Vimalakirti's Advice

Description

Vimalakirti’s 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 Vimalakirti’s 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. Translator’s 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 Copyrights