Advice from Devadatta

Question

When given advice by Devadatta (or a Devadatta-like person), should that person be ridiculed as a Buddha (i.e. the Buddha that he pretends to be), or as what he is behind the mask? Or both?

When a hypocrite calls me up to behave in decent ways, then in order not to get tangled up in his net, I naturally get the urge to ridicule the Buddha into his face (possibly before ridiculing himself), in order to give a clear sign of not adhering to fake advice, even if giving that sign requires temporarily insulting the real Buddha. It’s as if saying “I’d rather ridicule the Buddha himself than take his Dhamma from someone like you”.

Answer 1

If the teacher understands the meaning and the teaching, then that's a good enough reason to teach.

If the audience understands the meaning and the teaching, then that's a good enough reason to teach. Here, whether the teacher fully understands or follows the teaching, appears to be optional.

If both teacher and audience understand the meaning and the teaching, then that's a good enough reason to teach.

“Mendicants, taking three reasons into consideration provides quite enough motivation to teach Dhamma to another. What three? When the teacher understands the meaning and the teaching. When the audience understands the meaning and the teaching. When both the teacher and the audience understand the meaning and the teaching.

Taking these three reasons into consideration provides quite enough motivation to teach Dhamma to another.”
AN 3.43

Answer 2

If we consider the ideal way, then ridiculing is an Akusala.

If what he gave was a wrong advice, then we can stay away from following it.

If a wrong person gives a right advice, we can still follow the advice but not the person.

And if any wrong person is trying to climb into the "Advisor Role" in a group by trying to giving constant advices, then we can boycott or advise him, instead of ridiculing.

Even the monks' Vinaya has procedures like "advising, formal advising in a meeting, boycotting, formal threatening, temporary expelling and expelling."

Answer 3

The urge to ridicule is part of a power struggle. It amounts to:

"This person has tried to exert power by giving advice, so I will destroy his power by making him seem foolish."

It doesn't matter whether you ridicule the Buddha, the man, his wife, or his dog. Power struggles are tanhā; you are merely embroiling yourself in the craving for power. We can entangle ourselves in the net by struggling against it as easily as by embracing it.

Humor can be a useful tool for bringing people back to their true selves, or it can be a brutal weapon meant to prod them into egoic reactions. Mind which way you use it.

If someone offers you advice — and pardon me offering you advice, by the way — I think it's best to smile politely and then do whatever seems right. Sometimes advice is useful, sometimes it isn't, sometimes the matter is too trivial to huff and puff about. The most sophisticated timepiece skips a beat on occasion, and a broken clock is right twice a day, so judge on the merits not the expectations.

As it says in the Daodejing (pardon the code switch)

One person hears of the Way and grasps it, practicing diligently
Another hears of the Way and is interested, applying it now and then
Yet another hears of the Way and laughs out loud and such foolishness
If no one ever laughed, it wouldn't be the Way.

Answer 4

When getting in trade (give, serve, accept...) with Devadatta and his host, then of course one's relation toward the Gems is broken, no more prosperity is possible till it's restored. That isn't a matter of merely hypocritical (wrong estimated): but simply evil minded and objected toward gains in the world.

But other than from Devadatta and his host -- if getting actually good advice, even if seeming being not from a perfect one, good to investigate them properly -- as one easy could mistakenly think the Buddha and his good disciples being the bad ones, in the deep net of trading fakes in your cyber world, being part of a large corrupted family.