Nichiren … commented on the “great king’s feast” [Chapter 6: Assurance of Future Buddhahood] in connection with memorial prayers that he offered on behalf of followers who had lost family members. In so doing, he evoked associations between the arhat Maudgalyāyana (Ch. Mulian, J. Mokuren), whose attainment of buddhahood is predicted in this chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, and Buddhist funerary and memorial rites. Maudgalyāyana was celebrated in the early Buddhist tradition as the Buddha’s disciple most accomplished in supernatural powers. After his mother had died, the story goes, Maudgalyāyana scanned the cosmos with his divine eye to see where she had been reborn and found her suffering in the realm of hungry ghosts as retribution for her greed and stinginess when alive. He then attempted to send her magically conjured food, but it burst into flames and scorched her when she tried to eat it. Bewildered, he consulted the Buddha, who advised him to offer a meal to the assembly of monks at the end of the summer monsoon retreat. Maudgalyāyana did so, and with that merit, his mother gained release from the hungry ghost realm. This legend became the basis throughout East Asia of the annual “Ghost Festival” (Skt. Ullambana; Ch. Yulanpen; J. Urabon), in which lay people make special offerings to monks at the close of the summer retreat, a period during which monastics are said to heighten their spiritual powers. The monks in turn perform services to transfer merit to their patrons’ deceased relatives, confirming the reciprocal bonds between monastics and laity, the living and the dead. Maudgalyāyana’s story was also related to the “ritual for hungry ghosts,” a merit offering for those deceased who had no relatives to sponsor services on their behalf. In Japan, this ritual was often performed in conjunction with Urabon, or for persons who had died in battle, of starvation, or under other unfortunate circumstances.