SIT-A-LONG with JUNDO: Heart Sutra XXXI (Vimalakirti)
A 'shout out' for my favorite of all Mahayana Sutras ... the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra.The story is noteworthy for a couple of reasons:
First, in the tale, 'ol Vimalakirti is an unordained, married lay person (a father and businessman) who 'bests' all the Buddha's great disciples and Bodhisattvas in his understanding of the Dharma. It means that lay folks can stand head and shoulders with anyone in this practice!Second, Vimalakirti speaks of Enlightenment within Samsara, that one can be in this world yet free of this world. That is found in passages such as the following (Robert Thurman trans.)He lived at home, but remained aloof from the realm of desire... He had a son, a wife, and female attendants, yet always maintained continence. He appeared to be surrounded by servants, yet lived in solitude. ... He engaged in all sorts of businesses, yet had no interest in profit or possessions. To train living beings, he would appear at crossroads and on street corners, and to protect them he participated in government. ... To demonstrate the evils of desire, he even entered the brothels. To establish drunkards in correct mindfulness, he entered all the cabarets. ... He was honored as the 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.
Far/ be/yond/ all/ de/lu/sion/, Nir/va/na/ is/ al/rea/dy/ here/.
All/ past/, pre/sent/ and/ fu/ture/ Budd/has/
Live/ this/ Praj/na/ Pa/ra/mi/ta/*
And/ re/al/ize/ su/preme/ and/ com/plete/ en/light/en/ment/.
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2 comments:
Hi Jundo,
Yeah, Vimalakirti is quite the guy, isn't he? It's the only Sutra I know of which you can't read without grinning now and then. :-) Hui-neng seems to have placed it in high regard as well, since he quotes from it often in the 'Platform Sutra'. However, Master Dogen was highly critical of Vimalakirti in the 'Sanjûshichibon bodai bunpô' chapter of the Shobogenzo. Do you have any insight into why he was so critical of it/him? Was it because Vimalakirti, as a lay-person, was perceived as posing some kind of threat to his monastic model of practice? Thanks.
Gassho
Ken
Hi Ken,
I had forgotten about that passage. Dogen seems to wildly misread the Vimalakirti story in order to make the points that Dogen wants to make on the superiority of monastic practice (not the first or last time that Dogen twisted the words of a Buddhist writing to fit his own agenda).
However, it is widely known that Dogen, in his later years, was much crankier, argumentative and sectarian than the younger and more open, catholic Dogen who first came from China. (Perhaps he bears some similarity to the early and late "Kids, get off my lawn" John McCaine). This is discussed in several places, for example, from P. 42 in Kim's "Eihei Dogen, Mystical Realist"
MYSTICAL REALIST
The David Putney article "Some Problems of Interpretation" puts the later, more hot headed Dogen down to the pressures he was under in hold Eiheiji together in one piece:
The picture of the latter years of Dogen emerges as that of a man struggling with disciples who had come to him already trained in doctrines of Original Enlightenment, Japanese esoteric Buddhism (mikkyo), and the naturalism of the Daruma school, whose understanding of Buddhism was swayed by these traditions in ways of which Dogen did not approve and that Dogen was unable to counter conclusively. Significantly, this was also a time in which the growing Pure Land tradition was questioning the value of the monastic vinaya. This context would explain the evolution in his writing from his early dynamic engagement with contemporary Buddhist issues to a dogmatic condemnation of doctrines, practices, and teachers during his later years. His late emphasis on the training of his disciples at the Eihei-ji may be evidence of a kind of desperation to leave behind at least something of his original vision.
Anyway, the wonderful thing about Dogen is that he could say that "X is not Y" and "X is Y" at different times, or even all at the same breath or within the same sentence. In his case, it was not fudging the truth to do so, but was in fact expressing many truths all true in their way. Thus, I will take Dogen to be saying that Monastic Practice is vastly superior to Lay Practice. But also Lay Practice is vastly superior to Monastic Practic, and precisely the same. All True.
So, sure, Dogen was write that monastic life had its advantages back in 13th century Japan. But, with modern education levels, modern printing and the internet, online Dharma talks, etc. etc. ... I like to argue that a 21st Century lay person can receive a BETTER Buddhist education in many ways than narrow, ill educated, unworldly clerics of ages past.
Gassho, Jundo
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