Ubhatobhaṭṭhajātaka

A Twofold Failure

“His blinding and her beating.”—This story the Master told while at the Bamboo Grove, about Devadatta. We hear that the Brethren, meeting together in the Hall of Truth, spoke one with another, saying that even as a torch from a pyre, charred at both ends and bedunged in the middle, does not serve as wood either in forest-tree or village-hearth, so Devadatta by giving up the world to follow this saving faith had only achieved a twofold shortcoming and failure, seeing that he had missed the comforts of a-lay life yet had fallen short of his vocation as a Brother.