The Life of Moggallana

Who He Was: The Disciple Foremost in Psychic Power

According to the Dictionary of Pali Proper Names (DPPN), Moggallāna was the second of the Chief Disciples of Gotama Buddha — the first being Sāriputta. The DPPN entry also gives his other name, Kolita.

His pre-eminence, the DPPN says, lay in his possession of psychic power: he could create a living shape innumerable times and could transform himself into any shape at will. The suttas declare Sāriputta and Moggallāna to be the ideal disciples whose example others should follow.

Stories about Moggallana circulate widely online, mostly without sources, and often blending materials from different eras and traditions. This page takes the opposite approach: every statement is attributed by name — to the DPPN, or to Pali sutta passages on this site that you can open and check segment by segment — and where a famous story is absent from these materials, we say so plainly.

How He Went Forth: With Sāriputta, to Arahantship in Seven Days

According to the DPPN, Moggallāna and Sāriputta first practiced together as disciples of Sañjaya. Later, Sāriputta, wandering in Rājagaha, met Assaji, heard the stanza 'ye dhammā hetuppabhavā' ('of things that arise from a cause...'), and became a stream-enterer; he found Moggallāna and repeated the stanza to him, and Moggallāna too became a stream-enterer.

After an unsuccessful attempt to persuade their teacher Sañjaya to come along, the two set out for the Buddha at Veḷuvana — and Sañjaya's five hundred disciples agreed to go with them. The Buddha preached to them and ordained them with the words 'Come, monks.'

Then comes the most striking scene in the DPPN's account: Moggallāna went to the hamlet of Kallavāla in Magadha, and on the seventh day after his ordination, drowsiness overcame him as he sat meditating. The Buddha knew this, appeared before him, and exhorted him to be zealous. That very day he attained arahantship. From hearing a single stanza to the final goal took only days — and that is the DPPN's complete account of his path.

What 'Foremost in Psychic Power' Looked Like: Episodes from the DPPN

The DPPN entry records several displays of iddhi (psychic power), each with its Pali source. One: when the Buddha and his monks failed to get alms in Verañja, Moggallāna offered to turn the earth upside down so that the nutritive essence on its under surface might serve as food, and offered to open a road so the monks could go elsewhere for alms — both offers were refused by the Buddha (Vin.iii.7).

Two: when some monks sat on the ground floor of the Migāramātupāsāda talking loosely and frivolously, heedless of the Buddha in the upper story, Moggallāna, at the Buddha's request, shook the whole building with his great toe and made it rattle to shake them awake (SN.v.269ff.). Three: visiting Sakka, king of the gods, and finding him obsessed with his own splendour, Moggallāna shook Sakka's palace Vejayanta until Sakka's hair stood on end and his pride was humbled (MN.i.251ff.). He also went to the Brahma world and questioned Baka Brahmā in solemn conclave, making him confess that his earlier views were erroneous.

The DPPN further records that Māra once worried Moggallāna by entering his belly — Moggallāna ordered him out, and told him that he himself had once, in a past life, been a Māra named Dūsī (MN.i.332ff., the Māratajjanīya Sutta). He could see petas (hungry ghosts) and other beings invisible to the ordinary eye (SN.ii.254ff.), and his visits to the deva worlds were very welcome to the devas (SN.v.366f.).

Notice the common shape of these episodes: in the DPPN's account, his powers serve teaching and admonition — waking up heedless monks, humbling proud gods and Brahmās — while his one proposal to solve a subsistence problem by psychic power was turned down by the Buddha.

How the Buddha Rated Him: 'Mother and Nurse' in MN 141

The DPPN cites the Saccavibhaṅga Sutta (MN 141, MN.iii.248) for the Buddha's way of distinguishing these 'twin brethren': 'Sāriputta is as she who brings forth and Moggallāna is as the nurse of what is brought forth; Sāriputta trains in the fruits of conversion, Moggallāna trains in the highest good.' The full scene is preserved in the sutta on this site.

At the opening of MN 141, after briefly stating the four noble truths at the Deer Park, the Buddha publicly urges the monks to associate with Sāriputta and Moggallāna, calling them wise monks who assist their fellow practitioners. The 'mother and nurse' division of labour is a concrete appraisal: Sāriputta brings people into the stream of the noble path; Moggallāna walks with them to the end — the highest goal, the final liberation of the arahant.

The DPPN also records the Buddha's direct compliment to Moggallāna's preaching: once, having himself taught the Sakyans in their new Mote Hall at Kapilavatthu, the weary Buddha asked Moggallāna to talk to the monks; Moggallāna spoke of lusts and the means of getting rid of them, and at the end of the sermon the Buddha praised him warmly (SN.iv.183ff.).

In the Classroom: The Anumāna Sutta (MN 15) — Teaching Monks to Examine Themselves

Most people remember only the psychic powers; but this site preserves a discourse Moggallāna delivered himself — the Anumāna Sutta, 'Measuring in Accordance' (MN 15). At the Deer Park on Crocodile Hill among the Bhaggas, he gathers the monks and teaches a subject that has nothing to do with iddhi and everything to do with daily practice: what makes a person easy or hard to admonish, and how to check which one you are.

He first lists sixteen qualities that make a person hard to admonish — corrupt wishes, exalting oneself and disparaging others, anger and resentment, striking back when reproved, clinging obstinately to one's own views. Then comes the method: first infer about yourself from others — seeing how unlikable these qualities are in another, infer that you would be just as unlikable with them; then review yourself item by item, striving to abandon whatever you find, and dwelling glad and joyful, training day and night in wholesome qualities, whenever you find yourself clear.

He closes with a famous simile: like a young person fond of adornment examining their own face in a bright mirror or a bowl of clear water — removing any dirt or blemish they see, and rejoicing if they see none. The Moggallāna of this sutta is a practical, considerate teacher — consistent with the DPPN's record that the Buddha charged him with looking after the monks' welfare, a charge he carried out diligently; the Theragāthā preserves several of his verses exhorting his colleagues, and on one occasion he personally seized a badly behaved monk, thrust him outside, and bolted the door (AN.iv.204ff.).

With Sāriputta: A Dialogue in the Anaṅgaṇa Sutta (MN 5)

According to the DPPN, the love between Moggallāna and Sāriputta was mutual, as was the admiration: Sāriputta's verses in praise of Moggallāna in the Theragāthā (Thag.1178–1181) are even more eloquent than Moggallāna's in praise of Sāriputta. Their strongest bond was the love of each for the Buddha; when apart, they would relate to each other, by means of the divine ear and the divine eye, how they had been conversing with him (SN.ii.275ff.). When Devadatta split the Sangha and led five hundred monks away, it was Sāriputta and Moggallāna whom the Buddha sent to bring them back — and they succeeded (Vin.ii.185).

The Anaṅgaṇa Sutta (MN 5) on this site preserves the two working in tandem. After Sāriputta sets out his fourfold classification of persons — with or without inner blemish, knowing it or not — Moggallāna immediately asks the driving question: of two people equally blemished, why is one called inferior and the other superior? That question draws out the heart of the discourse, and Sāriputta answers layer by layer with the simile of the bronze bowl.

At the end of the sutta, Moggallāna offers a scene he had witnessed himself in Rājagaha: a cartwright's son planing the rim of a wheel while an old cartwright looks on, thinking 'if only he would plane off this bend, this twist, this flaw' — and the young man planes off exactly those places. Sāriputta's teaching, Moggallāna says in praise, is just like that: as if knowing heart from heart, he planes the heart. The sutta closes with the two great beings rejoicing in each other's well-spoken words.

The Death of Moggallana: What the Early Texts Actually Say

Versions of 'the death of Moggallana' abound online — beaten by hired assassins, his bones crushed, the ripening of ancient kamma — told in vivid detail. Before repeating any of them, it is worth reading what the materials this page relies on actually say.

According to the DPPN: Sāriputta died before Moggallāna, and the Theragāthā contains several verses attributed to Moggallāna on Sāriputta's death (Thag.1158–1161); Moggallāna evidently died before the Buddha, as the Saṃyutta Nikāya records the Buddha speaking of both as dead. Then comes the key sentence: 'the early texts contain no record of the circumstances of Moggallāna's death.'

In other words: at the level of the earliest stratum — the Pali suttas and Vinaya — what we can confirm is only the relative timing of his passing: after Sāriputta, before the Buddha. The widely told assassination scenes and their karmic explanations do not come from this stratum, and are not in the materials this page relies on (the DPPN excerpt and the suttas on this site); in keeping with this page's sourcing discipline, we neither retell them nor rule on their truth. If you meet those stories elsewhere, you can read them with this coordinate in hand: they belong to a later layer of transmission, not to the early canon.

Relation to Mahāyāna interpretation

Many readers searching for Moggallana are really looking for 'Mulian saves his mother' — the story in which Moggallana sees with his psychic powers that his late mother has fallen among the hungry ghosts, and, on the Buddha's instruction, rescues her by making offerings to the Sangha at the end of the rains retreat. This is the origin story of the Ullambana (Ghost) Festival, held on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month across East Asia. It should be stated plainly: this story comes from the Ullambana Sutra as transmitted in the Chinese Buddhist tradition; in the Pali tradition, the DPPN entry on Moggallāna contains no account of him saving his mother — the nearest element in the Pali materials is his ability to see petas (hungry ghosts) and other beings invisible to the ordinary eye (SN.ii.254ff.). The two traditions each transmit a different Moggallana narrative: the Pali canon emphasizes his psychic power, his teaching, and his guardianship of the Sangha, while the Chinese story of saving his mother grew into a profoundly influential culture of filial devotion and rites for the departed. This site presents the former from the Pali sources, and sets the Chinese tradition's story alongside for comparison, without ruling on its truth.