What did Devadatta do wrong? Eight jhānas, five higher knowledges — and it collapsed in an instant
Summary
What exactly did Devadatta do wrong? The question sounds as though it already has an answer, and the truth runs much deeper. He attained all eight absorptions — the four form and four formless — and five higher knowledges: flight, reading minds, recollecting past lives. All of it fell away in an instant, for want of one thing. Hence the phrase “Devadatta’s concentration”: the most powerful concentration an unawakened person can hold, with no wisdom and no right view governing it.
The talk runs in three parts. First, a test of the heart: forgiving someone who has harmed you, and muditā, the direct antidote to envy. Second, Devadatta’s trajectory — gain and honor slowly consuming the mind, the five demands and the distortion of the middle way, through to schism in the Sangha and the attempt on the Buddha’s life.
Third, “Devadatta’s concentration” itself: why an unawakened person’s jhāna can decay, the sixth higher knowledge Devadatta did not have, and the image of clear water in a jar whose sediment has merely settled to the bottom.
It closes on a single question from a viewer’s comment — do we train in concentration because we want to be extraordinary, or because we want to be free of suffering?
Key points
Even the highest concentration an unawakened person can reach can decay
Eight attainments and five higher knowledges guarantee nothing without wisdom and right view governing them.
The sixth higher knowledge is the one that was missing
The first five are capabilities. The sixth is the ending of the taints — the only one that makes the rest secure.
Settled sediment is not sediment that is gone
The water in the jar really is clear, until something stirs it. That image explains the whole instantaneous collapse.
Gain and honor consume the mind slowly
Devadatta’s path did not begin with the attempt on the Buddha’s life. It began at a much smaller point, long before.
Muditā is the direct antidote to envy
Not suppressing envy but training in gladness at another’s good, which envy cannot occupy the same space as.