"One of the four cardinal sins in the monastic order of the Buddha--after unchastity, theft, and killing--was laying claim to miraculous powers. it is related that Kakyamuni once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had wasted twenty years of his human existence in learning how to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 158)