dn2:35.1 What do you think, Great King?
dn2:35.2 Suppose you had a person who was a bondservant, a worker. They get up before you and go to bed after you, and are obliging, behaving nicely and speaking politely, and gazing up at your face.
dn2:35.3 They’d think:
dn2:35.4 ‘The outcome and result of good deeds is just so incredible, so amazing!
dn2:35.5 For this King Ajātasattu is a human being, and so am I.
dn2:35.6 Yet he amuses himself, supplied and provided with the five kinds of sensual stimulation as if he were a god.
dn2:35.7 Whereas I’m his bondservant, his worker. I get up before him and go to bed after him, and am obliging, behaving nicely and speaking politely, and gazing up at his face.
dn2:35.8 I really should do good deeds.
dn2:35.9 Why don’t I shave off my hair and beard, dress in ocher robes, and go forth from the lay life to homelessness?’
dn2:35.10 After some time, that is what they do.
dn2:35.11 Having gone forth they’d live restrained in body, speech, and mind, living content with nothing more than food and clothes, delighting in seclusion.
dn2:35.12 And suppose your men were to report all this to you.
dn2:35.16 Would you say to them:
dn2:35.17 ‘Bring that person to me! Let them once more be my bondservant, my worker’?”



