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Vimalakirti Sutra
The Bodhisattva Manjushri accepted the Buddha’s request to visit the lay friend Vimalakirti, even though he knew that Vimalakirti’s wisdom and eloquence were extraordinary. When the assembly gathered around, Vimalakirti emptied his room to manifest true emptiness—“no empty space”—so that over thirty thousand lion thrones from other Buddha lands could be brought in, symbolizing the true nature where having arises from non-having. The dialogue opened with the principle of “neither coming nor going” (“to arrive is not to arrive, to see is not to see”), distinguishing between phenomena and essence, and then immediately shifted to the Prajnaparamita teaching, demonstrating that only by going beyond words about the phenomenal world can one touch the ontological ground.
Lay friend Vimalakirti diagnosed the “illness of sentient beings” for all species: delusion (ignorance) gives rise to craving, from which grasping is born, and because sentient beings are ill, he himself is also “ill”—a demonstration of the principle of interbeing. The medicine for taming the mind of the Bodhisattva consists of precepts, concentration, insight, and the sangha as a solid “armor,” then sharing all merits toward supreme enlightenment, vowing, “May I and all beings together realize the Buddha path.”
The end of the chapter unfolds the path of transcending all views: not only letting go of attachment to self (the body is me), possession (the body is mine), mutual existence (the body is in me—I am in the body), and the universe as self; but also transcending the sixty-two wrong views, using “nothing to attain” (empty of emptiness) to dwell freely in birth and death. Through the Three Insights—Emptiness (all dharmas arise by conditions), Conventional Designation (names are only conventional designations), and the Middle Way (the middle path transcending being and non-being)—the Bodhisattva abides peacefully in birth and death, afflictions still “extinguished” in wondrous being.