I do not speak for any of these reasons. Nigrodha, there are things that are unskillful, corrupting, leading to future lives, hurtful, resulting in suffering and future rebirth, old age, and death. I teach Dhamma so that those things may be given up. When you practice accordingly, corrupting qualities will be given up in you and cleansing qualities will grow. You’ll enter and remain in the fullness and abundance of wisdom, having realized it with your own insight in this very life.”

When this was said, those wanderers sat silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say, as if their minds were possessed by Māra. Then it occurred to the Buddha, “All these silly people have been touched by the Wicked One! For not even a single one thinks, ‘Come, let us lead the spiritual life under the ascetic Gotama for the sake of enlightenment—for what do seven days matter?’” Then the Buddha, having roared his lion’s roar in the lady Udumbarikā’s monastery for wanderers, rose into the air and landed on Vulture’s Peak. Meanwhile, the householder Sandhāna went right back to Rājagaha.

Long Discourses 26 The Wheel-Turning Monarch

1. Taking Refuge in Oneself