The complete title of this scripture is Vimalakīrti-Nirdeśa Sūtra, rendered Scripture of the Teachings of Vimalakīrti in English. One of the most popular Indian Mahayana scriptures, it was composed around the second century CE as one of the early Mahayana scriptures and was translated into Chinese, Tibetan, and other central Asian languages. The original Sanskrit text was lost until its very recent discovery. Of the several Chinese translations, Kumārajīva’s (344–413) in 406 and Xuanzang’s (ca. 600–664) in 650 are the most outstanding, and of those two, Kumārajīva’s is the most popular. The scripture portrays the layperson Vimalakīrti as the greatest bodhisattva, whose understanding of the Buddha’s teaching is superior to all other bodhisattvas. In addition to sharing the Mahayana teaching of emptiness with the Perfection of Wisdom literature, the scripture makes impressive criticism of the Hinayana escapist style of sitting meditation and concentration and claims that going about one’s business as usual in the world while following the way of teaching, or entering into nirvana without cutting off from all daily disturbances, is the true meditation. This became one of the most often-quoted justifications in the numerous Chan Buddhist discourses on realizing enlightenment within ordinary activities. The other important influence of the scripture on Chan discourse is its elaboration on the dharma gate of non-duality (bu’er famen). After exhausting the discussion of overcoming all kinds of dualism, the text lets Vimalakīrti demonstrate a complete silence against all linguistic affirmation and negation. It implies that the negation of words is still a form of speech, and only silence can perform such double negation against all linguistic dualism. This strategy inspired the Chan Buddhist use of signifying silence as a way of overcoming the limitation of linguistic expressions.