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- SN 21

SN 21.8
PTS: S ii 281
CDB i 719
Nando Sutta: Nanda
translated from the Pali by
Maurice O'Connell Walshe
© 2007
The Pali title of this sutta is based on the PTS (Feer) edition.

[At Saavatthii] Now the Venerable Nanda, the Blessed One's first cousin, put on well-pressed[1] robes, painted his eyes,[2] took a bright shiny bowl and went before the Blessed One. Having saluted the Blessed One he sat down to one side. As he sat there the Blessed One said: "It is not suitable for you, Nanda, who as a young man of good family have left the household life, in faith, for homelessness, to appear in well-pressed robes, with painted eyes and a bright shiny bowl. The proper thing for you, Nanda,... is to be a forest-dweller, to go for alms in ragged robes, dwelling aloof from sense-desires." [He added the verse:]

Maybe I'll see Nanda once In the forest, dressed in rags, Living just from cast-off scraps,[3] Quite detached from sense-desires.

After that the Venerable Nanda became a forest-dweller, going for alms in ragged robes, dwelling aloof from sense-desires.

# Notes

1.
  Lit. "flattened and pressed all round" (PED ["Pali-English Dictionary," T.W. Rhys Davids & William Stede, 1921-25, PTS]): explained at some length in KS ["Book of the Kindred Sayings," trans. of the Sa.myutta Nikaaya] Vol. II [trans. by C.A.F. Rhys Davids, 1922, PTS], p. 191.
2.
  With collyrium. This was against the (later) rules, we might have expected this little story to have been used, like other such, in the Vinaya Pi.taka as an explanation for the introduction of such a rule.
3.
  Food rejected by others.