Re: Washing away merit & Cittalapabbata references

Bhante,

  Regarding the first quote to be traced:

> 1: “When Brahmins said that they could wash away their sins by bathing
> in sacred rivers, the Buddha joked that the water might wash away their
> good deeds also.”

  I know of a very similar sutta, but it is not the Buddha himself who
reproves a Brahmin for ritualistic bathing in frigid water (instead, it is
one of the female monks).  I believe there are several suttas on this topic,
but I do not know one off-hand in which the Buddha is the interlocutor.  A
number of Brahmin forms of ritual ablution are satirized in the the
Janussoni-vaggo --this is a possibility, but I do not remember this
specifically.

E.M.


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