The introduction to the Ariyapariyesana-Sutta gives a fairly complete picture of a day in his life at Savatthi.  It relates how in the morning he took his bowl and mantle and went to the town to collect food.  While he was away, some monks told his personal attendant Ananda that they wished to hear a discourse from him, as it was long since they had had the privilege.  Ananda suggested that they had better go to the hermitage of the Brahman Rammaka near the town.  The Buddha returned, ate his meal and then said “Come, Ananda, let us go to the terrace of Migara’s mother[353] and stay there till evening.”  They went there and spent the day in meditation.  Towards evening the Buddha rose and said “Let us go to the old bath to refresh our limbs.”  After they had bathed, Ananda suggested that they should go to Rammaka’s hermitage:  the Buddha assented by his silence and they went together.  Within the hermitage were many monks engaged in instructive conversation, so the Buddha waited at the door till there was a pause in the talk.  Then he coughed and knocked.  The monks opened the door, and offered him a seat.  After a short conversation, he recounted to them how he had striven for and obtained Buddhahood.

These congregations were often prolonged late into the night.  We hear for instance how he sat on the terrace belonging to Migara’s mother[354] in the midst of an assembly of monks waiting for his words, still and silent in the light of the full moon; how a monk would rise, adjusting his robe so as to leave one shoulder bare, bow with his hands joined and raised to his forehead and ask permission to put a question and the Lord would reply, Be seated, monk, ask what you will.  But sometimes in these nightly congregations the silence was unbroken.  When King Ajatasattu went to visit him[355] in the mango grove of Jivaka he was seized with sudden fear at the unearthly stillness of the place and suspected an ambush.  “Fear not, O King,” said Jivaka, “I am playing you no tricks.  Go straight on.  There in the pavilion hall the lamps are burning ... and there is the Blessed One sitting against the middle pillar, facing the east with the brethren round him.”  And when the king beheld the assembly seated in perfect silence, calm as a clear lake, he exclaimed “Would that my son might have such calm as this assembly now has.”

The major part of the Buddha’s activity was concerned with the instruction of his disciples and the organization of the Sangha or order.  Though he was ready to hear and teach all, the portrait presented to us is not that of a popular preacher who collects and frequents crowds but rather that of a master, occupied with the instruction of his pupils, a large band indeed but well prepared and able to appreciate and learn by heart teaching which, though freely offered to the whole world, was somewhat hard to untrained ears.  In one passage[356] an enquirer asks him why he shows more zeal in teaching some than others.