Connected Discourses 7.20

Select any verse to keep it — saved passages go to your Dhamma Deck, the same one the app uses.

1. Linked Discourses 7.20
2. 2. Lay Followers
3. An Almsman
4. At Sāvatthī.
5. Then a brahmin almsman went up to the Buddha, and exchanged greetings with him.
6. When the greetings and polite conversation were over, he sat down to one side and said to the Buddha,
7. “Worthy Gotama, both you and I are almsmen. What, then, is the difference between us?”
8. “You don’t become an almsman
9. just by begging alms from others.
10. One who has undertaken domestic duties
11. has not yet become a mendicant.
12. But one living a spiritual life
13. who has banished both merit and evil,
14. and wanders having appraised the world,
15. is said to be a mendicant.”
16. When he had spoken, the brahmin almsman said to the Buddha,
17. “Excellent, worthy Gotama! Excellent! …
18. From this day forth, may the worthy Gotama remember me as a lay follower who has gone for refuge for life.”