Mahāyāna Sūtra of Revealing Consciousness (84)

Original text: 贤护。其为福胜。诸大天神。之所著者。即须好香花。烧众名香。香美饮食。清净安置。祭解供具。咸须华洁。如是此识。为福资者。便获尊贵。安乐之果。

Explanation: The Buddha said, "Bhadrapāla, if it is some great heavenly deva that attaches itself to this person's physical body, the deva will require fragrant and beautiful flowers, the burning of many precious incenses, fragrant and delicious food and drink, all arranged in purity; the offerings for the sacrificial rites must all be splendid and clean." This is because heavenly devas love cleanliness, purity, and beauty. The Ālayavijñāna is just like this: when nourished by meritorious karma and containing the fruits of merit from wholesome karma, the Ālayavijñāna causes the five-aggregate body to obtain the retributive results of honor, stability, and happiness.

Heavenly beings love incense, love purity, and love splendor, so the person they attach to must frequently burn incense; for the sake of pleasant fragrance, the food and drink are all fragrant and delicious, and especially clean. Those people whom heavenly beings, upon the end of their heavenly life, take rebirth as among humans almost all have an obsession with cleanliness—that is because they have brought along the devas' habitual tendencies. Their hands must be washed countless times a day, and their living environment is extremely fastidious. In fact, those bacteria cannot be washed away, but they do not know this; they just habitually wash, frequently washing their clothes, frequently wiping the table, not permitting even a speck of dust. This is the obsession with cleanliness developed in the heavens—the habitual tendencies of devas who love cleanliness.

As for people who have taken rebirth from being pigs or dogs, look at what kind of environment pigs and dogs live in—their home will be roughly like that. From this one can judge what kind of sentient being this person was in a past life and from which realm they took rebirth. Furthermore, from a person's habitual tendencies one can judge what kind of sentient being they were in their previous life. If their appearance is extremely, extremely thin, with a long, elongated face, one can roughly judge what kind of sentient being this person was in a past life. At the time of death, by observing their appearance and the habitual tendencies and dispositions of this life, one can also roughly judge which realm they will take rebirth in. If a person, even in old age, remains greedy and stingy, unwilling to give away even a little thing to others, one knows that this person will undoubtedly go to the realm of hungry ghosts. Most people, after death, generally go to the ghost realm, because most sentient beings are stingy and greedy, corresponding to the beings of the hungry ghost realm, and so they become ghosts. Most sentient beings in the human realm have also taken rebirth from the three evil realms, because the habitual tendencies of most sentient beings correspond to the three evil realms.