ལས་བརྒྱ་ཐམ་པ་པ 16.24

16.24

and supported by five hundred of his disciples.

“One day a brahmin came from the south with five hundred disciples and established himself near the sage’s dwelling. There he began to teach his five hundred young brahmins the secret mantras of the brahmins. That brahmin was also a master of the eighteen sciences. When some disciples of the first brahmin sage who had already been living there heard about the brahmin, they went to see him, saying, ‘Teacher, work your benefit upon us as well!’

“ ‘How, then, am I to benefit you?’ the brahmin asked.

“The young brahmins said, ‘We request that you benefit us by teaching recitation.’

“ ‘I don’t teach the disciples of others,’ the brahmin said.

“The disciples of the first brahmin thought, ‘Our preceptor may have attracted us with food and clothes, but he is not capable of instructing us in recitation. Let us abandon that one and entrust ourselves to this brahmin instead. Let’s get together and learn recitation.’ So they said to the second brahmin, ‘We are abandoning our teacher. We shall entrust ourselves to you alone.’

“ ‘If that’s the case,’ the brahmin said, ‘let me help you by providing you with food and clothes, and by teaching you recitation.’

“No sooner had they heard this than the young brahmins left the sage friendless and all alone and entrusted themselves to the brahmin, who gathered them around him by providing them with food and clothes and by teaching them recitation.

“O monks, what do you think? I am the one who was that brahmin then, and lived the life of a bodhisattva. The action of causing a schism in that sage’s retinue ripened such that for hundreds upon hundreds and thousands upon thousands of years I took rebirth as a hell being and was cooked. Then when I died from there and transmigrated, wherever I was born I underwent separation from my disciples up until this very day, when, due to the ripening of that action, Devadatta has divided my circle.”