 Three points may be noted here. First, the self-awareness of the practitioner indicated by Shan-tao is that of a human being wholly incapable of fulfilling Buddhist practices. This is expressed in eschatological terms of endless entrapment in samsaric existence: one is burdened by the karmic consequences of evil acts of past lives extending from the immeasurable past; one continues to act from the desires and hatreds arising from ignorant self-attachment in the present; bereft as one is of any genuine goodness, one’s future can only be further painful existence in endless transmigration.