5.5 The Story about the Elder Udāyī
Udāyittheravatthu
Dhp 64
Burlingame: The Wise Fool
Elder Udāyī lived with the Buddha, but when questioned by visiting bhikkhus it was found he did not know even the fundamentals of the teaching; they told this to the Buddha, who spoke a verse.
Keywords: Fools, Wisdom
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“Even if a fool attends on a wise man,” this Dhamma teaching was given by the Teacher while he was in residence at Jetavana with reference to the Elder Udāyī.
It seems that when the great elders left the Dhamma Hall, Udāyī used to go in and sit in the Dhamma seat. Now one day some visiting bhikkhus saw him there, and thinking to themselves: “This must be the learned great elder,” asked him some questions about the aggregates and other matters.
Discovering that he knew nothing about any of these things, they said in scorn: “Who is this bhikkhu that he should live in the same monastery with the Buddhas? He does not even know about the aggregates, the elements
64. Yāvajīvam-pi ce bālo paṇḍitaṁ payirupāsati,
na so Dhammaṁ vijānāti, dabbī sūparasaṁ yathā.
Even if a fool attends on
a wise man for his whole life long,
he does not learn Dhamma, just as
spoon learns not the taste of curry.
At the end of the teaching the minds of the visiting bhikkhus were freed from the pollutants.
