If these rivers had carried away your bad deeds in the past, they would also carry away your good deeds, from which you’d be prevented.

Brahmin, the thing that you are afraid of, when you always plunge into the water, do not do that very thing, don’t let the cold harm your skin.”

“I have been on the wrong path, and you’ve guided me to the noble path. Madam, I give to you this ablution cloth.”

“Keep the cloth for yourself, I do not want it. If you fear suffering, if you don’t like suffering,

then don’t do bad deeds either openly or in secret. If you should do a bad deed, or you’re doing one now,

you won’t be freed from suffering, though you fly away and flee. If you fear suffering, if you don’t like suffering,

go for refuge to the Buddha, the unaffected, to his teaching and to the Saṅgha. Undertake the precepts, that will be good for you.”

“I go for refuge to the Buddha, the unaffected, to his teaching and to the Saṅgha. I undertake the precepts, that will be good for me.

I used to be brahmin only by kin, today I truly am a brahmin! Master of the three knowledges, <j>accomplished in wisdom, I’m a scholar, a bathed initiate.”

Verses of the Senior Nuns 13.1 The Book of the Twenties Ambapālī