Then Venerable Ānanda went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and told him what had happened.

“Ānanda, that mendicant must be junior, recently gone forth, or else a foolish, incompetent senior mendicant. How on earth can he take something that I have declared categorically to be ambiguous? I do not see a single other individual about whom I have given such whole-hearted deliberation before making a declaration as I did in the case of Devadatta.

As long as I saw even a fraction of a hair’s tip of goodness in Devadatta I did not declare that he was going to a place of loss, to hell, there to remain for an eon, irredeemable. But when I saw that there was not even a fraction of a hair’s tip of goodness in Devadatta I declared that he was going to a place of loss, to hell, there to remain for an eon, irredeemable.

Suppose there was a sewer deeper than a man’s height, full to the brim with feces, and someone was sunk into it over their head. Then along comes a person who wants to help make them safe, who wants to lift them out of that sewer. But circling all around the sewer they couldn’t see even a fraction of a hair’s tip of that person that was not smeared with feces.