering death and loss. If those do not occur, floods, fires, theft, lost objects, illness, quarrels and disputes bring consequences equal to what was wrongly taken.
Reading note from this site
The text uses disasters as a warning against theft. It does not establish the causes of real illness or disaster or justify blaming victims.
Chinese source passage
又諸橫取人財者，乃計其妻子、家口以當之，漸至死喪。若不死喪，則有水火盜賊、遺亡器物、疾病口舌諸事，以當妄取之值。
Based on the classical text and this site’s independently prepared Japanese rendering. Classical source edition