Demerit Rules for Women’s Conduct
1. Boundless demerits for losing one’s chastity. (This refers to a woman willfully engaging in licentious relations with others.
Those who advocate licentiousness will never take responsibility. Sexual relations with anyone other than one’s lawful husband incur grave karmic transgressions.)
2. Three hundred demerits for procuring an abortion. (This refers to intentional abortion within wedlock. Since abortion is tantamount to taking a human life, demerits shall still be recorded.)
3. Ten demerits for engaging in an improper private conversation with an unrelated man, per instance.
4. One demerit for frivolous behavior, per instance.
Appendix V Articles on Offences of Licentious Karma
Cultivating one’s conduct and nurturing one’s nature begin above all with abstaining from licentious desires. Otherwise, licentiousness injures one’s vital essence internally and corrupts one’s conduct externally. The harm of licentiousness is like a sharp‑edged steel knife, scraping away essence and gnawing at the bones, draining one’s original vitality completely. One who seeks the cultivation of Dao can achieve no accomplishment thereby. Worse still, one given to licentiousness corrupts ethical and moral principles and commits exceptionally grave karmic transgressions. Therefore, one must exercise great caution. The statutes are set forth below:
1. Those who commit adultery in violation of ethical norms shall receive no pardon. Those whose adulterous act remains unconsummated shall have the penalty reduced by one grade.
2. No pardon for those who indulge in licentious acts beneath the sun, moon and stars, before deities or Buddhas, within temples and shrines, or on parents’ birthdays and death anniversaries. No pardon for those who rape chaste women, widows or nuns.