Upali (6th century BCE) - उपालि - Upāli - Upāli - ཉེ་བར་འཁོར། nye bar 'khor nyewar khor - 優波離 优波离, Yōubōlí - 우바리 Ubari - 優波離 Ubari - Upāli
Upali (उपालि - Upāli; ཉེ་བར་འཁོར། nye bar 'khor Nyewar Khor) was one of the ten principal disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha and is revered throughout the Buddhist tradition as the disciple foremost in upholding the monastic precepts and the Vinaya discipline. Born into a low-caste barber family in Kapilavastu in ancient India during the 6th century BCE, his exact year of birth and year of death are not definitively fixed in historical archives, though he lived and taught through the 5th century BCE. When several Shakya princes, including Ananda and Aniruddha, left their royal homes to practice renunciation, Upali accompanied them as their barber, only to receive their discarded jewelry and return home before deciding to renounce the world himself. Upon approaching the Buddha, Shakyamuni ordained Upali before the aristocratic princes so that the former nobles would have to pay formal respect to him, demonstrating the radical egalitarianism of the Dharma and dismantling caste pride within the Sangha.
Taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, Upali initially wished to retreat into solitude for intensive meditation, but Shakyamuni advised him to remain within the community to master both textual study and meditative insight. Through rigorous adherence to ethical conduct, mindfulness, and right effort, he purified his mind of the three poisons, realized the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination, and attained full awakening as an arhat, gaining complete liberation from karma and samsara. He became the foremost authority on the intricate rules of monastic conduct, training generations of monastics in right speech, right action, right livelihood, and non-attachment so that the Sangha could flourish in harmony along the Middle Way and the Noble Eightfold Path.
Following the parinirvana of Shakyamuni, Upali played a pivotal role at the First Council alongside Mahakashyapa and Ananda by reciting the entirety of the Vinaya Pitaka from memory, preserving the foundational monastic code for all future Buddhist lineages. His recitations form the core of the Vinaya collections preserved in the Tibetan Tripitaka starting with Toh Number 1 and across the Chinese Tripitaka in texts such as Taisho Number 1421 and Taisho Number 1428, as well as the Mahayana Upalipariprccha Sutra on bodhisattva precepts and confession cataloged as Toh Number 68 and Taisho Number 310. Embodying supreme wisdom, equanimity, and skillful means, Upali served as the guardian of monastic purity until he peacefully passed into parinirvana, leaving an enduring legacy for later Buddhist Masters like Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, and Atisha.