Chengfu, inherited burden, appears in the Taiping Jing and is one of the more distinctive Chinese explanations of misfortune. Karma in the Indian traditions individualises: what happens to you is what you did, in this life or another. Chengfu distributes across a lineage and across time: an ancestor's unresolved wrongs accumulate and press on descendants, so a person may be suffering for something done five generations back. The consequences are twofold and both matter. It removes the implication that the sufferer deserved it, which is pastorally significant, and it makes the living permanently responsible for the dead — the debts can be worked off, and much Taoist ritual, particularly the funerary and confessional rites, is explicitly about clearing them. It also explains why Chinese religious practice is so heavily oriented toward the ancestors: they are not merely remembered, they are an ongoing liability and an ongoing asset.