Reading guide
A threefold accusation, met with identical refusal each time
Kokālika's charge against Sāriputta and Moggallāna is repeated verbatim three times, and the Buddha's response — ‘don't say that’, urging confidence in the two monks — is repeated in exactly the same words each time, the discourse's formal structure itself conveying that nothing new is being offered or heard on either side.
Illness described with unflinching, escalating specificity
The boils that erupt across Kokālika's body are traced through seven distinct size-comparisons — mustard seed, mung bean, chickpea, jujube seed, jujube, unripe wood-apple, ripe wood-apple — before bursting; this reading guide follows the source's own choice to narrate the physical consequence in full rather than summarizing past it.
A named hell, tied explicitly to a named cause
Kokālika's rebirth is not left vague; he is placed specifically in the Pink Lotus hell, and the text repeats twice, almost as a formula, that this rebirth follows ‘because of his resentment for Sāriputta and Moggallāna’ — cause and consequence stated together each time, not left for the reader to infer.
A question about duration answered by simile, not by number
When asked how long a lifetime in the Pink Lotus hell lasts, the Buddha doesn't offer a figure; he builds an image instead — a cart of twenty packs of sesame seed, one seed removed every hundred years — and then states that this cart would empty faster than a single lifetime in the least of ten nested hells, each twenty times the last, with Kokālika's own hell named only at the very end of the ascending list.
Verses shared with SN 6.9, now placed in their full context
The same four verses that closed SN 6.9 — the axe born in the mouth, the losing hand at dice, the overwhelming hell-duration figures — recur here verbatim, but now follow the complete narrative rather than a bedside warning alone, closing both this discourse and the vagga's first ten discourses together.
Key terms
The text
§1At Sāvatthī. Then the mendicant Kokālika went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and said to him, “Sir, Sāriputta and Moggallāna have corrupt wishes. They’ve fallen under the sway of corrupt wishes.” When this was said, the Buddha said to Kokālika, “Don’t say that, Kokālika! Don’t say that, Kokālika! Have confidence in Sāriputta and Moggallāna, they’re good monks.”
§2For a second time Kokālika said to the Buddha, “Despite my faith and trust in the Buddha, Sāriputta and Moggallāna have corrupt wishes. They’ve fallen under the sway of corrupt wishes.” For a second time, the Buddha said to Kokālika, “Don’t say that, Kokālika! Don’t say that, Kokālika! Have confidence in Sāriputta and Moggallāna, they’re good monks.” For a third time Kokālika said to the Buddha, “Despite my faith and trust in the Buddha, Sāriputta and Moggallāna have corrupt wishes. They’ve fallen under the sway of corrupt wishes.” For a third time, the Buddha said to Kokālika, “Don’t say that, Kokālika! Don’t say that, Kokālika! Have confidence in Sāriputta and Moggallāna, they’re good monks.”
§3Then Kokālika got up from his seat, bowed, and respectfully circled the Buddha, keeping him on his right, before leaving. Not long after he left his body erupted with boils the size of mustard seeds. The boils grew to the size of mung beans, then chickpeas, then jujube seeds, then jujubes, then myrobalans, then unripe wood-apples, then ripe wood-apples. Finally they burst open, and pus and blood oozed out. Then the mendicant Kokālika died of that illness. He was reborn in the Pink Lotus hell because of his resentment for Sāriputta and Moggallāna.
§4Then, late at night, the glorious divinity Sahampati, lighting up the entire Jeta’s Grove, went up to the Buddha, bowed, stood to one side, and said to him, “Sir, the mendicant Kokālika has passed away. He was reborn in the Pink Lotus hell because of his resentment for Sāriputta and Moggallāna.” That’s what the divinity Sahampati said. Then he bowed and respectfully circled the Buddha, keeping him on his right side, before vanishing right there.
§5When he said this, one of the mendicants asked the Buddha, “Sir, how long is the lifespan in the Pink Lotus hell?” “It’s long, mendicant. It’s not easy to calculate how many years, how many hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of years it lasts.” “But sir, is it possible to give a simile?” “It’s possible,” said the Buddha.
§6“Suppose there was a Kosalan load of twenty packs of sesame seed. And at the end of every hundred years someone would remove a single seed from it. By this means the Kosalan load of twenty packs of sesame seed would run out faster than a single lifetime in the Abbuda hell. Now, twenty lifetimes in the Abbuda hell equal one lifetime in the Nirabbuda hell. Twenty lifetimes in the Nirabbuda hell equal one lifetime in the Ababa hell. Twenty lifetimes in the Ababa hell equal one lifetime in the Aṭaṭa hell. Twenty lifetimes in the Aṭaṭa hell equal one lifetime in the Ahaha hell. Twenty lifetimes in the Ahaha hell equal one lifetime in the Yellow Lotus hell. Twenty lifetimes in the Yellow Lotus hell equal one lifetime in the Fragrant Water Lily hell. Twenty lifetimes in the Fragrant Water Lily hell equal one lifetime in the Blue Water Lily hell. Twenty lifetimes in the Blue Water Lily hell equal one lifetime in the White Lotus hell. Twenty lifetimes in the White Lotus hell equal one lifetime in the Pink Lotus hell. The mendicant Kokālika has been reborn in the Pink Lotus hell because of his resentment for Sāriputta and Moggallāna.”
§7“A man is born with an axe in his mouth. A fool cuts themselves with it when they say bad words.
§8When you praise someone worthy of criticism, or criticize someone worthy of praise, you choose a losing hand with your own mouth: you’ll never find happiness that way.
§9A losing hand at dice is a trivial thing, if all you lose is your money and all you own, even yourself. What’s a really terrible hand is to hate the holy ones.
§10For a hundred thousand times a hundred million, times five hundred and thirty-six times a thousand times ten million years a slanderer of noble ones goes to hell, having aimed bad words and thoughts at them.”
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