I HAVE placed your offerings of one sack of rice, parched rice, melons, eggplants, and other items before the Buddha.
As to the origin of the service for deceased ancestors,1 among the disciples of the Buddha was one called the Venerable Maudgalyayana. As the foremost in transcendental powers among the disciples, he ranked alongside Shariputra, the foremost in wisdom. These two were like the sun and moon ranged side by side around Mount Sumeru, or like the ministers of the left and right who assist a great king.
Maudgalyayana’s father was called Kissen Shishi, and his mother was called Shodai-nyo.2 His mother, because she was guilty of greed and stinginess, after her death was reborn in the realm of hungry spirits, but the Venerable Maudgalyayana rescued her from there, and this began the tradition of the service.
It came about as follows. Though Maudgalyayana’s mother had fallen into the realm of hungry spirits and was suffering there, Maudgalyayana, being only a common mortal, had no way of knowing this. When he was a young boy, he entered the house of a teacher of Brahmanism and there made an exhaustive study of the four Vedas and the eighteen major scriptures, which constitute the complete sacred writings of Brahmanism. At this time, however, he
still did not know where his mother had been reborn.
Later, at the age of thirteen, he and Shariputra together visited Shakyamuni Buddha and became his disciples. Thereafter, Maudgalyayana was able to free himself from the illusions of thought and to advance to the first stage of sagehood3 and then to cut off the illusions of desire and become an arhat, thereupon gaining the three insights and the six transcendental powers. Having opened the heavenly eye, he could see throughout the entire major world system as though it were reflected in a clear mirror. His vision penetrated the earth, and he could see into the three evil paths just as we, looking down through a layer of ice, see fish beneath the ice when the morning sun shines on it. And as he looked down, he saw that his mother was in the realm of hungry spirits.
She had nothing to drink, nothing to eat. Her skin was like that of a golden pheasant when its feathers have been plucked; her bones were like round stones placed one beside the other. Her head was big as a ball, her neck thin as a thread, and her stomach swelled like the sea. Her mouth open, her palms pressed together begging for something to eat, she resembled a starving leech that has caught the scent of a human. The sight of her famished
