Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics

THE TEACHING OF Vimalakīrti has been one of the most popular of Asian classics for about two thousand years. It was originally written in Sanskrit, based on accounts preserved in colloquial Indic languages, probably in the first century B.C.E. It nevertheless presents itself as recording events and conversations that took place in the time of Śākyamuni Buddha, over four hundred years earlier. It was first translated into Chinese in 170 C.E.; into Korean, Uighur, and Tibetan in the seventh through ninth centuries; and eventually into Mongolian and Manchu, as well as twice more into Chinese. In modern times, it has been translated into over ten languages, including most European languages, and at least five times into English.¹

The Vimalakīrti is one of a class of texts called Ārya Mahāyāna Sūtra, “Holy Scripture of the Universal Vehicle” of Buddhism. These texts form the “Bibles” of Mahāyāna Buddhists, the Buddhists who flourished in firstmillennium C.E. India and in Central and East Asia. These scriptures include hundreds of major texts and thousands of minor ones, with thousands more reportedly lost over the millennia. They began to emerge in India during the first century B.C.E. They purported to proclaim a new gospel of the Buddha, adding to the monastic Buddhist concern for individual liberation from suffering a teaching of universal love and compassion for all beings. They claimed that this explicitly messianic teaching had been taught by the same Śākyamuni Buddha but had been kept esoteric for four hundred years, waiting for Indian civilization to develop the need for such a socially progressive doctrine. For, despite the fact that many monastic Buddhists did not (and still do not) consider these Mahāyāna Scriptures to be authentic teachings of the Buddha, these texts sparked a messianic movement that reached out from the monastic strongholds that the Buddha’s earlier teaching had established all over India to inspire lay men and women with the “bodhisattva ideal.” This ideal was that each person should assume responsibility for the salvation of all others, not accepting personal liberation in Nirvāna until becoming a perfect Buddha, defined as an enlightened savior with the actual ability to save all beings.

Whatever the provenance of the text, the Vimalakīrti attained its importance and popularity as much for its readability as for its sanctity. It opens with the Buddha and his company living in the pleasure grove of Āmrapālī, a famous femme fatale of the great merchant city of Vaiśālī. It is a slightly unconventional situation. This elegant lady had won a race to invite the Buddha and company as her guests, beating the delegation of the fathers of the city. The dignified society of the city had taken some offense and thus were temporarily refraining from visiting the Buddha. As the scene opens, however, a group of five hundred noble youths, the cream of the city’s younger generation, does come from the city to the grove to visit the Buddha and request his teaching.

They bring five hundred jeweled parasols as offerings, and the Buddha at once performs a miracle, forging them into a jeweled dome over the audience. In its bright surfaces, all behold reflected all parts of the universe, like a magical planetarium. After their awe has abated and they have sung his praises, they ask the Buddha not “How do we attain enlightenment?” or “What is the true nature of reality?” but “How does the bodhisatt va perfect the Buddha land?” Or, in more modern terms: “How does the messianic idealist make a perfect world for the benefit of all beings?” The Buddha answers with an elaborate description of the perfections of a Buddha-land and how they evolved from the perfections of the bodhisattva who becomes a Buddha.

At the end of this discourse, the wise and saintly monk Śāriputra, one of the Buddha’s closest “apostles,” becomes doubtful about this notion of a “perfect world,” thinking that it contradicts the “holy truth of suffering” and that the world he sees around him is far from perfect. The Buddha reads his mind, chides him for his lack of faith and insight, plants his toe on the ground, and miraculously grants the entire audience a second vision, a vision of the universe as a place of utter perfection, with each being exalted in his or her own highest fulfillment and enjoyment. He then lifts his toe and withdraws the vision. These dramatic events at the opening of the text set up the core tension of the Vimalakīrti, which is perhaps the central problematic of the Universal Vehicle itself. If Buddhahood is the perfection of the world as well as of the self, the saving of all beings as well as the freeing of the individual, then why did not the turbulent history of the planet come to an end with the Buddhahood of Śākyamuni? Why did not the struggle of evolution terminate with the Buddhahood of the first bodhisattva? Or, if this world is perfect to enlightened eyes, why does this perfection appear to the so highly evolved human beings as a faulty mess, an endless, seemingly futile struggle filled with needless suffering?

Once this problem has been posed, the scene shifts to downtown Vaiśālī, and the wealthy householder Vimalakīrti is introduced as the very embodiment of a Buddha’s liberative arts. He is respected by all the citizens from highest to lowest and is a jack of all trades, a deeply religious man, and an accomplished philosopher known for his inspiring brilliance and matchless eloquence. Indeed, as we soon come to see, he is thought by some to be a little too eloquent. As the plot moves forward, Vimalakīrti becomes sick and uses the occasion to lecture the citizens of Vaiśālī about the inadequacy of the ordinary body and the unlivability of the unenlightened life, contrasting his miserable state with the blissful perfect health of an enlightened Buddha, who enjoys a body made of diamond. He also complains that, now that he has become ill, the monks of Buddha’s company do not come to call on him, to cheer him and raise his spirits.

The scene then changes back to the Buddha in his grove, where, on cue, the Buddha asks his major disciples, monks, and lay supporters if they would not be so kind as to go to town to pay a sick call on the good Vimalakīrti. To his surprise, no one wants to go. Each of the major apostles among the saintly and learned monks tells a story about the last time he met with Vimalakīrti, in which Vimalakīrti challenged the narrowness of some central idea precious to that saint, refuting such partiality and powerfully opening up a whole new vista, but in the process overwhelming his poor visitor and leaving him speechless. Each of the major lay supporters has a similar tale to tell. All are united in their aversion to another encounter with the whirlwind of Vimalakīrti’s adamant eloquence. Fortunately, the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, known as the “crown prince of wisdom,” finally volunteers to go, both to save the community the embarrassment of failing to pay a call on one of their most respected members during his time of sickness and to enjoy a chat with the householder sage.

As soon as Mañjuśrī decides to go, the entire community decides to follow along, as the conversation between Vimalakīrti and Mañjuśrī promises to be richly entertaining. The scene again shifts to the house of Vimalakīrti, where the central episodes of the drama occur. First, the two sages engage in cryptic dialogues, during which the profound side of the Mahāyāna is clearly expounded, involving the teachings of subjective and objective selflessness and absolute emptiness. For example:

Mañjuśrī: “Householder, why is your house empty? Why have you no servants?” Vimalakīrti: “Mañjuśrī, all buddha-lands are also empty.” M: “What makes them empty?” V: “They are empty because of emptiness.” M: “What is empty about emptiness?” V: “Constructions are empty, because of emptiness.” M: “Can emptiness be conceptually constructed?” V: “Even that concept is itself empty, and emptiness cannot construct emptiness.” M: “Householder, where should emptiness be sought?” V: “Mañjuśrī, emptiness should be sought among the sixty-two false convictions.” M: “Where should the sixty-two convictions be sought?” V: “They should be sought in the liberation of the Tathāgatas.” M: “Where should the liberation of the Tathāgatas be sought?” V: “It should be sought in the prime mental activity of all beings.”

(HTV, 43–44)

Vimalakīrti here turns an ordinary question into a probe into the ultimate nature of things, declaring it to be total emptiness of all intrinsic reality. Mañjuśrī presses him on this, looking for traces of a nihilistic reification of emptiness into a real nothingness. Vimalakīrti holds his ground and reaffirms the emptiness of emptiness, which logically necessitates the reality of the world of relativity, which contains both delusions and enlightenment. Enlightenment itself is not something far away from ordinary life but something perhaps so close to the heart of every being that it tends to go unnoticed. This nondualism, based on a critique of the monastic Buddhist reification of Nirvāna as a realm of freedom apart from samsāric life, is the hallmark of the Mahāyāna movement, underlying its ultimate concern for universal compassion.

These dialogues were highly cherished by those Daoist intellectuals devoted to “enlightening conversation” during Buddhism’s early years in China, since they used wit and earnest conversation to open up the deep experience of reality. They served as the earliest model for the type of master-disciple exchanges eventually recorded in the kōan, or “public cases,” of the Chan (Zen) tradition. But they were a little much for Śāriputra, who found himself quite at a loss, with no place to stand or chair to sit on in the realm of ultimate groundlessness.

Once emptiness is opened up for the audience, Vimalakīrti begins to play with the dimensions of relativity as well. He obtains giant lion thrones from another universe and seats everyone upon one, making each feel as tall as a mountain. He then teaches the “inconceivable liberation of the bodhisattvas,” a teaching of the miraculous reality, which describes how anything is possible for the compassionate activity of the bodhisattva. He declares that to understand that teaching, one must understand the mystery of how a bodhisattva in the inconceivable liberation can place the axial mountain, Sumeru, into a mustard seed, without shrinking the mountain or rupturing the seed. Based on emptiness, he presents the mutual interpenetration and mutual nonobstruction of all things.

He and Mañjuśrī then discuss the problems of the paradoxical mutual indispensability of wisdom and compassion, insight and liberative art. Overjoyed by the inspiring teachings, the goddess of wisdom, Prajñāpāramitā herself, becomes manifest to bless the audience with flowers. After some deep conversations, she ends up teasing Śāriputra, the typical “male chauvinist” of those times, teaching him about the lack of the intrinsic reality of maleness and femaleness in the most charming and graphic way imaginable.

Vimalakīrti and Mañjuśrī then turn to the problem of good and evil, as Vimalakīrti expounds the code of bodhisattva deeds called “the reconciliation of dichotomies.” The high point of events in the mansion is reached after Vimalakīrti has asked twenty-five of the advanced bodhisattvas present to give their views of the truth of nonduality, the highest expression of ultimate Truth. Each teaches deeply and subtly, though Mañjuśrī expresses some dissatisfaction with their teachings before offering his own ideas. Then they all ask Vimalakīrti for his idea, but he maintains a thunderous silence. Vimalakīrti’s silence is perhaps the most famous silence in all Buddhist literature. It is the equivalent of the “Great Statement” of ultimate Truth in the Upanishads, “That Thou Art!” But perhaps Vimalakīrti felt that all his audience were so much That that he needed absolutely not to say so! This silence had a special impact coming from him, of course, as he usually spoke so inexhaustibly.

After this “lion’s roar” of great silence, Vimalakīrti sends out to another universe for lunch, bringing a few grains of rice from the Buddha Sugandhakūta of the Perfume Universe, which he multiplies to feed the great crowd that has magically fit into his empty house. Along with the food comes a group of perfume bodhisattvas from that universe, who are curious to see the “Barely Tolerable” (Sahā) universe of Buddha Śākyamuni and the amazing bodhisattva Vimalakīrti, who had beamed an emanation out across the galaxies to bring back lunch! They are shocked to see how unheavenly our universe is compared to theirs, and they and Vimalakīrti have an extended dialogue, during which he presents the “answer” to the problem posed in the beginning of the text. He persuades the perfume bodhisattvas that Śākyamuni’s “Tolerable” universe is ideal for bodhisattvas, indeed better than a heavenly perfume world, precisely because there is so much struggle and hardship in it. This difficulty of life is just what is needed for the development of compassion. Wisdom can certainly be cultivated by deep contemplation under a perfume tree, perhaps more conveniently than in our busy world. But without struggle, without nearness to suffering and without relationships with earthly beings, it is impossible to develop great compassion. And it is only compassion that creates eventually the Body of Buddhahood, just as wisdom creates the Mind. This section presents one of the clearest rationalizations of suffering in any Mahāyāna text; it is a veritable Buddhist “theodicy.”

The scene changes again for the final act of the drama, as Vimalakīrti demonstrates his inconceivable level of liberation yet again. He miniaturizes the entire assembly, picks it up in his hand, and places it gently down outside of town in the grove of Āmrapālī, in the presence of the Buddha. There is a reunion between the monk Buddha and the layman Buddha, as Vimalakīrti at this point is now described. Vimalakīrti stands directly before the (monk) Buddha and gives a penetrating discourse about how only one who does not see any Buddha can actually see the Buddha, as the Buddha is not this body of form, not sensation, not ideation, and so forth. The Buddha accepts that he is not there as well as there and praises his householder colleague.

It is eventually revealed that Vimalakīrti is an Emanation Body of the Akşobhya Buddha of the Buddha-land known as Abhirati (Intense Delight). Vimalakīrti performs a last miracle, bringing the entire Abhirati world in miniature form on the palm of his hand into this world to show it to all present. Abhirati is described as a paradise, but a paradise much more like our world, much more earthly than the heavenly Buddha-lands of perfume and jewel-lotus palaces. The main difference between Abhirati and our world is that the stairways from its earth to its heavens are always visible, and gods and humans mingle equally, all gravitating around the august presence of Akşobhya Buddha. This is the culminating dramatic symbol of the text: Vimalakīrti’s holding out of a hope for the future of this planet of ours in the Sahā universe.

The Vimalakīrti seems to have been designed as a kind of anthology of the major themes of all Mahāyāna scriptures. The wisdom teachings of especially chapters 5 and 9 are as if drawn from the Transcendent Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitā) scriptures. The miraculous glimpses of various “pure” Buddha-lands are cameos of the Pure Land of Bliss (Sukhāvatī) scriptures. The third and fourth chapters of dialogues between Vimalakīrti and various monks and laymen could have been drawn from any of the early Jewel Heap (Ratnakūṭa) scriptures, which are full of the controversies between those clinging to the strict dualism of the old monastic Buddhism and those inspired with the messianic nonduality of the Mahāyāna. The second chapter on “liberative art” or “technique” as well as the chapters proving to the perfume bodhisattvas the greater perfection of this seemingly imperfect Buddha-land of Śākyamuni echo the central message of the White Lotus of Holy Truth (Saddharma Puarīkā) scriptures. The sixth chapter on “Inconceivable Liberation” explicitly refers to the Avatasaka (Garland) scriptures, presenting the teaching of the chapter as a drop of that ocean, and the first miracle of the jeweled canopy resonates with the famous “Jewel Net of Indra” analogy for the mutually interpenetrative nature of all things, which is a central vision of the Garland. And finally, the ritual and magical nature of the mansion of Vimalakīrti, the enthronement of all members of the audience, the consecration of all by the goddess of wisdom, the teachings of the “Family of the Tathāgatas” and the reconciliation of dichotomies, and finally the magical, spiritual feast that cannot be digested until the participant achieves a higher stage of enlightenment—all these elements unquestionably convey an atmosphere of esoteric Buddhism, the apocalyptic vehicle later codified in the Buddhist Tantras.

The Vimalakīrti can be read in a single sitting. Its drama, visions, and humor can carry a reader past some of the difficult passages. But it can also be repeatedly browsed in, as its mysterious dialogues and paradoxes can stimulate contemplative thinking. For those new to Buddhist literature or more generally the wisdom literature of India, it can serve as an excellent introduction. And for those who have read widely, studied deeply, and taken time to contemplate, it endures as a quintessential summary.