Cleary - Vimalakirtis Advice

Table of Contents

Vimalakirtis Advice:

A Buddhist Scripture

Translated from the original Sanskrit

By Thomas Cleary

Contents

Translators introduction

The Great Vehicle Scripture called the Advice of the Noble Vimalakirti

1. Purification of Buddha-fields

2. Inconceivable Skill in Means

3. What Was Said on Sending Disciples and Bodhisattvas

4. Consolation in Illness

5. Teaching on Inconceivable Liberation

6. The Goddess

7. The Source of the Realized

8. Entry into Non-dual Truth

9. Receiving Emanation Food

10. A Gift of Teaching on the Perishable and Imperishable

11. Reception of the World of Delight and Vision of the Imperturbable Realized One

12. Past Practice and the Bequest of Truth

Glossary

Translators introduction

Vimalakirtis Advice is one of the most popular scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism. Although surviving in Chinese and Tibetan translations, the original Sanskrit scripture was thought to be lost, like many such texts, until it was rediscovered in the late twentieth century.

This scripture takes the form of a drama, partly surreal, largely in dialogue. The central figure, an enlightened man named Vimalakirti, is identified as a Licchavi, a citizen of the Licchavi kingdom in the time of Gautama Buddha. This tag is repeated consistently, to emphasize the point that Vimalakirti is a layman and a householder, who while in the world is not of it. One of the settings of the play is Vimalakirtis house in the great city of Vaisali, the capital of the Licchavis; another is a certain park, one of hundreds in Vaisali, where the Buddha sometimes sojourned.

The Advice of Vimalakirti represents Vimalakirti and Gautama Buddha addressing a very diverse audience, including members of other peoples, cultures, and religions, as well as individuals immersed in assorted levels of altered states of consciousness conventionally called divine. Particularly prominent, as the drama unfolds, are the Buddhist saints known as disciples, and those known as bodhisattvas.

The disciples are also called listeners or hearers, referred to as elders, and represented by names of major disciples of the historical Buddha who attained the peace of nirvana. The bodhisattvas are more diverse, and seek comprehensive knowledge. One of the principal characters of the play is the bodhisattva symbolic of insight and knowledge, whose name is Manjusri. In this scripture, Manjusri is consistently called the perpetual youth, representing the ever-freshness of immediate insight and the endless progress of knowledge.

The Advice of Vimalakirti deconstructs dogmatic adherence to doctrines and automatic application of practices, yet without denying their specific applications according to individual need, using control of perception and projection to expand awareness and refine attention to complexity of context. It is intentionally disturbing at times to elicit reactions, reveal assumptions and habits of thought, and promote self-understanding.

The Great Vehicle Scripture called the Advice of the Noble Vimalakirti

1. Purification of Buddha-fields

Honor to all past, present, and future Buddhas, bodhisattvas, noble disciples, and individual illuminates.

Thus have I heard: one time the Buddha was sojourning in Vaisali, in Amrapalis Grove, with a group of eight thousand great mendicants, all of them saints who had ended impulse, were free of afflictions, had attained self-mastery, with thoroughly liberated minds, with thoroughly liberated insight, great dragons who had done what was to be done, who had done their work, who had laid down their burden, who had attained their own aim, who had ended bondage to existence, with minds thoroughly liberated by appropriate instruction, who had attained consummate power over all consciousness.

He was also in the company of thirty-two thousand bodhisattvas recognized for higher knowledge, conversant with the preparations for spiritual knowledge, supported by the empowerment of Buddhas, protectors of the city of truth, with a thorough grasp of true principles, roaring the lions roar resounding throughout the ten directions, good friends to all beings unasked, perpetuating the lineage of the Three Treasures, adversaries of hidden demons, not overcome by the arguments of any others, accomplished in mindfulness, discernment, awareness, concentration, mental mastery, and eloquence, free of all obstruction and compulsion, having reached unhindered liberation, with inalienable brilliance, accomplished in the highest attainments of giving, self-restraint, control, control of the senses, integrity, patience, diligence, meditation, insight, skill in means, vowing, power, and knowledge, turning the wheel of teaching that never turns back, stamped with the seal of the marks of Buddhas, skilled in the knowledge of the faculties of all beings, proceeding with expertise unsurpassed in all societies, having accumulated great stores of virtue and knowledge, bodies adorned with all the signs and evidences of greatness, devoid of adornment though having the finest of forms, with reputations as lofty as the peak of Mount Sumeru, who had indestructible faith in the enlightened, the truth, and the community with will as firm as diamond, who could cause the rain of ambrosia to shower by a ray of light from the jewel of the teaching, who could pronounce the languages of all people perfectly, who completely cut off the habits of views of annihilation and eternity on realizing the profound truth of interdependent occurrence, roaring with voices like fearless lions, roaring the thunder of the great clouds of teaching, having gone beyond sameness and difference, great caravan leaders with the stores of insight and virtue of the treasure of the teaching, experienced in the guidance of the teaching whose conclusion is peaceful and subtle and which is characteristically hard to see and hard to penetrate, devoted to the sphere of knowledge entering into the comings and goings of all people and peoples ways of thinking, enthroned in the enlightened knowledge equal to the peerless, having become familiar with the ten powers, expertise, and unique qualities of Buddhas by determination, purposely showing birth in states of being after having gotten out of the pit of fear of falling into all miserable states of calamity and terror, knowing the formulas for the guidance of all people, aware of the ills of afflictions of all people, skillfully employed in the preparation of appropriate teaching-medicines, with access to an endless mine of virtues, had skillfully adorned endless Buddha-fields with an array of virtues, with effective seeing and hearing, never acting in vain. Even if their virtues were described for ten million million hundreds of thousands of immeasurable eons, an end to their multitude of virtues could never be found. They included the likes of the bodhisattvas named Samadarsin, Sama-asamadarsin, Samadhivikurvitaraja, Dharmesvara, Dharmaketu, Prabhaketu, Prabhavyuha, Ratnavyuha, Mahavyuha, Pratibhanakuta, Ratnakuta, Ratnapani, Ratnamudrahasta, Nityapralambahasta, Nityoksiptahasta, Nityatapas, Nityanandahasendriya, Pramodyaraja, Devaraja, Pranidhanavyasananuprapta, Pratisamvidprasadanaprapta, Gaganaganja, Ratnapradipadhara, Ratnavira, Ratnanandi, Ratnasri, Candrajala, Jaliniprabha, Anupalabdhidhyana, Prajnakuta, Ratnamukta, Marahantr, Vidyuddeva, Vikurvanaraja, Nimittakutasamatikranta, Sinhagarjita-abhyavaghosanasvara, Giryagrasamuddhataraja, Gandhahasti, Gandhakunjaranaga, Nityodyukta, Aniksiptadhura, Pramati, Sundarajata, Padmasrigarbha, Padmavyuha, Avalokitesvara, Mahasthamaprapta, Brahmajalaka, Ratnasvetasana, Marajit, Samaksetralamkara, Maniratnacchatra, Manicuda, Maitreya, and Manjusri as a perpetual youth; he was with thirty-two thousand bodhisattvas such as these.

Ten thousand Brahmas such as Sikhin from a world of four continents called Sorrowless also came to see the Blessed One, pay respects, attend, and listen to the teaching; they too gathered at this congregation. Twelve thousand Sakras, mighty gods, also came from various quadruple continents; they too gathered at this congregation. Likewise, moreover, Brahma, known as the possessor of great power among possessors of great power, and Sakra too, as well as world guardians, deities, rainmakers, spirits, celestial musicians, titans, rocs, minotaurs, and serpents were also present, assembled in that congregation. And the four groups as wellmendicants male and female and lay folk male and femalewere likewise assembled there.