The Vimalakërti Nirdeà Âa (Devanagari: à ¤µà ¤¿à ¤®à ¤²à ¤Âà ¥Âà ¤°à ¥Âà ¤¤à ¤¿à ¤¨à ¤¿à ¤°à ¥Âà ¤¦à ¥Âà ¤¶) (sometimes referred to as the Vimalakërti Sà «tra or Vimalakërti Nirdeà Âa Sà «tra) is a Mahayana Buddhist text which centers on a lay Buddhist meditator who attained a very high degree of enlightenment considered by some second only to the Buddha's. The word nirdeà Âa in the title means "instruction, advice", and Vimalakërti is the name of the main protagonist of the text, and means "Taintless Fame".
The sutra teaches, among other subjects, the meaning of nondualism, the doctrine of the true body of the Buddha, the doctrine that the appearances of the world are mere illusions, and the superiority of the MahÃÂyÃÂna over other paths. It places in the mouth of the upÃÂsaka (lay practitioner) Vimalakërti a teaching addressed to both arhats and bodhisattvas, regarding the doctrine of à Âà «nyatÃÂ. In most versions, the discourse of the text culminates with a wordless teaching of silence. Translator Burton Watson argues that the Vimalakërti Nirdeà Âa was likely composed in approximately 100 CE.
Although it had been thought lost for centuries, a version in Sanskrit was recovered in 1999 among the manuscripts of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. The Sanskrit was published in parallel with the Tibetan and three Chinese versions by the Study Group on Buddhist Sanskrit Literature at the Institute for Comprehensive Studies of Buddhism at Taisho University in 2004, and in 2006, the same group published a critical edition that has become the standard version of the Sanskrit for scholarly purposes. In 2007 the Nagarjuna Institute of Exact Methods published a romanized Sanskrit version under the title ÃÂryavimalakërtinirdeà Âo NÃÂma MahÃÂyÃÂnasà «tram.
For a recent and thorough summary of the present scholarly understanding of the text, readers should consult Felbur.
Various translations circulate, and an even greater number are known or claimed to have existed in the past.
Tradition holds that the text was translated into Classical Chinese seven times. A supposed first translation (probably legendary) is said in some classical bibliographic sources, beginning with the notoriously unreliable Lidai sanbao ji æ·代ä¸Â寶素T2034 in 598 C.E., to have been produced by Yan Fotiao å´ä½Â調. Three canonical Chinese versions are extant: an earlier version ascribed to Zhi Qian æ¯è¬Â, entitled Weimojie jing ç¶Âæ©詰綠T474; one produced by KumÃÂrajëva 鳩æ©羠仠in 406 C.E. under the title Weimojie suoshuo jing ç¶Âæ©詰æÂÂ說綠T475; and one translated by Xuanzang in 650 çÂÂ奠and is entitled Shuo Wogoucheng jing 說ç¡å¢稱綠T476. Of these, the KumÃÂrajëva version is the most famous.
The principal Tibetan version is that found in the Kanjur, by Chos nyid tshul khrims (DharmatÃÂÃ Âila), Dri ma med par grags pas bstan pa D176/Q843.' An additional version was found at Dunhuang in the early 20th century.
In modern English, six main translations exist, three from KumÃÂrajëva's Chinese, two from the Tibetan, and one from the recently rediscovered Sanskrit text. A typically erudite French translation by ÃÂtienne Lamotte was made from the Tibetan. Lamotte's French was re-translated into English by Sara Boin-Webb, bringing the total number of English versions to five. The English translations are:
Jan Nattier has discussed and compared most of these translations in considerable detail, as an interesting case in the agendas and resulting shortcomings of various approaches to modern Buddhist Studies.
There also exist or existed various translations (some of them at second remove) into the Japanese, Korean, Khotanese, Mongolian, Sogdian and Manchurian languages.
Most Japanese versions are based on KumÃÂrajëva, but two translations directly from the rediscovered Sanskrit text into vernacular Japanese have also now been published, one by Takahashi Hisao é«Âæ©Âå°Â夫 and Nishino Midori 西éÂÂç¿ , and one by Ueki Masatoshi æ¤Âæ¨é ä¿Â.
The Vimalakirti Sutra can be summarised as follows.
Chapter 1
The scene is ÃÂmrapÃÂlë's garden outside Vaià ÂÃÂlë. Even in this setting, we may see evidence of the literary sophistication of the authors, and the foreshadowing of key themes (antinomianism, female characters as literary tropes): ÃÂmrapÃÂlë was a famously accomplished courtesan, ascribed in narrative with various roles in relation to promulgation of the Dharma. Five hundred Licchavi youths offer parasols to the Buddha, who miraculously transforms them into a single gigantic parasol that covers the entire cosmos. The youths ask how the "Buddha field" (buddhaká¹£etra) can be purified. The Buddha responds that the Buddha field is pure when the mind is pure (this line was one source of a whole line of interpretation in Pure Land thinking in the later East Asian tradition). The buddhaká¹£etra is also equated with various other exalted categories in the MahÃÂyÃÂna, such as the six perfections, or the four "illimitables" or "noble dwelling-places" (brahmavihÃÂra). Because à ÂÃÂriputra is unable to see this purity, the Buddha performs a miracle that displays it to him briefly. One implication of this scene is that our SahàworldâÂÂthe buddhaká¹£etra of à ÂÃÂkyamuniâÂÂis in fact as glorious as other Buddha worlds, but our defilements prevent us from correctly seeing it as such.
Chapter 2
The scene is now Vimalakërti's house in Vaià ÂÃÂlë. He is a wealthy merchant householder. He is a husband and a father. However, he is also a powerful bodhisattva with Buddha-like qualities. He enters dens of iniquity, such as gambling parlours, brothels, and the haunts of philosophers of other schools, but even in so doing, he is merely appearing to conform with the ways of this world in order to bring sentient beings to realisation of the truth. Note the echo of the famous courtesan ÃÂmrapÃÂlë in the theme, emphasised here, of Vimalakërti's ambivalent, even paradoxical, relationship to sexuality and chastity; the same theme is revisited in an amusing anecdote in Chapter 3, in which Vimalakërti bests MÃÂra (the "Buddhist devil") by accepting 12,000 goddesses from him for his "serving-women". These goddesses have just been rejected by another advanced practitioner as improper, but Vimalakërti immediately takes the occasion to convert them towards ultimate awakening.
Here, it now transpires that Vimalakërti is feigning illness, in order that he can exploit the sympathy visits of his fellow citizens to teach them. He teaches one such group of visitors about the distinction between the apparently impermanent material body, which is prone to such sickness, and the true body of the Buddha. This is one of the earliest developed instances of dharmakÃÂya ("Dharma-body") doctrine known in MahÃÂyÃÂna literature.
Chapter 3
The Buddha successively appeals to a string of his most advanced non-MahÃÂyÃÂna disciples (mahÃÂà ÂrÃÂvakas), and also to three bodhisattvas and a householder, to visit Vimalakërti and ask after his health. They all refuse, saying that on prior occasions when they met with him, he showed them up in his understanding of various doctrines. Vimalakërti is typically portrayed in these recounted exchanges as having triumphed by a kind of paradoxical and contrary rhetoric, which on the surface makes no sense. For example, he bested à ÂÃÂriputra on the topic of sitting in meditation by asserting that true meditation is in fact a string of things bearing no obvious resemblance to meditation, such as having no body in the visible world, or abiding in a state of complete meditative cessation (normally held to resemble physical death to the untrained eye) while at the same time engaging actively and perfectly in all the niceties of monastic deportment.
Chapter 4
The bodhisattva Mañjuà Ârë (conventionally understood as the embodiment of supreme wisdom) is persuaded by the Buddha to visit Vimalakërti, albeit with some difficulty. Vimalakërti miraculously transforms his apparently narrow and humble abode into a vast cosmic palace, thus creating enough space for the throng Mañjuà Ârë has brought with him. Vimalakërti explains his illness in spiritual terms, equating it with the fundamental existential malaise of all sentient beings. According to this discourse, the true cure for all ills is also spiritual, and involves the achievement of states of non-self and non-dualism.
Chapter 5
Vimalakërti performs a further miracle, summoning from another distant Buddha-field 32,000 vast "lion thrones" (siá¹ÂhÃÂsana) for Mañjuà Ârë and his company, without expanding his narrow room. Each of these seats is so immense that advanced bodhisattvas must transform their bodies to a size of 42,000 yojanas (leagues) tall to sit on them. à Âariputra and other mahÃÂà ÂrÃÂvakas, incapable of this feat, cannot mount their seats. This space- and mind-bending miracle is taken as the chance to teach that a vast array of "unthinkable" things are possible for advanced adherents of the MahÃÂyÃÂna (e.g. inhaling all the winds of all the worlds at once, or showing all the offerings ever given to all Buddhas in a single pore of the skin of their bodies).
Chapter 6
Vimalakërti expounds a series of analogies designed to explain the point that the bodhisattva regards sentient beings as, in various senses, illusory or even logically impossible. A goddess then appears, who has been living in Vimalakërti's room for twelve years. She creates a shower of heavenly petals. These petals stick to the bodies of the non-MahÃÂyÃÂna adepts (mahÃÂà ÂrÃÂvakas), but slide off the bodies of the bodhisattvas and drop to the ground. à ÂÃÂriputra, perturbed (among other things, by a probable infringement of the monastic code, which prohibits personal adornment), even attempts to use his supernatural powers to shed this unwelcome decoration, but in vain. A battle of wits and wisdom ensues, in which à ÂÃÂriputra is sorely bested and humiliated by the goddess. She explains that he cannot shake off the flowers because he is "attached" (for instance, to a formalistic and superficial understanding of the Dharma and the Vinaya). à ÂÃÂriputra asks the goddess, perhaps somewhat peevishly, why she still has the (inferior) body of a woman, if she has attained to such high levels of insight. In response, she uses her own supernatural powers to switch bodies with à ÂÃÂriputra, who is even more perturbed to find himself in the guise of a woman, but finds that nothing he does allows him to return to his own "true" form. Eventually, the goddess takes mercy and releases her hold, but the overall effect of the exchange is to show the vast superiority of MahÃÂyÃÂna doctrine and practice over the other, more traditional forms of Buddhism of which à ÂÃÂriputra is a paragon. The drama presented in this chapter has been an important reference point for traditional and especially modern attempts to find MahÃÂyÃÂna perspectives on the nature of gender, and Buddhist feminist attempts to find canonical sources for a stance that ascribes equal spiritual status or potential to women.
Chapter 7
A dialogue ensues between Mañjuà Ârë and Vimalakërti. Echoing the dramatic besting of à ÂÃÂriputraâÂÂa famed expert in doctrineâÂÂby a mere non-Buddhist deity and female, this dialogue ultimately sees Mañjuà Ârë, the paragon of MahÃÂyÃÂna wisdom, upstaged by someone who is apparently a "mere" householder, and (as we saw in Chapter 2), apparently no model of virtue at thatâÂÂa companion of gamblers and prostitutes.
Chapter 8
Vimalakërti conducts a dialogue with a series of bodhisattvas from Mañjuà Ârë's entourage on the topic of non-duality (advaya). Again, Vimalakërti ultimately emerges supreme from this contest. His "statement" on the topic is his famous silence, which crowns the whole series of exchanges and is implicitly framed as the "last word". This portion of the text was important for later tradition, including various Chan/Zen texts and schools, as a source of the notion that truth is beyond language, and specially framed acts of silence are its most adequate expression.
Chapter 9
Vimalakërti uses his powers to conjure up a magically emanated bodhisattva, whom he sends to a remote Buddha-world to fetch a wonderfully fragrant type of food that is eaten there. The emanated bodhisattva brings this food back to Vimalakërti's home, and he uses a single bowlful to miraculously feed the vast congregation in attendance. Vimalakërti takes the occasion to deliver a discourse on the necessity of suffering as a means of teaching for the beings in à ÂÃÂkyamuni's Sahàworld.
Chapter 10
Vimalakërti picks up the entire assembly in his room in one hand, and miraculously transports it to ÃÂmrapÃÂlë's garden (the scene we left in the opening chapter), where they visit the Buddha and ÃÂnanda. When ÃÂnanda smells the fragrance of the wonderful food described in the previous chapter, it is used as the occasion for a teaching that describes how the Buddhas accomplish their teaching and liberation of sentient beings by all means conceivable (and inconceivable!). ÃÂnanda concedes that à ÂrÃÂvakas are inferior to bodhisattvas, and Vimalakërti delivers another teaching.
Chapter 11
Vimalakërti explains how he views the Buddha. This teaching is conveyed by a series of negations. The Buddha reveals to à ÂÃÂriputra that Vimalakërti is in fact a bodhisattva from the Buddha-world Abhirati, which is created and overseen by the Buddha Aká¹£obhya. In order to show the assembly in ÃÂmrapÃÂlë's garden this world, Vimalakërti uses his prodigious powers to bring the entire world into the garden. à ÂÃÂkyamuni Buddha predicts to all present that they will be reborn in Abhirati, and Vimalakërti puts the Buddha-world back where it came from.
Chapter 12
The text closes with formulaic statements that the teaching it delivers should be preserved and transmitted. A new sermon expounds a series of characteristics of inferior bodhisattvas, which prevent them attaining the highest attainments. The Buddha entrusts the sà «tra to Maitreya, in order that sentient beings of future ages may also be able to hear it.
According to Fan Muyou, the Vimalakërtinirdeà Âa contains numerous philosophical and doctrinal themes, including:
According to Etienne Lamotte, the Vimalakërtinirdeà Âa is one of the oldest Mahayana sutras and contains the madhyamika philosophy of emptiness (à Âà «nyatÃÂ) in a raw state (which may have served as a foundation for Nagarjuna's school). In his translation of the sutra (L'Enseignement de Vimalakërti (Vimalakërtinirdeà Âa)), Lamotte outlines the major theses of the madhyamaka school and shows how the Vimalakërtinirdeà Âa contains all of these. Some of these major ideas include:
Burton Watson also argues that the doctrine of emptiness is the central teaching of this sutra, along with the related idea that since all dharmas are of the same nature, they are non-dual, having a single ultimate quality.
The Vimalakërti-nirdeà Âa "offers us two dramatic and contrasting moments of silence. The first of these <nowiki>[is]</nowiki> the silence of à ÂÃÂriputra", who is rendered silent during an exchange with a goddess:
Vimalakërti remains silent while discussing the subject of emptiness with an assembly of bodhisattvas. The bodhisattvas give a variety of answers on the question what non-duality is. Mañjuà Ârë is the last bodhisattva to answer, and says that "by giving an explanation they have already fallen into dualism". Vimalakërti, in his turn, answers with silence.
With this emphasis on silence the Vimalakërti-nirdeà Âa served as a forerunner of the approach of the Ch'an/Zen tradition, with its avoidance of positive statements on 'ultimate reality':
But it does not mean that language is to be discredited completely:
The Vimalakërti was the object of much commentary activity in East Asian Buddhism. By contrast, no commentaries are known in India or Tibet. A fragment of a very early commentary, conceivably dating before the end of the fourth century, has been preserved in manuscript form, and taken as the object of a monographic study.
Another important text, the Zhu Weimojie jing 注ç¶Âæ©詰綠(which modern scholarship has shown to be the product of a complex history), transmits what is actually a set of interrelated commentaries ascribed to scholars among the very translation team that produced the second Chinese translation at the beginning of the fifth century, including KumÃÂrajëva himself.
Other relatively early commentaries were produced by Jingying Huiyuan 淨影栧é (523âÂÂ592): Wuimo yiji ç¶Âæ©義訠T1776; Zhiyi æº顠(538âÂÂ597): Weimo jing xuanshu ç¶Âæ©ç¶ÂçÂÂçÂÂ; Jizang Ã¥ÂÂè (549âÂÂ623): Jingming xuanlun æ·¨åÂÂçÂÂè« T1780 and Weimo jing yishu ç¶Âæ©ç¶Â義ç T1781; [Kiu]Ji [窺]åº (632âÂÂ682): Shuo Wugoucheng jing shu 說ç¡å¢稱ç¶Âç T1782; and Zhanran æ¹Âç¶ (711âÂÂ782): Weimo jing lüeshu ç¶Âæ©ç¶ÂçÂ¥ç T1778. Yet another significant commentary is the Yuimagyà  gisho ç¶Âæ©çµÂ義çÂÂ, or Commentary on the Vimalakërti Sà «tra, ascribed to Prince Shà Âtoku èÂÂ徳太å (574âÂÂ622), an early work of Japanese Buddhism, which is said to be based on the commentary of the Liang dynasty Chinese monk Zhizang æºè (458âÂÂ522 CE).
The impact of the Vimalakërti-nirdeà Âa can also be traced in many other dimensions of East Asian culture. Large numbers of manuscript copies of the text survive in collections from Dunhuang æ¦砠and elsewhere. The text had a major impact on the arts, including visual art, but also poetry. The self-chosen soubriquet of the Tang poet Wang Wei çÂÂ綠(699âÂÂ759), for instance, means nothing less than "Vimalakërti". In the modern world, the famous Peking opera "The Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers" 天女æ£è±, created by Mei Lanfang 梠èÂÂè³ (1894âÂÂ1961), also took as its basis the dramatic encounter between the goddess and à ÂÃÂriputra in Chapter 6.
The sutra is also thought to have been influential in East Asian Buddhism for its perceived humor (though the supposed humour of the text is a difficult topic, somewhat controversial in modern scholarship), and the perception that it provides scriptural warrant for various compromises between (typically monastic) austerity and engagement with secular life. The text has also been influential in MahÃÂyÃÂna Buddhism for its perceived inclusiveness and respect for non-monastic practitioners, and is often interpreted as advocating an equal role for women in Buddhism.
One context in which the text was especially popular was the Chan/Zen 禪 school. However, McRae also notes that the sà «tra was not used as an object of devotion, and that no school was ever formed around it, so that it does not seem to have enjoyed the degree of popularity of some other sà «tras.
Richard B. Mather traces multiple causes of the popularity of the text in China, including its "brash" humor, its criticism of à ÂrÃÂvakas and Abhidharma, and the universality and "flexibility" of its outlook. Mather states that despite its disparagement of à ÂrÃÂvakas, the sà «tra strong supports the Saá¹Âgha, and the text intends to sanction the pursuit of the bodhisattva path by both monastics and laity without opposition to one another.
Hu Shih, an important figure in Chinese language reform in the early 20th century, wrote that the Vimalakërti-nirdeà Âa was among KumÃÂrajëva's three most influential translations (the other two being the Diamond Sà «tra and Lotus Sà «tra). As a literary work, he praised this version of the sà «tra as "half novel and half drama, with the greatest impact on literature and fine arts." Nan Huaijin also regards this translation of the Vimalakërti-nirdeà Âa as unique in Chinese literature, and forming "virtually its own literary realm."
According to Nan Huaijin's description of the Chan/Zen monastic system, the abbot of the monastery customarily lived in a small room patterned after that of Vimalakërti's room. This room, as well as the abbot himself, were colloquially referred to as the fÃÂngzhàng (Ch. æ¹ä¸Â, Jpn. hà Âjà Â), or "ten-foot square," "square fathom." This refers to a description of Vimalakërti's apparently small and humble room, which the text portrays as miraculously transforming into a vast cosmic arena in which transcendent truths are taught for an audience of advanced bodhisattvas.