Good morning. So we've been talking for the past couple of months and ending next week about the Bodhisattva practice and practices and looking at the major Bodhisattva figures and their stories and approaches as a way of talking about bodhisattva practice and how we can find ways to express the practice of awakening beings in our own practice, in our own life, in our own world. Today I want to talk about Vimalakirti, who's particularly relevant to us as a non-residential lay practice sangha. So Vimalakirti was the great enlightened layman. The story about him and one particular sutra about him, a very popular sutra in East Asia.

[01:06]

He was the great enlightened layman student of Shakyamuni Buddha in Shakyamuni Buddha's time. more enlightened than all of the great disciples and bodhisattvas of the Buddha. So very complicated figure, actually. So I want to try and talk about some of the more important aspects. of the Malakirti. Again, he was totally immersed in the world as a lay person, as a wealthy layman who entered into all the different realms in the world for the sake of awakening beings in those realms. And we've been talking about various bodhisattvas who express compassion as a balance to the wisdom represented by the bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjushri. So, Kanon, Kanzeon, Avalokiteshvara, Jizo, Samantabhadra, Maitreya all,

[02:14]

sort of on the compassion side. Vimalakirti is complicated, but in some ways represents another aspect of wisdom teaching. A little different from Manjushri, he represents the teaching of the inconceivable, inconceivable wisdom. So I'll go into that, how he displays inconceivability and patience with the inconceivability of things, the unknowability of things, the ungraspability of reality itself. And there are many other aspects of Vimalakirti, one of which is practicing with illness and using that as a way of teaching. So to start in, and I want to read more than I usually do this morning, he was immersed in the world to liberate all beings in worldly realms.

[03:28]

Endowed with great material wealth and appearing to live as befitted his class at the time, the Malakirti used his riches to sustain the impoverished. Although he had a wife, a son, a harem, as rich men did in those times, and servants, he lived simply as a religious devotee, abstaining from all sensual indulgence. He entered many different realms inhabited by varied social classes, from gambling dens and taverns to upper-class financial exchanges, engaging in trade, although uninterested in his own personal profit. He discussed and understood worldly philosophies and sciences, but always was in accord with Buddha's teaching. The Malakirti entered brothels to talk about the folly of sexual misconduct and educate the young women there, and entered bars to lead drunkards to right mindfulness. So he's depicted in this

[04:43]

in this sutra as entering into all possible worldly realms and being actually the most skillful in each of those realms, but also using his position there to help liberate beings. aligned with ordinary people because he appreciated worldly excellence, Vimalakirti also was honored by deities for revealing the limitations of their divinity. He served as a, so again, this is, we don't, he wasn't as far as we know an historical figure actually, but in this sutra about him, he served as a government official in order to protect beings, always acting in harmony with the law, while using his position to reverse the attachments of rulers to the power of their sovereignty. He appeared as the most skillful in each of his various endeavors while constantly awakening and benefiting the beings he encountered."

[05:46]

So this sutra became very popular in China and in Japan because of all the lay people, the literati, who wanted to follow in the Buddhist teaching. The relationship of bodhisattvas to delusions is elaborated by Vimalakirti later in the sutra when he introduces the disciples to the teachings about inconceivable liberation and the nature of the family of the Buddhas. So he talks about the Buddha's family. And just to read a little bit from the sutra itself, which I'm going to do also,

[06:48]

To develop children, Vimalakirti visited all the schools. To demonstrate the evils of desire, he even entered the brothels. To establish drunkards and correct mindfulness, he entered all the cabarets. He was honored as a businessman among businessmen because he demonstrated the priority of the dharma. He was honored as the landlord among landlords because he renounced the aggressiveness of ownership. So this is the ideal of the layperson functioning in the world as a bodhisattva. He was immersed in the world. And in the sutra, it talks about the importance of needing to be in the world for a bodhisattva. really a radical teaching going against the tradition of monastic practice, which was the main form of Buddhist practice traditionally in India and also later in China and pretty much in Japan as well.

[08:12]

So... at one point. In the sutra, it has Mahakasyapa, the Buddha's disciple, saying, only those guilty of the five deadly sins can conceive the spirit of enlightenment and can attain Buddhahood, which is a pretty extreme statement. But the sutra is full of these kinds of ways of talking about needing to actually understand beings in the world and needing to enter into beings in the world. So in this way, it's... kind of encouragement to our practice of Practicing in the world, practicing in the world for the sake of beings in the world. How do we do Bodhisattva practice without being in the situation of being in a monastic enclosure where it's designed to help us focus on our meditation and our awareness and develop Bodhisattva capacities?

[09:28]

it goes to extremes to say that actually bodhisattvas need to immerse themselves in the world. So in some ways our practice as a storefront temple in the middle of a big city is what is recommended in the Vimalakirti Sutra. To be in our lives in the world And yet, how do we then express the Bodhisattva values and practices in our situation, in our work situations, in our family situations, in our situations in our life? And I think it's hyperbole to say that we have to actually commit the five deadly sins from the Buddhist point of view, but it's saying that we need to know how beings function in the world. express bodhisattva values, bodhisattva precepts, bodhisattva awareness in that context.

[10:37]

So along those lines, part of what happens in the sutra, well, Vimalakirti shows up, the disciples, the great disciples of the Buddha, and the great bodhisattvas of the Buddhas. The way this comes about is, in terms of the storyline of the sutra, is that The Malakirti becomes ill and he's confined to his room as a skillful means. So there's also this aspect of practicing with illness. And he talks about illness as, his illness as being like the illness of the world. So he's suffering illness because the world is ill. So this is part of our awareness of the suffering, the First Noble Truth of Suffering.

[11:41]

He says, For example, friends, this body is so impermanent, fragile, unworthy of confidence, and feeble. It is so insubstantial, perishable, short-lived, painful, filled with diseases, and subject to changes. Thus, my friends, as this body is only a vessel of many sicknesses, wise men do not rely on it. So he goes on like that and talks about the reality of our mortality. But he also talks about he's ill because all beings are ill. So another expression of that. an ailing bodhisattva may manage his mind by, so there's a scene later on where Manjushri and Vimalakirti have a conversation about this, and I'll get back to that, but he tells Manjushri that an ailing bodhisattva may manage his mind by considering that sickness arises from passions which result from illusory mental fabrications, the body being a mere construction of conditioned factors.

[13:13]

There is ultimately no essential thing that is sick. Sickness may be dispersed with the elimination of egoism and possessiveness, which rely on the discriminations of self and other. By recognizing through one's own suffering the misery of all beings, the bodhisattva may accurately contemplate beings and resolve to heal them." So he uses illness as a kind of a healing. the wounded healer is a motif in shamanism, but you know, the Heart Sutra talks about no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, and we assume that, you know, we have functional eyes and ears and nose and tongue and body and mind, and yet these are all very ephemeral, I can tell you. So, we can see that this is true for all beings and that we assume

[14:22]

these things. We assume that we can just keep going with our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind, and so forth. But really, all of this is very ephemeral. And so, this gets to the inconceivability, which I'll come back to. But part of the dramatic narrative of the story is that once Shakyamuni Buddha hears that his friend and student and colleague, Vimalakirti, is ill. He asks his great disciples and bodhisattvas, oh, would one of you please go and call on Vimalakirti? He's ill. Please call on him and ask him how he's doing, which is a practice of bodhisattvas to take care of those who are ill and call on them. And one by one, all of his great disciples, and then numbers of his bodhisattvas, and it says in the sutra that, the sutra describes a limited number of these, but actually elsewhere it says that there are actually a huge number of these who expressed reluctance, that they did not want to go and call on Jamalakirti, because

[15:40]

The last time they had encountered Vimalakirti, he had totally showed them up, especially in terms of the practice they were best known for. So Vimalakirti is kind of a trickster also. He plays with, I mean, the sutras is really, it's very entertaining in lots and lots of ways. So there are many examples of this. Just one is the disciple, one of the 10 great disciples of the Buddha was Rahula, who was actually the Buddha's son. So after the Buddha became the Buddha, many of his family members joined his order. His wife, his stepmother or aunt, many of his cousins including Ananda, and also his son Rahula. And Rahula was known especially as the expert on renunciation, because like Shakyamuni himself, he was a prince and he would have become a king, but instead he became a monk and joined Shakyamuni's

[16:47]

order as a monk. So this is just one example of these stories that these disciples tell, but Shakti Muni, Vimalakirti comes upon Rahula, talking to a bunch of other young practitioners, and they're asking him, Rahula, about the benefits of renunciation, because Rahula is famous for having renounced his kingship. It's like if Prince Harry, instead of marrying Megan had gone off and become a monk or something, you know, and he's renounced his position. And so Rahula is talking to them about how wonderful renunciation is, and Malakirti says to him, this is, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but he says, you know, this is totally hypocritical. This isn't renunciation. You're talking about the benefits of renunciation. That's not really renunciation. You're talking about how good it is and all the good things you're getting from it. That's not really renunciation. Anyway, he does this with many different disciples. Shariputra with wisdom, and anyway, and Subhuti with meditation.

[17:53]

So he has kind of exposed their limitations and they're not up, they're all too embarrassed to go and call on Vimalakirti. So this is, again, this, I recommend Robert Thurman's translation of the sutra. It's very entertaining. At some point, Manjushri, the great bodhisattva of wisdom, the fearless young bodhisattva of wisdom, who rides a lion, says, oh, I'll go and talk to Vimalakirti. and see how he's doing. And once that happens, all the other disciples and bodhisattvas, thousands of them, say, oh, we want to see that. So they all go to Vimalakirti's room to watch this discussion between Manjushri and Vimalakirti, because they know it's going to be pretty interesting. Manjushri is the great Bodhisattva of insight and wisdom and teaching of sameness and emptiness.

[18:58]

And he's going to call on Vimala Kirti, this great enlightened layman, and so it's going to be a pretty interesting discussion. But what happens, they all go to Vimala Kirti's room, and Vimala Kirti has, through his, Inconceivable Powers has emptied the room of all adornments, except he's lying on his sickbed. And it turns out it's a very small room. It's about a quarter the size of this room. So it's very small. And actually, in India, they didn't particularly care about history and lineage and these exact things. In China, they did. So in China, the emperor sent an emissary to go see the Malakirti's room to see exactly what size it was. And the emissary went to India to Vaishali, which is the town where Vimalakirti is supposed to have lived and asked them, where was Vimalakirti's room?

[20:05]

And they kind of laugh at him, but then they point him to a place where there's a room that's 10 feet square. And so the emissary goes back to China, and after that, So in Japanese, that's called hojo. That means a 10 feet square room. And after that, you'll still hear Hojo-san as the name that abbots are given in Japanese after this room. And so the abbot's room is supposed to be 10 feet square after Vimalakirti. So, when I was at Shohaku's in Indiana, co-teaching with him a few weeks ago, they call him Hojo-san. That's the proper address for an abbot because they live in this small space, supposedly, although some of those Hojos were actually rather large. Anyway, that's a digression, excuse me. The story goes that all the disciples and bodhisattvas follow Manjushri and they want to go to see this discussion with Vimalakirti and they all go into this room and there's thousands of them and somehow through Vimalakirti's powers, which we'll hear more about, they all fit inside this room which is less than a quarter of the size of this room.

[21:21]

And Shariputra, who's kind of the butt of a lot of Malakirti's jokes and barbs during this whole sutra, is wondering, where is everybody going to sit? Because they're all in this small room, and having to listen to Manjushri and Malakirti talk. Oh, OK. So Shariputra, one of the great disciples of, thank you for telling me, Shariputra, one of the great disciples of, and let me know in the back if you can't hear me also. Shariputra, one of the disciples of, the great disciples of the Buddha, is among this crowd of disciples and bodhisattvas who go to Vimalakirti's room to hear him talk with Manjushri.

[22:27]

And Sariputra wonders, where is everybody going to sit? And Vimalakirti knows this and says to Sariputra, did you come here to hear the dharma or did you come here for a seat? And he keeps teasing Shariputra. You'll hear more about this throughout the sutra. But then he asks Manjushri, well, where are the best, you know, Manjushri, you've been through many Buddha realms and many world spheres, and where are the best lion thrones, the greatest lion thrones? And Manjushri mentions some Buddha field, you know, several, you know, thousands of light years away that has wonderful, huge lion thrones. And Vimalakirti instantly has them all transported into his room. Somehow, all of these huge thrones and all of these bodhisattvas and disciples all fit inside this tiny room. So anyway, all these interesting things happen. And then there's a discussion that happens between Manjushri and Vimalakirti.

[23:33]

And I'll come back to that. But I want to talk more about this trickster aspect of Vimalakirti. And this aspect, it's a kind of aspect of wisdom, the teaching of inconceivability. So we've talked about Manjushri teaching insight into the immediate insight into what's important and the emptiness of all things, which goes along with the emptiness of our idea of self and other and our idea of eyes and ears and nose and tongue and so forth as ever present. Vimalakirti plays with our usual sense of space and time and dimension, the chairs being one example, but there are many others. And I'll only touch on a few of them.

[24:41]

But this is an aspect of wisdom. That's portrayed in, for example, the Flower Ornament Sutra, but other sutras as well. So near the end of the sutra, Shakyamuni gives another name for the Vimalakirti Sutra as the Dharma of Inconceivable Liberation. So the endless depths of realms of reality are far beyond the limitations of our intellectual or perceptual capacities. Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, talks about this a lot too. We cannot possibly comprehend in full either the relative or ultimate truth of any entity or event.

[25:45]

Vimalakirti encourages us to develop ever more subtle acceptance of the fact of the ungraspability and non-arising of all phenomena. This is a particular aspect of the practice of patience. So this is one of the practices that Vimalakirti specializes in, this tolerance of The fact that we can't get a hold of anything, that reality is beyond our comprehension, beyond the limitations of our usual human consciousness and perceptions, as limited as our eyes, ears and nose and so forth are, We cannot possibly comprehend in full either the relative or ultimate truth of any entity or event. Vimalakirti encourages us to develop ever more subtle acceptance of the fact of the ungraspability and non-arising of all phenomena. This patience implies an ongoing process of opening up to new possibilities and to freshness of experience of entering strange new worlds where none have gone before.

[26:53]

So this is an aspect of the Malakirti's meditation, to be open to seeing, to accepting the limitation of what we can see and know. And this is something that, as I say, Dogen talks about a lot. A lot of the Zen koans are about this. Some examples of this from the sutras, from the sutra itself, the Malakirti Sutra. So, Vimalakirti says to Sariputra, for the Tathagatas and the Bodhisattvas, the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, there is a liberation called inconceivable. The Bodhisattva who lives in the inconceivable liberation can put the king of mountains, Mount Sumeru, which is so high, so great, so noble, and so vast, into a mustard seed. He can perform this feat without enlarging the mustard seed and without shrinking Mount Sumeru.

[27:58]

And the deities of the assembly of the four great kings and of the various heavens do not even know where they are. Only those beings who are destined to be disciplined by miracles see and understand the putting of the king of mountains, Sumeru, into the mustard seed. So Vimalakirti does these various magical displays. and in which beings are transformed and a whole sense of space is changed. And this is very much talked about in the Huayen school and in the Flower Ornament Sutra. And there's a demonstration of this at the end of my favorite Buddhist movie, Men in Black, if any of you have seen that. So, our whole sense of time and dimension and space, Vimalakirti is showing that in terms of inconceivable liberation, this is

[29:00]

Not really true. So, Vimalakirti says, further, Reverend Shariputra, there are beings who become disciplined after an immense period of evolution, and there are also those who are disciplined after a short period of evolution. The Bodhisattva who lives in the inconceivable liberation for the sake of disciplining those living beings who are disciplined through immeasurable periods of evolution can make the passing of a week seem like the passing of an eon. And he can make the passing of an eon seem like the passing of a week for those who are disciplined through a short period of evolution. the living beings who are disciplined through an immeasurable period of evolution actually perceive a week to be the passing of a neon and so forth. So he's playing again with, he also says, such a bodhisattva can pick up with his right hand this billion world galactic universe

[30:08]

as if it were a potter's wheel and spinning it round, throw it beyond the universe, the universe is as numerous as the sands of the Ganges River, without the living beings therein knowing their motion or its origin, and he can catch it. and put it back in its place without the living being suspecting they're coming and going. And yet the whole operation is visible to those who would benefit from seeing it. So there's all these wild descriptions of these things that Vimalakirti can do to show our usual sense of space and time as not ultimately real. Another one. A bodhisattva who lives in inconceivable liberation can manifest all the splendors of the virtues of the Buddha fields within a single Buddha field.

[31:13]

Likewise, he can place all living beings in the palm of his right hand and can show them with supernatural speed of thought all the Buddha fields without ever leaving his own Buddha field. He can display it in a single pore, all the offerings ever offered to all the Buddhas of the 10 directions and of the orbs of all the suns, moons, and stars in the 10 directions. So this This way of seeing things that Vimalakirti is talking about is just, you know, it's beyond, I don't know if modern physics has caught up with this or not, but it's, again, this kind of inconceivable realm. A couple more examples. So at one point, Vimalakirti performed the miraculous feat of placing the entire assembly, that is all of the assembly of the disciples and bodhisattvas, complete with all those huge thrones, upon his right hand.

[32:35]

And then, having transported himself magically into the presence of the Buddha, placing it on the ground, he bowed down to the feet of the Buddha, circumambulated him to the right seven times with palms together, and withdrew to one side. Then he said to the Buddha, Lord, I produced the concept of inconceivability toward them, their activities appeared inconceivable to me to the point that I was unable to think of them, to judge them, or even to imagine them. So he does these amazing kind of displays. There's a kind of strange example of this in the Faces of Compassion book. There's a picture of the Malakirti holding a galaxy and holding the assembly in his palm, and it's on page 285.

[33:40]

And you might be able to see this. And somehow, this is an old print that was on display in a museum, in the East Asian Museum, in Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. And Ed Brown took this photo. And you can see that there's a light in the hand of Vimala Kirti, that's not in the original. That happened to be a flash that appeared in the photo that Ed took right in Vimala Kirti's hand. So it wasn't in the original, it's just, anyway. Okay, so there's all this kind of weird magical stuff that Vimala Kirti displays for the sake of showing beings this liberation of inconceivability, and that our usual way of seeing reality is limited by our usual conceptualization and so forth.

[34:51]

I'm getting, I need to catch up with the time, because I'm not going to be able to spread the time back and forth as Vimalakirti does. I want to tell two more stories. One is about a goddess who is in Vimalakirti's room, who's a friend of Vimalakirti. And she shares with Vimalakirti his capacity for doing magical displays. And she plays a trick on Shariputra also. So Shariputra is one of the great leading disciples of, historically, of Shakyamuni Buddha. And Vimalakirti tells Manjushri that the essential reality and function of the bodhisattvas, about the essential reality and function of the bodhisattva's love. And this goddess friend of Vimalakirti manifests herself in material form and full of delight showers beautiful heavenly blossoms on the bodhisattvas and great disciples.

[36:02]

So she's kind of floating around in the room and just dropping flowers on the bodhisattvas and disciples. And the flowers fall to the ground from the bodies of the bodhisattvas, but they stick to the disciples. And Shariputra is very upset about this because the disciples, these monk disciples, are not supposed to have any adornments. So he's very upset. He tries to brush away the flowers, but he can't, and he complains that this is improper for him to be wearing flowers. The goddess reprimands Shariputra, saying that flowers are free of conceptualizations and discriminations, and are thus proper, whereas the disciples themselves are full of improper conceptualizations. The flowers do not stick to the bodhisattvas who have dispelled such fabricated discriminations. Anyway, the Shariputra becomes impressed by the goddess and asks how long she's been in Vamala Kirti's room.

[37:03]

She then asks Shariputra how long he has been liberated. Shariputra remained silent for a while, finally muttering that liberation is inexpressible, so he does not know what to say. She responds that liberation is the nature of every syllable, and not apart from language, as liberation is the sameness of all entities. And she goes on and talks to Shariputra this way. So Shariputra is really very impressed and overwhelmed by this goddess and starts asking her who she is and where she came from and asks about Vimalakirti and his teaching. And she says that she's been living with Vimalakirti in his room for 12 years and all that she's heard from Vimalakirti is about loving kindness and the inconceivable quality of Buddhas

[38:05]

Finally, Shariputra is so impressed that he asks the goddess why she does not transform herself into a man. Now, if you were at an ordinary gathering, that would be a very rude question. I don't know if anybody's ever asked such a thing to any of you, but in the context of patriarchal Indian Buddhism, they had this understanding that only men could become Buddhists. And we know that's not true. So there's a whole thing that happens there. It carries on for a while in the sutra. Basically, the goddess says that she cannot find any essential masculinity or femininity, you know, and that that's just a conceptualization that we have, and it's illusory. And then the goddess does this, performs this inconceivable

[39:14]

trick on Shariputra and transforms him into a woman and becomes a man herself. And Shariputra, of course, is totally freaked out. And so he's just shocked and distraught to find himself a woman, and he admits that he does not know how to change back into a man. The goddess explains to Sariputra that the gender distinction is not ultimately real, that the Buddha has said that beings are not, in essence, limited to being either male or female. you know, is an early form in Buddhism of undercutting our usual gender discriminations. And so this is one of the early teachings that's talked about in modern Buddhism and talking about women's studies in terms of Buddhism. Eventually, the goddess has pity on Shariputra and they switch back.

[40:17]

Anyway, that's just one of the entertaining parts of the sutra. The most famous, so I'm going to just cut to the most famous thing in the sutra, which is going back to the conversation between Manjushri and Vimala Kirti. At some point, In the sutra, well, first there's this whole discussion between Manjushri and Vimalakirti about his sickness and how Vimalakirti talks about the illness of all beings and he's suffering illness because all beings are ill. And then at some point after that discussion, Vimalakirti asks, all of the assembled bodhisattvas, please explain how the bodhisattvas enter the dharma gate of non-duality, of not being caught up in various dualities.

[41:29]

And then there's a whole long section where various bodhisattvas talk about their own experience of seeing through duality. For example, one of them says, production and destruction are two, but what is not produced and does not occur cannot be destroyed. Thus the attainment of the tolerance of the birthlessness of things, the ungraspability of things, is the entrance into non-duality. And they go through various dualities. Distraction and attention. I and mine. Right and wrong. In various bodhisattvas talk about their various dualities and how they saw through them. At the end of this long section, though, when the Bodhisattvas had given their explanations, they all addressed the Crown Prince Manjushri.

[42:33]

Manjushri, what is the Bodhisattva's entrance into non-duality? And Manjushri replied, good sirs, you have all spoken well. Nevertheless, all your explanations are themselves dualistic. To know no one teaching, to express nothing, to say nothing, to explain nothing, to announce nothing, to indicate nothing, and to designate nothing, that is the entrance into non-duality, Manjushri says. So again, Manjushri is the, Manjushri's wisdom is about emptiness, seeing through all of our ideas of things being substantial, of our self being substantial, or the self of anything being substantial. So he's talking about this emptiness of all things. Then Manjushri says to Vimalakirti, we have all given our own teachings, noble sir. Now, may you elucidate the teaching of the entrance into the principle of non-duality.

[43:39]

Thereupon, Vimalakirti And the sutra says, he kept his silence, saying nothing at all. At which point, Manjushri applauded Vimalakirti, excellent, excellent, noble sir. This is indeed the entrance into the non-duality of the bodhisattvas. Here there is no use for syllables, sounds, and ideas. So, this thunderous silence is described as Malakirti's entrance into non-duality, and it's a famous, the most famous thing in the sutra. this thunderous silence of Vimalakirti. Of course, now that Vimalakirti's done it, Zen teachers have to say something.

[44:44]

They can't just use silence. Although this is, you know, we sit silently, so in some ways this is our practice to follow Vimalakirti's lead. And Shakyamuni is sometimes described as the Buddha who teaches through silence. Later on in the sutra, there's some other Buddhas who appear, one of whom is a Buddha who teaches through fragrance. And there are other Buddhas who teach through use of flowers or other vehicles. And there's a case in the Book of Serenity about about this thunderous silence, and one of the commentaries says, silence still is a teaching method. Anyway, but this is the most famous part of the Malakirti Sutra. So, okay, the Malakirti is this layperson who's in the world completely, but he's using his

[45:48]

his entry into the world to help awaken beings, and to help awaken beings especially to this wisdom of inconceivability, that our usual idea about reality is limited, and that there's much more to see and to know, and to widen our sense of the possibilities of bodhisattva reality and practice. So, unlike Vimalakirti, I've said way too much. Does anybody have comments, questions, responses to any part of this complicated lay, great layman, Vimalakirti? Yes, Paula.

[46:51]

He was in all businesses. He was wealthy. He was an investor. He was an educator. He ran schools. He was in many businesses. Yeah. Oh, that too. Yeah. Yeah, he was, but he was part, so in terms of looking at exemplars of Amalakirti, there are various aspects. There's using illness as a teaching tool, so I mentioned Helen Keller using her deafness, but also people who are like Renaissance people who do many different things. That's part of his teaching in the world is to be in many different realms.

[47:53]

So I mentioned people like Thomas Jefferson who had many great skills and limitations. Yeah, he sees through all the gender discrimination thing. He sees through many different kinds of ways in which we are caught by our conceptualizations. but he does this by being very much present in the world. So he's different from the other major Bodhisattva figures in some ways. I mean, Jizo also is kind of in all the different realms, but kind of to the side, witnessing. And Bodhisattva of compassion enters into different realms to listen to beings. But Vimalakirti's kind of actively engaged in, as involved in, Well, again, actually, I think of Vimalakirti as sort of a mixture of Manjushri and Samantabhadra.

[49:02]

Because Samantabhadra also has these displays from the Flower Ornament Sutra of interconnectedness and we could say the inconceivable. So Samantabhadra, in some ways, is close to Vimalakirti in some ways. So the distinctions between these different bodhisattvas we've been looking at are not so clear cut. There's a lot of overlap. And the point isn't to. Yes, it talks about his family. Yes, he has a family. He has children and a wife. Yes, it mentions their names in the sutra. There's this one sutra that is all about him. And then he's mentioned in a couple of other minor sutras. But he's not an important, he's not important doctrinally or philosophically. There's not a school that's based on him. But in the Chan school, in Zen school particularly, he was very popular because he's an example

[50:03]

of somebody in the world as a layperson who's doing the work of Bodhisattva practice and helping awaken beings and liberate beings and relieve suffering. So in that sense, he's very popular in East Asia. The sutra goes back to India and is known in Tibet. The translation I recommend is from Robert Thurman from the Tibetan version, but really that sutra was very popular and important in East Asia particularly. And you see statues of him sometimes, but not as much as the other bodhisattvas. He's depicted in white as a layperson. Sometimes he's depicted like leaning over, like in a sickbed. Other comments? Yes, Brian. I have a follow-up question about this. I like the connection with life in the world

[51:08]

the Chan and Zen tradition, it all seems to be coming out of the monastic world. I guess my question is how common is this dedicated practice that we're trying to do here historically in the world in China's life in East Asia? Yeah, good question. And the history is complicated and not all one thing. But basically, the tradition we have and the forms we use come from the monastic tradition in China and in Japan. There were also, in China particularly, many great lay people who were adepts, who studied with some of the great Chan masters, but who were working in the government and were literati and were officials. So there were a great many lay adepts in China. And in Japan, too, and in modern Japanese soto-zen, for example, and rinzai, too, a lot of the priests are laypeople like we are as priests, in the sense of possibly having jobs or families.

[52:37]

in a monastery or a local temple? Well, they would have trained in a monastery first, yeah. Oh, but the lay people like the literati would have gone and visited the teachers in the monasteries. So Dogen and all the other great teachers, there were lay people who came and came to their talks and even trained with them, studied with them, went and talked with them. So there were lay people who were practicing, but the basic form that the zendo and the ritual forms that we have come from the monastic context. But particularly, and I think this is true in Tibet too, there was a lay tradition. And, you know, there were lay people. Part of the Mahayana, as opposed to the earlier Theravada, is that it does include lay people.

[53:40]

But the tradition was kept alive through the monastic institution. But then there were always lay people who were engaging with the teachers and that. And the Theravada not so much? The Theravada too, there were lay people who came, but they emphasized the... Well, the Theravada people, the monks would go out on begging rounds and they would engage with the community, but the lay people weren't practicing in the same way, I think. So one of the things Suzuki Roshi talked about is that when he came to California is that we're neither monk nor lay in a real sense because there were lay people who went to Tassajara and did practice periods and that was different from Japan. what, how Zen is in America, whether it's in places like Green Gulch that are residential or Great Vow Monastery, there are lay and mask people, but there are many more non-residential centers like this now.

[54:57]

But some of the people here have, like Haitian has gone to do intensives at Green Gulch, and that's available to people here to go and experience residential practice, and that has its value. You know, our basic practice is to be in the world, in the city. And yet, we come here to experience meditation. And next weekend, we'll have a three-day sitting and possibility for more intensive meditative practice. But then, you know, we walk out on the street. But this is in tune with something that's at the core of Mahayana practice, and Vimalakirti is the exemplar of that. Other questions or responses or comments?

[56:02]

Yes, Jason? interested in Vimalakirti as in the other Bodhisattvas? Yeah, that's true. Dogen, and this may be more an effect of Dogen later on going up to a heiji in the north and having this monastic center and trying to encourage the monks. But he did criticize Vimalakirti for not getting ordained. Dogen, you know, says different things at different times, I think mainly because he is talking to different people, so he was encouraging his monks, I think. But he does, he has one place in his extensive record where he says that when Vimalakirti is criticizing Subuddhi, for his alms practice, and he says that Vimalakirti doesn't understand it.

[57:07]

So Bodhi is really correct in that case. So Dogen plays with it, as he plays with a lot of the teachings. But I don't have to agree with everything Dogen said either. Yes, Samantha? Yeah, this is Robert Thurman's translation of the Vimalakirti Sutra. There are a few translations now. There's a Burton Watson translation of the Chinese, but this is called The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti. So, and by Robert Thurman, who was a great Tibetan Buddhist scholar, formerly a monk and translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His daughter Uma used to be known as Robert Thurman's daughter, but now he's Uma Thurman's father.

[58:09]

So anyway, that Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti is a translation of the Vimalakirti Sutra, and it's very good and has very good appendixes, and it's in our library, I'm pretty sure. And it's a very entertaining sutra. Any other comments or questions, responses?

[58:32]

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