Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a Brahmin and perfected his education at Takkasila. Putting Lusts from him and renouncing the world for the hermit’s life, he won the Five Knowledges and the Eight Attainments, and lived in the Himalayas, where five hundred hermits gathered round him. One rainy season, his chief disciple went with half the hermits to the people to get salt and vinegar. And that was the time when the Bodhisatta should die. And his disciples, wishing to know his spiritual attainment, said to him, “What excellence have you won?”

The Bodhisatta said,”Won? I have won Nothing.” So saying, he died, but was reborn in the Brahma Realm of Radiant Devas. (For Bodhisatta even though they may have attained to the highest state are never reborn in the formless World, because they are incapable of passing beyond the Realm of Form.) Mistaking his meaning, his disciples concluded that he had failed to win any spiritual attainment. So they did not pay the customary honors at cremation.

On his return the chief disciple learn that the master was dead, and asked whether they had asked what he had won. “He said he had won nothing,” said they. “So we did not pay him the usual honors at cremation.”

“You have not understood the meaning,” said that chief disciple. “Our master meant that he had attained to the insight called the insight into the Nothingness of Things.” But though he explained this again and again to the disciples, they did not believe him.

Knowing their doubt, the Bodhisatta cried, “Fools! They do not believe my chief disciple. I will make this thing plain to them.” And he came from the Brahma Realm and by virtue of his mighty powers rested in mid air above the hermitage and uttered this stanza in praise of the wisdom of the chief disciple:-

Far better than a thousand fools, though they

Cry out a hundred years unceasingly,

Is one who, hearing, straightway understands.

Thus did the Great Being from mid air proclaim the Truth and rebuke the band of hermits. Then he passed back to the Brahma Realm, and all those hermits too qualified themselves for rebirth in the same Realm.