Paracittajñāna

paracittajñāna [alt cetoparyāyābhijñāna] (P. ceto-pariya-ñāṇa; T. gzhan gyi sems she pa; C. taxintong 他心通) is translated as "knowledge of others minds," etc. It means the ability to know when another person is greedy, not greedy, angry, not angry, etc.

Paracittajñāna is identified as:

• one of the five mundane superknowledges

The Buddhist Dictionary provides the following quote from the Pali suttas:

He knows the minds of other beings (parassa ceto-pariya-ñāṇa), of other persons, by penetrating them with his own mind. He knows the greedy mind as greedy and the non-greedy one as not greedy; knows the hating mind as hating and the non-hating one as not hating; knows the deluded mind as deluded and the non-deluded one as not deluded; knows the shrunken mind and the distracted one, the developed mind and the undeveloped one, the surpassable mind and the unsurpassable one, the concentrated mind and the unconcentrated one, the freed mind and the unfreed one.

Further reading:

• Nyanaponika Thera; Hecker, Hellmuth (2012), Great Disciples of the Buddha: Their Lives, Their Works, Their Legacy (PDF), Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-0-86171-864-1 , Chapter 2: Moggallana

Sources

• Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University 
• Nyanatiloka Thera (2019), Nyanaponika Thera, ed., Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, Pariyatti Publishing