Now at that time, Nigrodha was sitting together with a large assembly of wanderers making an uproar, a colossal racket. They engaged in all kinds of low talk, such as talk about kings, bandits, and chief ministers; talk about armies, threats, and wars; talk about food, drink, clothes, and beds; talk about garlands and fragrances; talk about family, vehicles, villages, towns, cities, and countries; talk about women and heroes; talk at the street market and the place for water pots; talk about the departed; motley talk; tales of land and sea; and talk about being reborn in this or that place.

Nigrodha saw Sandhāna coming off in the distance, and hushed his own assembly: “Be quiet, good fellows, don’t make a sound. The householder Sandhāna, a disciple of the ascetic Gotama, is coming. He is included among the white-clothed lay disciples of the ascetic Gotama, who is residing near Rājagaha. Such venerables like the quiet, are educated to be quiet, and praise the quiet. Hopefully if he sees that our assembly is quiet he’ll see fit to approach.” Then those wanderers fell silent.

Then Sandhāna went up to the wanderer Nigrodha, and exchanged greetings with him. When the greetings and polite conversation were over, he sat down to one side and said to Nigrodha, “The way the wanderers make an uproar as they sit together and talk about all kinds of low topics is one thing. It’s quite different to the way the Buddha frequents remote lodgings in the wilderness and the forest that are quiet and still, far from the madding crowd, remote from human settlements, and fit for retreat.”