Nigrodha, you might think, ‘The ascetic Gotama speaks like this because he wants pupils.’ But you should not see it like this. Let your teacher remain your teacher.

You might think, ‘The ascetic Gotama speaks like this because he wants us to give up our recitation.’ But you should not see it like this. Let your recitation remain as it is.

You might think, ‘The ascetic Gotama speaks like this because he wants us to give up our livelihood.’ But you should not see it like this. Let your livelihood remain as it is.

You might think, ‘The ascetic Gotama speaks like this because he wants us to start doing things that are unskillful and considered unskillful in our tradition.’ But you should not see it like this. Let those things that are unskillful and considered unskillful in your tradition remain as they are.

You might think, ‘The ascetic Gotama speaks like this because he wants us to stop doing things that are skillful and considered skillful in our tradition.’ But you should not see it like this. Let those things that are skillful and considered skillful in your tradition remain as they are.

I do not speak for any of these reasons. Nigrodha, there are things that are unskillful, corrupted, leading to future lives, hurtful, resulting in suffering and future rebirth, old age, and death. I teach Dhamma so that those things may be given up. When you practice accordingly, corrupting qualities will be given up in you and cleansing qualities will grow. You’ll enter and remain in the fullness and abundance of wisdom, having realized it with your own insight in this very life.”

When this was said, those wanderers sat silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say, as if their minds were possessed by Māra. Then the Buddha thought, “All these foolish people have been touched by the Wicked One! For not even a single one thinks, ‘Come, let us lead the spiritual life under the ascetic Gotama for the sake of enlightenment—for what do seven days matter?’

Then the Buddha, having roared his lion’s roar in the lady Udumbarikā’s monastery for wanderers, rose into the air and landed on Vulture’s Peak. Meanwhile, the householder Sandhāna just went back to Rājagaha.