Teaching the Abhidharma in the Heaven of the Thirty-three: The Buddha and his Mother

Abstract

In what follows I investigate the tale of the Buddhaʼs sojourn in the Heaven of the Thirty-three to teach his mother, based on a translation of a version of this episode in the Saṃyukta-āgama preserved in Chinese, with a view to discerning the gradual development and significance of this tale.