The Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa (Devanagari: विमलकीर्तिनिर्देश) (sometimes referred to as the Vimalakīrti Sūtra or Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra) 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 nirdeśa in the title means "instruction, advice", and Vimalakīrti 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 Mahāyāna over other paths. It places in the mouth of the upāsaka (lay practitioner) Vimalakīrti a teaching addressed to both arhats and bodhisattvas, regarding the doctrine of śūnyatā. In most versions, the discourse of the text culminates with a wordless teaching of silence. Translator Burton Watson argues that the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa 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 Āryavimalakīrtinirdeśo Nāma Mahāyānasūtram.
For a recent and thorough summary of the present scholarly understanding of the text, readers should consult Felbur.
Translations
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 歷代三寶紀 T2034 in 598 C.E., to have been produced by Yan Fotiao 嚴佛調. Three canonical Chinese versions are extant: an earlier version ascribed to Zhi Qian 支謙, entitled Weimojie jing 維摩詰經 T474; one produced by Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什 in 406 C.E. under the title Weimojie suoshuo jing 維摩詰所說經 T475; and one translated by Xuanzang in 650 玄奘 and is entitled Shuo Wogoucheng jing 說無垢稱經 T476. Of these, the Kumārajīva version is the most famous.
The principal Tibetan version is that found in the Kanjur, by Chos nyid tshul khrims (Dharmatāśila), 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 Kumārajīva's Chinese, two from the Tibetan, and one from the recently rediscovered Sanskrit text. A typically erudite French translation by Étienne 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:
(From Kumārajīva's Chinese) (An exhaustive scholarly treatment) - Translation from French Ziporyn, Brook (1998). Review : The Vimalakirti Sutra by Burton Watson, The Journal of Asian Studies 57 (1), 205–206 (From Kumārajīva's Chinese and featuring a short introduction) (From Tibetan and featuring short introduction, extensive notes and glossary entries). The same translation "with an abridged introduction and notes, and lightly edited under the supervision of Professor Thurman" is published online with open access at 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha (From Kumārajīva's Chinese and featuring short introduction, glossary, and minor notes) (The first English edition translated from the Potala Palace Sanskrit manuscript, with brief introduction. Seems available only as electronic book.) (First scholarly translation from the Potala Palace Sanskrit manuscript, with an introduction and annotations.) (From Kumārajīva's Chinese and featuring a short introduction, annotations, index, and original Chinese version.)
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 Kumārajīva, 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, and one by Ueki Masatoshi 植木雅俊.
Synopsis
The Vimalakirti Sutra can be summarised as follows. (From Kumārajīva's Chinese and featuring short introduction, glossary, and minor notes)Study Group 2004Study Group 2006Lamotte 1962
Chapter 1
The scene is Āmrapālī's garden outside Vaiśālī. 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): Āmrapālī 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" (buddhakṣetra) 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 buddhakṣetra is also equated with various other exalted categories in the Mahāyāna, such as the six perfections, or the four "illimitables" or "noble dwelling-places" (brahmavihāra). Because Śāriputra 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 Sahā world—the buddhakṣetra of Śākyamuni—is 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 Vimalakīrti's house in Vaiśālī. 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 Āmrapālī in the theme, emphasised here, of Vimalakīrti's ambivalent, even paradoxical, relationship to sexuality and chastity; the same theme is revisited in an amusing anecdote in Chapter 3, in which Vimalakīrti bests Māra (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 Vimalakīrti immediately takes the occasion to convert them towards ultimate awakening.
Here, it now transpires that Vimalakīrti 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 dharmakāya ("Dharma-body") doctrine known in Mahāyāna literature.
Chapter 3
The Buddha successively appeals to a string of his most advanced non-Mahāyāna disciples (mahāśrāvakas), and also to three bodhisattvas and a householder, to visit Vimalakīrti 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. Vimalakīrti 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 Śāriputra 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 Mañjuśrī (conventionally understood as the embodiment of supreme wisdom) is persuaded by the Buddha to visit Vimalakīrti, albeit with some difficulty. Vimalakīrti miraculously transforms his apparently narrow and humble abode into a vast cosmic palace, thus creating enough space for the throng Mañjuśrī has brought with him. Vimalakīrti 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
Vimalakīrti performs a further miracle, summoning from another distant Buddha-field 32,000 vast "lion thrones" (siṃhāsana) for Mañjuśrī 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. Śariputra and other mahāśrāvakas, 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 Mahāyāna (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