Vimalakirti Sutra

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Vimalakīrti debating Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. Chinese painting from the Dunhuang Caves, Tang Dynasty

Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa (T. 'dri med grags pas bstan pa'i mdo དྲི་མེད་གྲགས་པས་བསྟན་པའི་མདོ་; C. Weimo jing; J. Yuimagyō; K. Yuma kyŏng 維摩經) (a.k.a. Vimalakīrti Sūtra). A beloved Mahayana sutra which presents the core Mahayana themes of "wisdom (prajna) and method (upaya)", emptiness (sunyata), and non-duality (advaya).[1] These themes are presented through a series of interactions between the Buddha's disciples and an eccentric lay practitioner (upāsaka) named Vimalakīrti. Vimalakīrti, as the sutra reveals, is actually a highly realized bodhisattva, and in his discussions with the Buddha's disciples, he draws out the distinctions between the expansive view of the Mahayana ("Great Vehicle") and the more limited view of the Sravakayana ("Hearer's Vehicle").

The Princeton Dictionary states:

The sūtra is widely quoted in later literature, especially on the topics of emptiness, method, and nonduality. It became particularly famous in East Asia because the protagonist is a layman, who repeatedly demonstrates that his wisdom is superior to that of monks. Scenes from the sūtra are often depicted in East Asian Buddhist art.[1]

Title

Title variations include:

  • Vimalakīrtinirdeśa
  • Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa
  • Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra
  • Vimalakīrti Sūtra

Etymology:

  • nirdeśa means "instruction, advice, etc."
  • vimalakīrti means "Taintless Fame"

Text and translations

Translator Burton Watson states that the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa was likely composed in approximately 100 CE.[2]

Sanskrit text

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.[3] 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,[4] and in 2006, the same group published a critical edition that has become the standard version of the Sanskrit for scholarly purposes.[5]

In 2007 the Nagarjuna Institute of Exact Methods published a romanized Sanskrit version under the title Āryavimalakīrtinirdeśo Nāma Mahāyānasūtram.[6]

Chinese translations

File:Old Tibetan Chronicle, Pelliot tibétain 1287, p. 21. Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra in Chinese.jpg
Fragments of Vimalakirti Sutra in Chinese on the reverse side of Old Tibetan Chronicle discovered in Dunhuang Mogao Cave #17

There are three extant versions of this text in the Chinese canon:[7]

  • an early version ascribed to Zhi Qian, entitled Weimojie jing 維摩詰經 T474[8]
  • a version by Kumārajīva in 406 C.E. entitled Weimojie suoshuo jing 維摩詰所說經 T475[9]
  • a version by Xuanzang in 650, entitled Shuo Wogoucheng jing 說無垢稱經 T476[10]

Of these, the Kumārajīva version has been the most popular.[7] This version is the source for all (or most) of the modern English translations from Chinese.

According to traditional sources, the text was translated into Classical Chinese seven times, but only the three versions above are extant.

Japanese translations

Most Japanese versions are based on the Kumārajīva version, but two translations directly from the rediscovered Sanskrit text into vernacular Japanese have also now been published, one by Takahashi Hisao 高橋尚夫 and Nishino Midori 西野翠,[11] and one by Ueki Masatoshi 植木雅俊.[12]

Tibetan translations

The principal Tibetan version that is found in the Kangyur was translated by Dharmatāśīla (T. Chos nyid tshul khrims), entitled The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (T. Dri ma med par grags pas bstan pa) (D176/Q843).[13]

An additional version by unknown translators was found at Dunhuang in the early 20th century.[13]

Translations into other Asian languages

There also exist or existed various translations (some of them at second remove) into the Korean, Khotanese, Mongolian, Sogdian and Manchurian languages.

English translations

English translations of this text include four from Kumārajīva's Chinese version, one from the Tibetan, and one from the recently rediscovered Sanskrit text.

A French translation by Étienne Lamotte was made from the Tibetan in 1962.[14] Lamotte's French was translated into English by Sara Boin-Webb.[15]

Jan Nattier has published a comparative analysis of four of the most prominent of these translations.[16]

From Kumarajiva's Chinese Version

From the Tibetan Version

  • Thurman, Robert (1976). The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture. Pennsylvania State University Press.  (From Tibetan and featuring short introduction, extensive notes and glossary entries)

From the Sanskrit version

  • Cleary, Thomas (2013). Vimalakīrti's Advice. Amazon.com Services LLC.  (The first English edition translated from the Potala Palace Sanskrit manuscript, with brief introduction. Seems available only as electronic book.)

French translations

  • Carré, Patrick, Soûtra de la Liberté inconcevable : Les enseignements de Vimalakirti (Fayard, 2000). Translated from Chinese.
  • Lamotte, Étienne, L’Enseignement de Vimalakīrti, Louvain, 1962. Translated from Tibetan.
    This French translation was re-translated into English by Sarah Boin-Webb

Synopsis

The layman Vimalakīrti Debates Manjusri, Dunhuang Mogao Caves

Robert Thurman states:

The sūtra starts with the Buddha, in the presence of a large assembly of monks and bodhisattvas gathered before him in Āmrapālī’s grove outside Vaiśālī, receiving offerings from five hundred youths from the city, headed by the Licchavi bodhisattva Ratnākara, and in response revealing the entire universe as a vast buddhafield in a miraculous display, seen by all present. After pronouncing a notable praise to the Buddha in verse, Ratnākara asks him to explain what is meant by a bodhisattva purifying his buddhafield. The Buddha’s response to this request, together with further descriptions in the fifth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters, constitute one of the most complete and profound teachings on the subject of buddhafields to be found in the canonical literature.
The second chapter introduces the great Licchavi bodhisattva Vimalakīrti, master of the liberative art, who lives as a layman but transcends all categorization. Manifesting himself as if sick, he teaches all the notables and citizens of Vaiśālī, as they come to inquire about his health, on the insubstantial and unsatisfactory nature of the ordinary body, and compares it to the body of a tathāgata. In the third chapter, the Buddha asks his principal disciples, one by one, to visit Vimalakīrti on his sickbed. All of them in turn, however —first the great disciples, and then the bodhisattvas —feel reluctant to do so and decline on the grounds that previous encounters with him (recounted in detail) have left them astonished and somewhat discomfited by the profundity and transcendent nature of his views, often on topics or practices of which they had themselves hitherto been considered peerless masters.
Mañjuśrī, despite his own reluctance, is the only bodhisattva to assent to the Buddha’s request, and the fourth and subsequent chapters describe the conversations between him, Vimalakīrti, and a number of other interlocutors from the large assembly accompanying Mañjuśrī to Vimalakīrti’s house in the eager anticipation of hearing the Dharma expressed in the exchange between these two high-level bodhisattvas. Their discussion starts with what is meant by sickness, how a bodhisattva should comfort another bodhisattva who is sick, and how a sick bodhisattva should control his own mind, with most of the dialogue consisting of long passages spoken by Vimalakīrti in response to brief questions by Mañjuśrī. In the fifth chapter, Vimalakīrti performs the miraculous feat of bringing to his house in Vaiśālī millions of enormous thrones belonging to the entourage of a buddha from another, vastly distant universe, the Tathāgata Merupradīparāja, and explains how such apparently impossible transformations of time, space, and other phenomena become possible for a bodhisattva who lives in the inconceivable liberation. In the sixth chapter—after a discussion with Mañjuśrī on sentient beings and compassion—he leaves it to a goddess living in his house to demonstrate graphically to the hapless great disciple Śāriputra the dualistic notions he holds on attainment, vehicle, and even gender.
The seventh chapter opens with Vimalakīrti answering Mañjuśrī’s leading questions to explain that whatever ways a bodhisattva might follow, including those conventionally considered the most negative and harmful, will cause him to attain the qualities of the buddhas. This leads to a discussion on the family of the tathāgatas (tathāgatagotra) and a long speech in verse by Vimalakīrti extolling the ways in which the actions of bodhisattvas correspond to worldly activities, but transcend and surpass them by far. All of this is made possible by bodhisattvas’ freedom from dualistic thinking, and in the eighth chapter Vimalakīrti individually questions the bodhisattvas present about how each of them practices non-duality, receiving thirty-one different replies all of which Mañjuśrī finds laudable, but nevertheless still tinged with dualism. He requests Vimalakīrti to add his own point of view, to which Vimalakīrti’s responds with his famous silence.
Śāriputra again becomes an object of mind-opening critique when, at the opening of the ninth chapter, Vimalakīrti catches him wondering how everyone present is going to eat before noon. Vimalakīrti miraculously makes everyone perceive another distant buddhafield, where the Tathāgata Gandhottama kūṭa and his bodhisattvas are about to take their meal. Vimalakīrti emanates a bodhisattva, a messenger who goes to that buddhafield and invites all the bodhisattvas there back to the house in Vaiśālī, bringing a vessel of their miraculous, highly fragrant food for the assembly to enjoy. Vimalakīrti elicits from the visiting bodhisattvas an account of how Gandhottama kūṭa teaches the Dharma only through perfumes, and explains to them how the Buddha Śākyamuni has to use much grosser expedients to tame the wild and difficult beings of his own buddhafield, the Sahā world. The visitors are surprised and impressed by the Buddha’s compassion. They express the wish to pay him their respects and Vimalakīrti, in the tenth chapter, magically transports the entire assembly, including the visiting bodhisattvas, into the Buddha’s presence in Āmrapālī’s grove so that they may do so. A discussion between the Buddha, Vimalakīrti, and Ānanda of the great variety of methods used to express the Dharma in different buddhafields ensues, and the Buddha gives the visitors, before they depart for their own buddhafield, a long teaching on “the destructible and indestructible,” explaining how bodhisattvas should neither destroy what is compounded nor rest in what is uncompounded.
In the penultimate chapter, prompted by the Buddha, Vimalakīrti describes how he sees the Tathāgata. When Śāriputra asks where Vimalakīrti was before manifesting in this world, the Buddha tells him it was in Abhirati, the buddhafield of Akṣobhya. Everyone present wants a glimpse of that buddhafield, so at the Buddha’s request Vimalakīrti physically miniaturizes Abhirati, brings it to Vaiśālī to show and inspire them all, and then replaces it where it was. In a dialogue with Śakra in the final chapter the Buddha explains, as in many other sūtras, the extraordinary merit of studying and understanding this teaching, and recounts how in one of his own former lives he was taught the importance of Dharma-worship by the Tahāgata Bhaiṣajyarāja. He then entrusts his own enlightenment along with this sūtra to Maitreya, explaining the importance it will have in conveying the profound principles of the Dharma to beings in the future, as well as asking Ānanda to memorize it and giving it several different names.
In keeping with an alternative title of the sūtra (Inconceivable Liberation), Vimalakīrti lays great emphasis on the theme of inconceivability, that is, the ultimate incomprehensibility of all things, relative or absolute. He thus spells out the furthest implication of the application of voidness: that the finite, ego-centered mind cannot even conceive of the ultimate nature of things and, hence, as far as such minds are concerned, their ultimate reality is itself inconceivability. This accords with the degree of attainment of the bodhisattva, so frequently reached by Vimalakīrti’s audiences, called “the tolerance of the birthlessness of all things” (anutpattika­dharma­kṣānti). It is extremely significant that the term “tolerance” (kṣānti) is used here, rather than “conviction,” “understanding,” or “realization”; it emphasizes the fact that where the ultimate is concerned, the mind is unable to grasp anything in the pattern of dualistic knowledge, for there is no finite object in this case and only relative objects can be grasped with relative certainty in the mundane sense. Yet that is not to say that the student’s task is to simply put a label of “inconceivability” on all things and rest complacent with a sense of having reached a high state. Indeed, there are three stages of this tolerance: the verbal (ghoṣānugā), conforming (anulomikī), and true tolerance of the birthlessness of things. This indicates the difficulty of attainment of true tolerance, which occurs only at the eighth stage of bodhisattvahood. Inconceivability as a verbal concept is only a principle to be applied to the mind, just like the verbal concept of voidness, or even of infinity.
When we reflect intensively on any of these concepts, our minds open gradually in an ever widening sphere whose limits proceed from preconceived limitation to preconceived limitation. We discover to our surprise that there is always something further, and we logically discard the possibility of any limit being ultimate because any limit serves as the near boundary of the next larger space or dimension or time. If we adhere rigorously to this process, we soon find ourselves lost in the stars, as it were, with less and less security about ever having started from anywhere.
The Buddha gave this type of deepest teaching only to disciples able to deal with it. Nāgārjuna himself rarely spelled it out explicitly, restricting himself to providing the means whereby the disciplined intellect can strip away its own conceptualizations and habitual notions. But Vimalakīrti felt that such a message should be available to a much larger circle of people, for he expressed himself definitively on all occasions, as recorded in this sūtra.[18]

East Asian Commentaries

Important East Asian commentaries on the sutra include:[7]

Other commentaries include:

  • Jingming xuanlun 淨名玄論 also by Jizang (549–623)
  • Shuo Wugoucheng jing shu 說無垢稱經疏 by [Kiu]Ji [窺]基 (632–682)
  • Weimo jing lüeshu 維摩經略疏 by Zhanran (711–782)
  • Yuimagyō gisho 維摩経義疏, ascribed to Prince Shōtoku 聖徳太子 (574–622),[19] an early work of Japanese Buddhism, which is said to be based on the commentary of the Liang dynasty Chinese monk Zhizang 智藏 (458–522 CE).
  • Zhu weimojie jing 注維摩詰經 by Sengzhao (384–414?), 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 Kumārajīva himself.[20][21][22]

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.[23]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Buswell & Lopez 2014, s.v. Vimalakīrtinirdeśa.
  2. ↑ Watson, Burton (1997). The Vimalakirti Sutra. Columbia University Press. pp. 1–2. 
  3. ↑ Sidhartha's, Inent. "A Darshan in Vimalakirti Nirdesha". Sidhartha's Intent. Retrieved 30 January 2017. 
  4. ↑ Study Group on Buddhist Sanskrit Literature at the Institute for Comprehensive Studies of Buddhism 大正大学綜合仏教研究所梵語佛典硏究会 (2004). Vimalakīrtinirdeśa: Transliterated Sanskrit Text Collated with Tibetan and Chinese Translations 梵蔵漢対照維摩経. Taisho University Press. 
  5. ↑ Study Group on Buddhist Sanskrit Literature at the Institute for Comprehensive Studies of Buddhism 大正大学綜合仏教研究所梵語佛典硏究会 (2006). Vimalakīrtinirdeśa: A Sanskrit Edition Based upon the Manuscript Newly Found at the Potala Palace 梵文維摩経―ポタラ宮所蔵写本に基づく校訂. Taisho University Press. 
  6. ↑ "Āryavimalakīrtinirdeśo Nāma Mahāyānasūtram". Samsara. Retrieved 15 April 2015. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 維摩經, Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (to sign in, see DDB sign-in)
  8. ↑ "The SAT Daizōkyō Text Database, T474". 
  9. ↑ "The SAT Daizōkyō Text Database, T475". 
  10. ↑ "The SAT Daizōkyō Text Database, T476". 
  11. ↑ Takahashi Hisao 高橋尚夫 and Nishino Midori 西野翠 (2011). Bonbun Wayaku Yuima gyō 梵文和訳維摩経. Shunjūsha. 
  12. ↑ Ueki Masatoshi 植木雅俊 (2011). Bon-Kan-Wa taishō gendaigo yaku Yuimagyō 梵漢和対照・現代語訳維摩経. Iwanami Shoten. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Thurman, Robert A. F. (2017). "The Teaching of Vimalakīrti". 
  14. ↑ Lamotte, Étienne (1962). L'Enseignement de Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa). Université de Louvain. 
  15. ↑ Boin-Webb, Sara (1976). The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa): From the French Translation with Introduction and Notes (L'enseignement de Vimalakirti). Pali Text Society. 
  16. ↑ Nattier, Jan (2000). "The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa): A Review of Four English Translations". Buddhist Literature. 2: 234–258. 
  17. ↑ Ziporyn, Brook (1998). Review : The Vimalakirti Sutra by Burton Watson, The Journal of Asian Studies 57 (1), 205-206  – via JSTOR (subscription required)
  18. ↑ Robert Thurman (2017), The Teaching of Vimalakīrti, 84000 Collection
  19. ↑ Hubbard, Jamie, trans. (2012). Expository Commentary on the Vimalakīrti Sutra Archived 2023-03-06 at the Wayback Machine.. Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, Berkeley. p. xiii
  20. ↑ Hashimoto Hōkei 橋本芳契 (1958). "Chū Yuimakitsu kyō no shisō kōsei: Rajū, Sōjō, Dōshō sanshi setsu no taihi 註維摩詰經の思想構成 羅什僧肇道生三師說の對比". Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究. 6 (2): 509–513. 
  21. ↑ Hashimoto Hōkei 橋本芳契 (1973). "Chū Yuima kyō no Rajū setsu ni tsuite 註維摩經の羅什說について". Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究. 21 (2): 523–529. 
  22. ↑ Usuda Junzō 臼田淳三 (1977). "Chū Yuimakitsu kyō no kenkyū 注維摩詰経の研究". Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究. 26 (1): 262–265. 
  23. ↑ Shi Guopu 釋果樸 (1998). Dunhuang xiejuan P3006, Zhi Qian ben Weimojie jing zhujie kao 敦煌寫卷P3006支謙本維摩詰經注解考. Fagu Culture Press. 
  24. ↑ Lamotte, Etienne; Boin-Webb, Sara (1976). The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa): From the French Translation with Introd. and Notes (L'enseignement de Vimalarkirti), p. lxxxv. Pali Text Society


Sources

Further reading

External links

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