Why did the Elder drink blindly without distinguishing whether it was wine or water?

Question: The Elder Sāgata drank without examining what he was drinking; the wine entered his mouth without his discerning the taste. Was this because the Elder was no longer attached to the feeling of flavors, or because he was in meditative concentration (samādhi), so that drinking wine and drinking water were the same to him? Does "without examining" in the sūtra mean that he no longer discriminated tastes?

Answer: The Elder trusted this female lay devotee very much and never imagined that she would give him wine to drink, so he drank whatever she gave him, without vigilance. When drinking, perhaps the Elder had no experience with alcohol and the like and could not distinguish it; moreover, because the Elder possessed great supernatural powers and had great self-confidence, he was not concerned about anything, so it did not matter to him what he drank. In fact, for one who possesses the fourth dhyāna and great supernatural powers, having passed beyond the domain of the aggregate of form (rūpa) and the domain of the aggregate of feeling (vedanā), the physical body will not be affected by material form. In the Buddha's time, in order to make it convenient for the Buddha to establish the precepts, some disciples cooperated with the Buddha in liberating sentient beings, acting out the drama alongside the Buddha. The wicked people of that time were not truly wicked; they only pretended to be wicked. If there had been no wicked people committing evil deeds, how could so many sūtras have been handed down, how could those precepts have been handed down?