You Reap What You Sow

自業自得 (jigō jitoku): one's own deeds, one's own fruit. What you did comes back to you, and no one else did this to you; 得 is to receive, so the fruit is received, not gained. The words are a sutra's, translated into Chinese in 539, where a hell-warden says them to a sinner who asks why he burns; a Japanese monk wrote them of himself about 1213, and Hakuin sang them to mill-girls in 1760 with the seed and the field, which is where the English harvest meets the Japanese. The sutra says it of good deeds too; Japanese usage says it of bad ones, so the scroll is a warning in Japanese and can be a promise in English.