The vinaya carefully instructs how a feast to honor Buddhist monks is to be prepared. How they are to behave themselves. How the seats should be arranged. When they are allowed to speak. How hands and dishes should be washed. How the floors should be swept. That a plate of food and an empty chair be left at the table for Mother Hariti.

And if the host should ask who is Mother Hariti?

“Thus have I heard,

Once in her former life, this mother made a vow for some reason or other to devour all the babies in Rajagraha. After causing much suffering and grief, she was caught and executed.

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Her soul was reborn as a demon, and that demon had ten vicious daughters. She doted on her children and fed them on the flesh and blood and bones of infants that she stole each night.

The people of Rajagraha went to the Buddha, and begged him to intervene for the sake of their children. The Buddha’s only response was to gently place his alms bowl upside down before him.

That night when the demon awoke, she screamed in distress finding only nine daughters asleep in their beds. She search her hut, the forest, the city wailing and tearing at her hair in distress. Calling for her missing child.

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She came before the grove where the Buddha sheltered. The temple arose to stop her, with a gesture of the Buddha’s hand they stepped aside. She threw herself on the ground begging for her daughter’s return.

The Buddha reached down and picked up his rice bowl, revealing the missing daughter.

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In that moment Mother Hariti saw her suffering for one missing daughter of ten was a pale echo of the hundreds of parents whose only son or daughter had been devoured. She vowed before the Buddha that henceforth she would eat only the wild pomegranates and would become the divine protector of mothers and their children.

As a mark of his approval the Buddha blessed her with marks against all curses and black magic, power to cure disease and ease the pain of child birth, and vowed that his disciples at every feast would set aside a portion so that her children would be fed.”

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