your bridge home
Saints and Poets
The most powerful man in the order finds his own mother starving in a realm he cannot lift her out of.
The man who could do anything was beaten to death by robbers, and let it happen.
Moggallana was born Kolita, on the same day and in the next village to his lifelong friend Upatissa, who became Sariputta. They went looking for the truth together, found it together, and were ordained together. The Buddha named them his two chief disciples.
Sariputta was the one who could explain anything.
Moggallana was the other kind.
He was foremost in iddhi, the psychic powers, and the texts do not treat this shyly. He goes to the heavens and talks to the gods. He goes to the hell realms and comes back and reports.
And he used it for teaching. He would go and look at where a particular kind of life led. Then he came back and told people living that way what he had seen.
The most famous of those journeys is the one about his mother.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.