Devadatta The Buddha did not show any hatred or deceive, even after what Devadatta had done. Soon after, Devadatta got sick and realized that what he had done was wrong. He tried to go to Buddha's place to apologize for what he did, but it was too late. On the way to the Buddha, the earth sucked him into the Niraya Hell for his deeds. According to the Pāli Canon, he taught his sangha to adopt five tapas (literally, "austerities") throughout their lives: The Buddha's reply was that those who felt so inclined could follow these rules – except that of
Devadatta sleeping under a tree during the rainy season – but he refused to make the rules obligatory. They are among the 13 ascetic practices (dhutanga). His followers (including bhikkhus and bhikkhunis) were new monks from the Vajjī clan. According to Jacqueline Stone and Stephen F. Teiser, Devadatta was "well known to the sutra's early devotees as the Buddhist archetype of an evildoer." In the context of the "promise of buddhahood for everyone, this chapter became widely understood as illustrating the potential for enlightenment even in evil persons." In the Lotus Sūtra, chapter 12, found in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, the