Disturbed by Sangamaji Sutta (Ud 1.8) Anyone have any insights or more positive ways of looking at it?

[sabbamitta]

This is what the translator, Bhante @sujato, says about this Sutta:

@sujato

There is a challenging episode when the mendicant Venerable Saṅgāmaji is approached by his ex-wife with a child she says is his. She asks him to help look after her and the child. This is a call-back to the discourse with Mahākassapa, which praises him as one who does not support a family. Saṅgāmaji ignores his ex-wife’s pleading, and she leaves with the child. On the face of it, it’s a shocking story, where Saṅgāmaji’s heartlessness is praised as equanimity. Yet the story is more subtle than it might seem.

Near the end of the text, the ex-wife makes to depart, leaving the child behind; but when she sees that even this provokes no response, she returns for the child. Now, the text describes her behavior here as vippakāra, a somewhat obscure term that is usually translated following the commentary as “bad manners” or “misbehavior”. However, this word normally means “change, alteration” (Cone’s Dictionary of Pali), and in its only other occurrence in the canon it means simply a change in posture (Parivāra 15:37.6). Here, therefore, it merely refers to the observation that she turned around and went back for the child. What that means is that neither here nor anywhere else in the text is she criticized for her actions.

We don’t know the circumstances of Saṅgāmaji’s departure from his wife. What kind of marriage was it? Why did he leave? We do not know. The commentary fills in some details, but since these are mostly lifted from the famous story of Raṭṭhapāla, it is difficult to feel too confident in their veracity. And even then, it does not discuss his former marriage or how he left home. We are left with a story of an ex-wife’s all-too-human need for her husband’s support, and a confirmed renunciate’s determination to continue on his path. The narrative highlights the tension between their responses, each determined by a different scale of value.

From here. I think this is the longest comment he made on a single Sutta in his essay on the Udāna.