維摩詰所說經 心要連讀

Jewel Accumulation comes with five hundred householders’ sons, and together they offer the Buddha five hundred canopies of the seven jewels. The Buddha causes the many canopies to merge into one. The mountains and seas, sun and moon, and palaces of the three-thousand-great-thousand world-system, together with the buddhas of the ten directions and the Dharma They are teaching, all appear within it.

Seeing a vast world appear within one small canopy, Jewel Accumulation praises the Buddha and asks Him: How does a bodhisattva purify a buddha-land?

The Buddha does not begin with jewels or with level ground. He says that the kinds of sentient beings are the bodhisattva’s buddha-land. A bodhisattva chooses a buddha-land according to the sentient beings to be transformed and disciplined, and also according to how sentient beings will enter the Buddha’s wisdom and produce bodhisattva roots. From the outset, a pure land is taught in relation to sentient beings.

The sūtra gives a simile of building a dwelling. A palace can be built on open ground, but empty space cannot directly become a palace. A bodhisattva vows to choose a buddha-land in order to bring sentient beings to accomplishment. The sūtra says that the vow to choose a buddha-land is not accomplished out of empty space.

The Buddha therefore proceeds not by describing the appearance of the land, but by teaching seventeen practices: a straightforward mind, a profound mind, the mind of awakening; giving, ethical discipline, patience, diligent effort, meditation, and wisdom; loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity; the four means of gathering, skillful means, the thirty-seven factors of the path, dedication, removal of the eight difficulties, not criticizing the faults of others, and the ten wholesome actions. Each practice points toward a kind of sentient being, a kind of merit, or a kind of land. How you treat others, guard the mind, and speak is already answering what kind of buddha-land you are bringing to accomplishment.

Nor does the pure land teaching “when the mind is pure, the buddha-land is pure” leap from one thought directly to the endpoint. The sūtra sets out the intervening path step by step. A straightforward mind must give rise to practice, practice must deepen, and a profound mind must be disciplined. Once disciplined, one must practice according to what has been taught. Practice in accord with the teaching must still be dedicated; dedication must still possess skillful means; and skillful means must still bring sentient beings to accomplishment. Only when sentient beings are brought to accomplishment does the sūtra speak of a pure buddha-land. Purity of the buddha-land then leads onward to purity of teaching, wisdom, mind, and every merit.

Śāriputra, however, sees hills, pits, thorns, gravel, soil, rocks, and mountains. Brahmā King Conch-Crest sees the same buddha-land as a palace in the Heaven of Mastery. The Buddha presses the earth with His toe, jeweled adornments appear, and everyone in the assembly sees himself seated upon a jeweled lotus. He then says that the devas share one jeweled vessel, while the color of the rice differs according to each one’s merit.

The same land can be perceived differently. This does not tell anyone to pretend that the hills and gravel are absent. It brings the question back: Does your mind have high and low? Do you regard every sentient being equally? Has a straightforward mind become practice? Have skillful means brought sentient beings to accomplishment?

You wish to find a pure land, so why does the Buddha first place sentient beings inside the answer? Because a pure land is not a beautiful landscape left over after sentient beings have been abandoned. From a straightforward mind through the ten wholesome actions, from practice according to the teaching through bringing sentient beings to accomplishment, and from purity of mind to the adornment one perceives, a buddha-land is not a separate place elsewhere. It is the land these practices are bringing to accomplishment together.

To liberate people, Vimalakīrti dwells in Vaiśālī through skillful means.

He lives in the city of Vaiśālī. White-robed, he keeps pure discipline. Living at home, he is not attached to the three realms. He manifests having a wife, yet constantly cultivates brahmacarya. He has a household retinue, yet his mind constantly delights in seclusion. Precious ornaments rest on his body, but what truly adorns him are his marks and excellences. Food enters his mouth, but what truly becomes its savor is meditative joy.

He does not remain only at home. He goes to the crossroads and enters places of government, halls of debate, and schools. He also enters brothels and wine shops. The crossroads need benefit; public affairs need protection; debate needs guidance toward the Great Vehicle; children need to be drawn out and awakened. Places of sensual defilement need the faults of desire to be seen, and places where resolve has been lost need resolve to be established anew. The place does not determine his direction for him. He enters every place bearing the direction of liberating people.

He also enters one class of people after another. Elders need the supreme Dharma; householders need to loosen their attachment; kṣatriyas need patience; brahmins need pride removed; ministers need the true Dharma; princes need loyalty and filial devotion; palace officials need to correct the palace women; ordinary people need the strength of merit; Brahmā gods need supreme wisdom; Śakra gods need to see impermanence; world-protecting heavenly kings need to protect sentient beings. Skillful means is not saying the same thing to everyone. It points out the step truly needed where each person presently stands.

Yet the turn in this chapter occurs not at a crossroads, in a hall of debate, or in a wine shop, but in an illness.

Through skillful means, Vimalakīrti manifests bodily illness. Before, he went toward others; now kings, ministers, elders, householders, brahmins, princes, and officials come to inquire about him. Illness does not interrupt his skillful means. Instead, it enables every visitor to hear of the problem that each person also carries in the body.

This body is like a mass of foam that cannot be grasped; like a bubble that cannot remain for long; like a mirage arising from thirst and craving; like a plantain tree with no solid core; like an illusion, a dream, a shadow, and an echo; like a drifting cloud that changes and vanishes in a moment; and like lightning that never stops from thought-moment to thought-moment. It takes the four great elements as a temporary home and is jointly compounded by the five aggregates, eighteen elements, and twelve sense-fields. Bathing, clothing, and food can tend it, but cannot keep it from wearing away. Today, no one knows when it will die, yet in the end it must die.

If one reads only this far, Chapter 02, “Skillful Means,” seems merely to urge disgust with the body. But the sūtra immediately turns: this body should be regarded with revulsion; one should delight in seeking the Buddha-body.

The Buddha-body does not arise from another kind of outward appearance. It is born of merit and wisdom; ethical discipline, meditation, and wisdom; loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity; giving, ethical discipline, patience, diligent effort, meditation, liberation, great learning, and wisdom. It is also born of skillful means, factors conducive to the path, calm and insight, abandoning what is unwholesome, gathering what is wholesome, truth, and heedfulness. This body compounded from the four great elements must finally disperse, while immeasurable pure dharmas point toward the body of the Tathāgata.

The whole chapter therefore does not conclude with “How can I avoid becoming ill?” It concludes with arousing the mind of awakening. The wish to attain the Buddha-body and the wish to eliminate the illnesses of all sentient beings cannot be separated. Vimalakīrti dwells in the city, enters the crowds, and manifests illness. All these passages point forward and backward to the same matter: from the body on which sentient beings rely, he enables them to see what cannot be relied upon; then, from the place that cannot be relied upon, he enables them to arouse the mind that seeks buddhahood and liberates sentient beings.

If the mind is not bound by the world, why enter every place within the world? Because nonattachment does not mean leaving sentient beings. The skillful means taught in this chapter is to let pure conduct become a gate through which others arouse the mind, whether one is at a crossroads, at home, or in illness.

Śāriputra sits beneath a tree in the forest, Maudgalyāyana teaches the Dharma in a city lane, Kāśyapa goes from door to door with his bowl, and before Subhūti is a bowl filled with rice. Each act seems already to be proceeding on the right track: they can enter absorption, teach the Dharma, observe the disciplinary code, leave home, and attend upon the Buddha. Yet Vimalakīrti does not ask, “Have you done it?” He asks: Have you grasped the Dharma you practice as a position of your own?

If the mind still abides within or without while the body sits beneath a tree, meditative sitting is sealed within a seated mark. If, while speaking the Dharma, one treats Dharma as something one can hand to others, speaker, listener, what is spoken, and what is attained all arise together. The sūtra speaks of an illusory person teaching the Dharma to another illusory person, but it does not tell people to stop teaching. It immediately continues to require the teacher to discern whether faculties are sharp or dull, praise the Great Vehicle with great compassion, remember and repay the Buddha’s kindness, and keep the Three Jewels unbroken.

The alms bowl brings equality into everyday receiving. If one goes only to poor neighborhoods and not to wealthy homes, compassion still has a place it does not reach universally. If food and Dharma are divided into the small and the great, equality has already left what is immediately before one. Thus one enters a settlement as though entering an empty settlement: seeing form as though blind, hearing sound as an echo, smelling scent as wind, tasting flavor without following discrimination, and receiving contact as wisdom realizes. This does not close the faculties, but no longer lets faculties and objects draw lines of high and low for oneself.

The bhikṣus before Pūrṇa are described in the sūtra through jeweled vessels, beryl, the great ocean, and sunlight. Impure food must not be placed in a jeweled vessel, nor beryl mistaken for crystal. Those who wish to travel the great road must not be shown only a small path. The great ocean cannot be gathered into an ox’s hoofprint, nor sunlight equated with a firefly. Teaching the Dharma does not ask only, “Is this statement correct?” One must first see what mind and what faculties stand before one. If a mind long directed toward the Great Vehicle is mistaken, even words that contain Dharma may fail to correspond to the person addressed.

Aniruddha sees the billion-world universe as one sees an āmalaka fruit in the palm. Vimalakīrti does not compete with him over distance, but asks whether this seeing is fabricated or unfabricated. The true divine eye in the sūtra still completely sees all buddha-lands, yet does not see through two marks. Seeing is not canceled; what is loosened is the mark that grasps “I am seeing.”

Two bhikṣus who have violated the disciplinary code come burdened by doubt and remorse. What matters at this point is not adding another layer of offense, but not disturbing their minds. The nature of offense is not within, not without, and not in between; mind is likewise. False conception, inversion, and grasping at self are defilement; separation from false conception and inversion and not grasping at self are purity. All dharmas are like illusion, lightning, dreams, mirages, the moon in water, and images in a mirror: the images appear distinctly, yet possess no fixed nature that can be grasped. Only knowing this does the sūtra call observing and skillfully understanding the disciplinary code.

Leaving home likewise cannot be converted into a gain. The sūtra first says that it has no benefit and no merit, then fully enumerates separation from views, subduing Māra, crossing the five paths, purifying the five eyes, attaining the five powers, establishing the five faculties, not harming others, and being apart from faults while according with meditation. Non-attainment does not diminish conduct and vows; instead, it prevents conduct and vows from establishing a calculable possession of self.

Finally, Ānanda still holds a bowl waiting to receive milk. Vimalakīrti says that the Tathāgata’s dharma-body has no illness, while a voice from the sky says that the Buddha manifests the practice of this Dharma in the evil world of the five degenerations to liberate sentient beings. Ānanda is not told to discard the bowl, but to fetch the milk without shame. Freedom from illness and manifested illness do not erase one another. So it is throughout the ten episodes of this chapter: Dharma does not appear only after meditative sitting, teaching, an alms bowl, observing the disciplinary code, leaving home, and attending upon the Buddha have been abandoned. It is within these very practices that one is no longer confined by the name of what one does.

All five hundred great disciples say that they cannot go to inquire about the illness. Their repeated “I am not capable” leaves more than the fact that Vimalakīrti’s eloquence is difficult to withstand. It leaves a question that falls directly upon one’s own practice: Is the Dharma I preserve, teach, and practice today opening a road for sentient beings, or merely placing me securely in a familiar position?

Why does Vimalakīrti teach the goddesses only one Dharma-gate, called the Inexhaustible Lamp, when they must abide in Māra’s palace? Because what a bodhisattva must carry away is not a place that forever avoids darkness, but a practice through which light can keep increasing in the midst of darkness.

In this chapter, the Buddha four times commands a bodhisattva to go and inquire about Vimalakīrti’s illness, yet Maitreya, Radiant Adornment, World-Upholder, and Excellent Virtue all say that they are not equal to the task. What the four remember is not one and the same debate, but four different starting points: on which life the prophecy of one more birth depends; where the place of awakening is ultimately located; how Māra, resembling Śakra, appears with twelve thousand goddesses; and how a seven-day assembly of material giving turns toward Dharma-giving.

Maitreya is first asked: Does the prophecy of one more birth depend on the past, the future, or the present? The past has ceased, the future has not arrived, and the present does not remain; even within the correct position of non-arising, there is no prophecy that can be received and no awakening that can be attained. When Vimalakīrti teaches this Dharma, two hundred devas attain acceptance of the non-arising of dharmas. Non-attainment and the benefit of the Dharma stand side by side in the same scriptural passage: awakening cannot be seized as something owned by body or mind, yet the devas’ attainment of acceptance is recorded all the same.

Radiant Adornment asks Vimalakīrti where he has come from, and the answer is that he has come from the place of awakening. Asked again where that place is, Vimalakīrti proceeds from the upright mind, initiating practice, the profound mind, and the mind of awakening through giving, ethical discipline, patience, diligent effort, meditation, and wisdom, and onward through loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity, skillful means, the four means of gathering, dependent origination, the afflictions, sentient beings, and all dharmas. At the end, the place of awakening comes down to 「舉足下足，當知皆從道場來，住於佛法矣！」 — “With every lifting and placing of the foot, know that you have come from the place of awakening and abide in the Buddha-Dharma!” One does not first find a pure location and only then begin to practice. Every step must issue from freedom from falsity, expectation of no reward, benefit to sentient beings, and correct contemplation of all dharmas.

When World-Upholder’s story begins, the king Māra assumes the appearance of Śakra and arrives with twelve thousand goddesses. Vimalakīrti identifies Māra, yet does not drive the goddesses away. He accepts them, causes them to give rise to the mind of unsurpassed perfect awakening, and replaces delight in the five desires with delight in the Dharma. When Māra is about to take the goddesses back to his palace, they ask, “How should we abide in Māra’s palace?”

Vimalakīrti does not tell them to find another place. He teaches only the Inexhaustible Lamp: 「譬如一燈，燃百千燈，冥者皆明，明終不盡。」 — “It is like one lamp lighting hundreds of thousands of lamps: all dark places become bright, yet the light never comes to an end.” One bodhisattva guides hundreds of thousands of sentient beings; the bodhisattva’s own mind that seeks the path is not extinguished, and every wholesome dharma increases through the Dharma that is taught. The goddesses still return to Māra’s palace. Vimalakīrti points them to no other place; he teaches them only one Dharma-gate, called the Inexhaustible Lamp.

Excellent Virtue’s jeweled necklace carries the practice into another image. Vimalakīrti divides it into two parts, giving one to the beggar of the lowest status in the assembly and offering the other to Tathāgata Hard-to-Overcome. Only when the donor faces both fields with an equal mind, without discrimination, in accord with great compassion, and seeking no reward is Dharma-giving complete. One lamp lights hundreds of thousands of lamps without its brightness ever ending; one jeweled necklace is divided between two fields while the donor’s mind makes no distinction. Both images are given by this chapter itself, and neither confines bodhisattva practice within oneself.

Thus this lamp is not an ornament within the chapter. Maitreya’s passage loosens awakening as something attainable; Radiant Adornment’s loosens a fixed place of awakening; World-Upholder’s turns delight in the five desires into delight in the Dharma that can transform others; and Excellent Virtue’s carries seven days of material giving into making offerings to all sentient beings in a single moment. What the four declarations of being unequal to the task leave together is not that Vimalakīrti defeated anyone, but that bodhisattva practice cannot stop at an already acquired status, location, pleasure, or discrimination between fields of merit.

Why, when the goddesses must return to Māra’s palace, does Vimalakīrti teach them to carry only one lamp? Because a lamp whose brightness continues need not wait for darkness to disappear before being lit. It is kindled when one bodhisattva guides another sentient being, and it continues to shine in that bodhisattva’s own wholesome dharmas. The light’s never coming to an end does not call darkness light; it means that, while dwelling in darkness, one still knows where the next lamp should be kindled.

Vimalakīrti knew that Mañjuśrī and the assembly were coming, so he removed every object and every attendant from the room. The room was empty, yet he did not remove the sickbed as well: he left only one bed and lay upon it in illness.

If emptiness meant only that nothing was there, this bed would seem superfluous. Yet this chapter begins precisely here and asks: If illness has no form, why can one still inquire about it? If the body is a provisional composite, why must one still comfort the sick? If even the illness of emptiness is empty, why must one still undergo the various feelings?

Vimalakīrti's answer is not, “My illness has nothing to do with sentient beings.” It is exactly the opposite: when sentient beings are ill, he is ill; only when sentient beings recover does he recover. It is like parents who have only one child: when the child falls ill, the parents fall ill as well; when the child recovers, the parents recover as well. The bodhisattva's illness arises from great compassion.

The empty room therefore does not shut sentient beings outside the door. Vimalakīrti says that emptiness should be sought within the sixty-two views, that the sixty-two views should be sought within the liberation of the buddhas, and that the liberation of the buddhas should in turn be sought within the activities of mind of all sentient beings. The further the inquiry into emptiness proceeds, the more it returns to the place where sentient beings are.

So it is with bodily illness. The illness is not any one of the four elements, yet neither is it apart from earth, water, fire, and wind. The illness has no form and cannot be seen, yet the suffering undergone by sentient beings has not been erased. A sick bodhisattva must speak of the body's impermanence, suffering, absence of self, and empty quiescence, while at the same time not telling another sick person to detest the body, delight in cessation, or abandon sentient beings.

Removing the conception of self does not mean turning to abide in a conception of dharmas; leaving the conception of dharmas does not mean turning to abide in the illness of emptiness. The conception of dharmas remains a grave affliction, and the sūtra immediately goes on to say that the illness of emptiness is also empty. Even though no apprehensible recipient can be found, the various feelings are still undergone; even while contemplating that the illnesses of sentient beings are neither real nor established, great compassion is still not abandoned.

Thus the person on the sickbed must also become a king of physicians. From his own suffering he recollects sentient beings in the evil destinies; he seeks not only to discipline himself but also to discipline all sentient beings, removing only the illness and not removing the dharmas. Only one who can remove the suffering of aging, illness, and death for both oneself and sentient beings can be called brave, like a warrior who has defeated an enemy.

At the end of this chapter, “this is the conduct of the bodhisattva” is stated thirty-two times: practicing emptiness while planting the roots of virtue; practicing signlessness while liberating sentient beings; practicing wishlessness while manifesting the reception of a body; contemplating buddha-lands as quiescent like space while still manifesting pure buddha-lands; and even attaining the Buddha's Way, turning the Dharma wheel, and entering nirvāṇa while still not abandoning the bodhisattva path.

The room is empty, yet one bed remains. This does not mean that the emptiness is incomplete. It means that great compassion has not left sentient beings behind: not abiding in the body and not abandoning the body; not abiding in illness and not fleeing illness; not abiding even in emptiness, and not abandoning a single sentient being who is still ill.

Because what this chapter presents is not merely the size of a room, but how large and small can be mutually unobstructed at the same time.

The story begins with an entirely ordinary thought. Śāriputra sees that there are no beds or seats in the room and wonders: where will so many bodhisattvas and great disciples sit? Vimalakīrti does not immediately bring in seats. He only asks: have you come for the Dharma, or have you come for beds and seats?

Śāriputra says that he has come for the Dharma. Vimalakīrti then pursues the question step by step: if this truly is seeking the Dharma, why grasp something attainable among the five aggregates, the elements and entrances, the three realms, Buddha, Dharma, and community, the truths of suffering, origination, cessation, and the path, or seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing? If even nirvāṇa becomes an attachment, it remains attachment. Seeking the Dharma thus proceeds all the way to seeking nothing in any dharma.

Yet in the very next scene, thirty-two thousand lofty, broad, adorned, and pure lion thrones actually arrive.

The small room contains them all without mutual obstruction; Vaiśālī, Jambudvīpa, and the four-continent world likewise become neither constricted nor narrow, and everything remains just as before. The scripture does not make the lofty thrones disappear, nor does it erase the small room. It simply lets two things that seem unable to hold true at the same time appear simultaneously before the assembly.

Mount Sumeru then enters a mustard seed. The mustard seed does not increase, Sumeru does not decrease, and the king of mountains remains in its original form just as before. The gods dwelling upon the mountain do not even know that they have entered it; only those who should be liberated see it.

The four great seas enter a single pore. Fish, soft-shelled turtles, giant turtles, and alligators are not disturbed; the seas remain in their original forms just as before; and dragons, ghosts, spirits, and asuras likewise do not know where they have entered. Sumeru enters the mustard seed with neither increase nor decrease, and the king of mountains remains in its original form just as before; the four seas enter a pore without disturbing aquatic creatures, and the seas remain in their original forms just as before.

A three-thousand-great-thousand world, like a potter's turning wheel, is placed in one palm, cast beyond worlds as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, and then returned to its original place. The sentient beings within form no thought of going or returning, and the world remains in its original form just as before. Seven days can be extended into a kalpa and a kalpa contracted into seven days, yet both appear in response to the needs of sentient beings who can be liberated.

The adornments of all buddha-lands can be gathered in one land, and the sentient beings of one buddha-land can be placed upon the palm and shown throughout the ten directions. Implements for offerings to the buddhas, and suns, moons, and constellations, can appear within a single pore. The winds of the ten directions enter one mouth without breaking the trees; the fire at the end of a kalpa enters one belly, yet the fires remain just as before and the body is unharmed; a buddha-land is lifted beyond immeasurable worlds like a jujube leaf raised on the tip of a needle, without disturbing sentient beings.

These images, repeatedly accompanied by “just as before,” “unharmed,” and “without disturbance,” together safeguard one point: freedom does not take harm as its price, and transformation is not completed by destroying an original form.

After Mahākāśyapa hears this, he uses another image to describe his own situation: though many colors are displayed before a blind person, they are not what he can see. The Dharma-gate is already before him, yet seeing and not seeing it remain different matters. He then says: what wise person, on hearing this, would fail to arouse the aspiration for unsurpassed perfect awakening? As he speaks, thirty-two thousand sons of the gods arouse that aspiration.

The images at the chapter's end press still closer to the mind. The outer appearance of a king Māra may be a manifestation made by a bodhisattva through skillful means. A great beggar demanding a person's body, family, towns, wealth, and food may likewise have come to make resolve firm. The scripture does not therefore entrust such pressure to everyone. On the contrary, it states explicitly that ordinary persons are inferior and lack the power to act in this way. A dragon-elephant's trampling is not something a donkey can bear.

Why, then, can one small room contain thirty-two thousand lofty thrones? The scripture does not reduce its answer to a single statement about large and small changing places. It lets us see that the scripture first calls the room broad and expansive, yet later still calls it such a small room; the lofty thrones remain lofty thrones, Sumeru remains in its original form just as before, and sentient beings neither perceive nor know. The gate of inconceivability is named by the scripture itself as a gate of wisdom and skillful means.

At first Śāriputra merely wants to find somewhere to sit. Later, Vimalakīrti places a three-thousand-great-thousand world upon his right palm, casts it beyond Ganges-sands, and returns it to its original place. At the chapter's end, the scripture itself concludes with 「住不可思議解脫菩薩智慧方便之門」—“the gate of wisdom and skillful means of bodhisattvas abiding in inconceivable liberation.” Between these two ends, the question also unfolds from a seat to this: when no dharma is any longer a seat that you try to grasp, can wisdom and skillful means allow each place reached to be both free and without disturbance?

Vimalakīrti first lets us look upon a moon reflected in water.

The moon's reflection is distinct, yet no real moon can be apprehended in the water. A face appears in a mirror, yet there is no second face inside it. A mirage appears in the heat, clouds appear in the sky, bubbles appear on water, and a flash of lightning does not remain for long. The scripture also speaks of bird tracks in the sky, the child of a sterile woman, a dream after awakening, and fire arising without a cause. A bodhisattva contemplating sentient beings likewise does not grasp what is seen as a fixed and unchanging self-nature.

The question immediately follows: if sentient beings cannot be grasped in this way, for whom should loving-kindness and compassion still be practised?

Vimalakīrti does not answer, “Since they are like illusions, there is no need to liberate them.” He says that after making this contemplation, the bodhisattva must still form the thought of expounding this Dharma to sentient beings; only this is true loving-kindness. The contemplation of emptiness therefore does not hollow out loving-kindness and compassion. Quiescent loving-kindness, non-burning loving-kindness, non-contentious loving-kindness, nondual loving-kindness, boundless loving-kindness, great compassion loving-kindness, Dharma-giving loving-kindness, precept-keeping loving-kindness, patient loving-kindness, diligent loving-kindness, meditative loving-kindness, wisdom loving-kindness, skillful means loving-kindness—all proceed through peace-and-happiness loving-kindness. The scripture gives the ground for each: bodhisattva loving-kindness brings sentient beings peace, Buddha loving-kindness awakens sentient beings, diligent loving-kindness bears sentient beings, and peace-and-happiness loving-kindness enables them to attain the Buddha's bliss.

Loving-kindness is not conditioned upon grasping sentient beings as truly existent. Precisely because it does not turn sentient beings into objects one possesses and controls, loving-kindness demands nothing in return. Compassion means that merit is shared with all sentient beings; sympathetic joy means benefiting sentient beings without regret; equanimity means performing blessed deeds without expectation.

When the heavenly flowers fall, this principle suddenly acquires a visible form. Flowers falling upon the bodhisattvas drop away, while those falling upon the great disciples cling and will not leave. Śāriputra says that the flowers fail to accord with Dharma, but the goddess says that the flowers themselves make no discrimination; people give rise to discriminating thoughts. The flowers do not discriminate. While the mind that distinguishes the flowers, dislikes them, and hastens to remove them remains, the flowers do not fall.

Śāriputra then remains silent because liberation is beyond speech, but the goddess says that speech and written words are also marks of liberation. She does not establish another liberation outside written words. Liberation is neither within, nor without, nor between the two, and written words likewise are neither within, nor without, nor between the two. If one fabricates a liberation outside written words, the “liberation” thus fabricated becomes a new place of abiding.

Śāriputra asks why she does not transform her female body. The goddess says that for twelve years she has sought the mark of woman and found it utterly unattainable—what, then, is there to transform? She first gives the example of an illusory woman conjured by an illusionist, then makes Śāriputra manifest the body of the goddess while she manifests Śāriputra's body. Śāriputra suddenly does not know how he came to possess a female body. After the spiritual power is withdrawn, the visible form of that female body is neither located nor not located. The scripture does not let an outwardly manifested form become a fixed self-nature.

Even awakening cannot become a final place of abiding. The goddess says that awakening has no place of abiding and therefore there is no person who can possess awakening as an attainment. Past, present, and future are only conventional words and numbers; awakening itself does not possess going, coming, or the present. Śāriputra says that he attains precisely because there is no attainment, and the goddess likewise speaks of the attainment of the buddhas and bodhisattvas through non-attainment.

Sentient beings are like the moon in water. For whom, then, should loving-kindness and compassion be practised? They are practised for sentient beings who are appearing, suffering, and hearing the Dharma, without grasping them as unchanging “ones whom I save.” Loving-kindness, teaching the Dharma, liberation, and manifestation have not been canceled. What is relinquished is only the mind that wants to find a fixed place of abiding in sentient beings, written words, bodily forms, or awakening.

The moon in the water still appears, heavenly flowers are still scattered, speech still occurs, and the goddess still manifests and teaches through the power of her past vows. Amid these present events, the bodhisattva practises loving-kindness: not abandoning sentient beings because they are like illusions, not grasping sentient beings as truly existent because of loving-kindness and compassion; abiding nowhere, yet never ceasing to see and benefit them.

Because lotuses do not grow on the high plain; they grow only in low, damp mud.

This is not praise of mud. Mud remains mud, and afflictions remain afflictions. Yet sentient beings are found precisely amid greed, anger, delusion, inversion, wrong views, and every kind of suffering. If a bodhisattva is willing to remain only on the high plain, where could the lotus arise?

Thus, when Mañjuśrī asks how a bodhisattva comprehends the Way of the Buddha, Vimalakīrti does not answer that one avoids every way contrary to it, but that one travels those contrary ways. He travels among the five heinous acts yet has no anger or resentment; goes to hell yet has no defilement of wrongdoing; goes among animals yet has neither ignorance nor pride; and goes among hungry ghosts yet possesses complete merit. He manifests greed yet remains apart from attachment, manifests anger yet constantly practices loving-kindness and patience, and manifests delusion yet disciplines his mind with wisdom. He manifests the afflictions yet his mind remains constantly pure, and manifests nirvāṇa yet does not cut off saṃsāra.

The key lies not in how extraordinary the outward appearance may be, but in the bodhisattva’s never losing compassion, wisdom, or purity wherever he goes. A contrary way is not his new abode. It is a place he reaches because he does not abandon sentient beings.

Mañjuśrī then says that having a body, ignorance, craving for existence, greed, anger, and delusion—through to the sixty-two views and all afflictions—are seeds of the Tathāgata. Vimalakīrti asks why, and the sūtra supplies three images of its own: the lotus does not grow on the high plain, a seed cannot be planted in space, and a precious jewel can be obtained only by entering deep into the sea.

The mud is not the lotus, the soil is not the fruit, and the great sea is not the precious jewel. Yet without entering those places, there can be no flowering, growth, or retrieval of treasure. Practice does not move us into an empty space without sentient beings or afflictions. It gives rise to the mind of awakening where afflictions are present, causes the seed to grow, and retrieves the treasure of omniscience from the great sea.

What, then, enables a bodhisattva to enter these places? Vimalakīrti answers in forty-two verses: wisdom is his mother, skillful means his father, joy in Dharma his wife, compassion his daughter, a wholesome mind his son, and emptiness and quiescence his dwelling. The factors of the path are his spiritual friends, the perfections his companions, retention his garden, uncontaminated dharmas its trees, factors of awakening its flowers, and liberation and wisdom its fruit. The Great Vehicle is his carriage, one-pointed mind its driver, and the eightfold right path the road it travels.

This household composed of Dharma opens toward sentient beings through the bodhisattva’s conduct for their benefit. When there is disease, he manifests as medicine; when there is famine, he manifests as food; when there is armed conflict, he establishes sentient beings in non-contention. Wherever hell brings suffering, he goes there to offer relief; wherever animals devour one another, he is born among them to bring benefit. He can also practice meditation amid objects of desire, like a lotus growing from fire. According to what sentient beings need, he can become a town leader, caravan guide, state preceptor, minister, champion, seer, or servant, turning each person from an immediate need toward the mind of awakening.

The Way of the Buddha ranges throughout contrary ways, yet never accords with defilement, attachment, or wrong views. It has mud, manured soil, and the great sea, but also lotuses, growth, and precious jewels. It has disease, hunger, thirst, and fear, but also medicine, food, and fearlessness. It has the lotus in fire, and the rarity of practicing meditation amid desire.

Why does the bodhisattva not stand on the high plain, but instead enter the mud? Because what he seeks is not a pure place cut off from sentient beings. He seeks to let the lotus arise where sentient beings are, to let the seed grow in manured soil, and to let those who hear of this path do more than praise the bodhisattva’s skillful means—to let them truly give rise to the mind of awakening.

Because nonduality is not the best possible answer, but the release even of “I have grasped the answer.”

Vimalakīrti first invites the bodhisattvas to speak according to what each delights in. The thirty-one then speak in sequence: arising and cessation, self and what belongs to self, defilement and purity, wholesome and unwholesome, wrongdoing and merit, contaminated and uncontaminated, conditioned and unconditioned, saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, form and emptiness, faculties and objects, the six perfections and omniscience, the right path and the wrong path, the real and unreal. Each begins with a pair of dharmas, sees how its two sides are established through grasping, and sees how their boundary is lost in true nature, emptiness, equality, and non-apprehension.

Yet could saying “the boundary between two sides is lost” create a third thing called nonduality? Mañjuśrī therefore goes one step further: with respect to all dharmas, no words, no discourse, no indication, no cognition, and departure from all questions and answers. This is not because the Dharma’s meaning does not exist, but because any sentence, once grasped, can stand as one side again. Even question and answer can leave a person within the opposition between one who asks and what is answered.

Mañjuśrī then gives the same question to Vimalakīrti. Vimalakīrti adds no more elevated statement. He remains silent and says nothing. This silence is not an inability to answer, nor does it negate the preceding thirty-one bodhisattvas. Without their successive teachings, silence would be only a blank. Precisely because every division has already been illuminated and every statement has reached its own limit, silence lacks nothing.

Mañjuśrī therefore says “excellent” twice and praises the absence of words and speech as true entry into the dharma-gate of nonduality. Speech can point to nonduality but cannot grasp nonduality as a thing. Vimalakīrti’s silence releases along with it even the mind that wishes to grasp nonduality.

While this chapter is being taught, five thousand bodhisattvas in the Dharma assembly all enter the dharma-gate of nonduality and attain acceptance of the non-arising of dharmas. The entire chapter begins from the fact that dharmas originally do not arise and reaches completion in silence. It does not blend arising and cessation, good and evil, or saṃsāra and nirvāṇa into an undifferentiated mass; it no longer establishes two graspable entities within their true nature. It does not demand that one never speak; it speaks until words no longer seal the Dharma shut.

The thirty-one bodhisattvas speak of nonduality level by level. Why, then, does Vimalakīrti say nothing at all? Because when one truly enters the gate, no answer is carried inside and no self that has obtained an answer remains outside. Only silence remains. Mañjuśrī knows that this is not the ending of the Dharma’s meaning, but the immediate arrival at nonduality.

Because the scripture first records two thoughts: Śāriputra thinks, 「日時欲至，此諸菩薩當於何食？」— “The time of day is drawing near; where will these bodhisattvas eat?” Another śrāvaka later thinks, 「是飯少，而此大眾人人當食。」— “This rice is little, while everyone in this great assembly is to eat.”

Śāriputra sees the approaching mealtime and thinks that the assembly needs to eat. Later, another śrāvaka sees a single bowl of fragrant rice and thinks again that the rice is little and the people many. Both thoughts are entirely ordinary: time is limited, food is limited, and the assembly is large. Vimalakīrti, however, takes this meal beyond buddha-lands as numerous as the sands of forty-two Ganges Rivers. Buddha Fragrance-Accumulation gives the transformed bodhisattva a bowl filled with fragrant rice, nine million bodhisattvas follow the rice, and Vimalakīrti creates nine million lion seats.

The fragrance of the rice pervades Vaiśālī and the great trichiliocosm. Brahmans, householders, earth spirits, spirits of empty space, and gods of the desire and form realms all follow the scent into the room. When everyone has eaten their fill, the rice in the bowl still has not diminished. Those who eat feel physical ease and joy, and a subtle fragrance emerges from their pores.

The scripture does not merely say, “This is a bowl of rice that cannot be finished.” Vimalakīrti first says it is pervaded by great compassion. The transformed bodhisattva then says that it is the remainder of food eaten by one endowed with inexhaustible ethical discipline, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and knowledge and vision of liberation. The rice’s inexhaustibility reflects the fact that the Tathāgata’s merit and wisdom cannot be measured by a śrāvaka’s lesser virtue and lesser wisdom.

Thus a limited mind is not only afraid that it will not receive a share. It also measures one land as high and another as low; it measures entry into discipline through fragrance as excellent and painful, direct words as coarse. Buddha Fragrance-Accumulation has already guarded against all three distortions: draw in bodily fragrance so that sentient beings do not become confused and attached; relinquish original form so that seekers of the Way do not feel inferior; and, on coming to Sahā, harbor no contempt.

The land of Myriad Fragrances brings beings into disciplined conduct through scent. Because the sentient beings of Sahā are forceful and difficult to teach, this world explains the evil destinies, karmic results, ethical discipline, wrong, and right one item at a time. The mind is like a monkey and must be controlled through various dharmas. Refractory and untrained elephants and horses must undergo painful discipline before they can be tamed. Fragrance is not a more graceful Buddhadharma, and forceful speech is not an inferior Buddhadharma. The scripture asks only: What can bring the sentient beings immediately before us into disciplined conduct?

The answer finally rests with bodhisattvas themselves. Where there is poverty, embrace it through generosity; where prohibitions are violated, through pure ethical discipline; where there are anger, laziness, mental distraction, and delusion, embrace them through patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom. Wishing to be born in a pure land also does not begin by rejecting this land. It means benefiting sentient beings here without hoping for repayment, taking on their suffering and dedicating merit, not envying the offerings others receive, not becoming arrogant over one’s own benefit, constantly examining one’s own faults, and not accusing others of shortcomings.

Why, when one bowl of rice plainly feeds the entire Dharma assembly, does Vimalakīrti still say it cannot be eaten with a limited mind? Because truly receiving great compassion does not mean taking one more portion of fragrant rice. It means no longer using the small measure in one’s own hands to draw boundaries around the Tathāgata’s merit and wisdom, the purity of buddha-lands, or sentient beings’ capacities. The bowl has no visible bottom, and bodhisattva practice does not stop when the meal ends. The fragrance must finally become generosity, pure ethical discipline, patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom; it must become freedom from seeking repayment and the constant examination of one’s own faults.

Food never had before does more than fill the stomach. It turns a mind that asks only “Will there be enough for me?” toward the question “How can I benefit sentient beings?”

Not by dividing the world into one side that is pure and another that is useless, but by letting compassion and wisdom continue without stopping within every kind of cause and condition.

This chapter begins with a concrete act: Vimalakīrti places the assembly, together with their lion seats, in his right palm and carries them before the Buddha. Yet the scripture does not stop at the wonder of supernormal power. The dialogue quickly turns to the fragrance in their pores, the remainder of a Buddha’s meal from the Land of Myriad Fragrances, and the point at which that rice is completely digested. Its power disappears only after the Dharma benefit due to the person who ate it has been accomplished. The scripture then uses a medicinal simile: the medicine disappears only after all the poisons in the body have been eliminated.

One serving of rice therefore no longer merely nourishes the body. It can cause one who has not entered the fixed position to enter it, one who has not aroused the Great Vehicle mind to arouse it, and one who has already aroused that mind to advance to acceptance of non-arising. The scripture also calls it capable of performing the Buddha’s work. What has never happened before is not merely that fragrance pervades every pore, but that ordinary food can become a gateway for entering the Dharma.

The Buddha then opens this gate still wider. Light can perform the Buddha’s work; bodhisattvas can perform it; created persons, the bodhi tree of awakening, clothing, bedding, food, groves and pavilions, excellent marks, the Buddha’s body, and space can all perform it. Dreams, illusions, shadows, echoes, reflections in mirrors, moons in water, and mirages in the heat can perform the Buddha’s work. Sound, language, and written words can perform it, and silent wordlessness can perform it as well.

These forms are not arranged as a ladder from low to high. Discourse can be an entrance, and silence can also perform the Buddha’s work; visible things can lead people into the Dharma, and so can space. The key is not whether a form appears majestic, but whether sentient beings enter disciplined conduct through the cause or condition that corresponds to them. Even the four Māras and eighty-four thousand gateways of affliction that weary sentient beings can be used by the buddhas according to the illness to perform the Buddha’s work. This does not praise affliction; it says that affliction cannot seal off the Buddha’s work.

In the same way, buddha-lands differ in purity and impurity, yet a bodhisattva is not carried away by joy or sorrow. On seeing a pure and beautiful buddha-land, the bodhisattva is neither greedy nor proud; on seeing an impure one, the bodhisattva is neither obstructed nor submerged. The scripture holds up ground and space as a mirror: ground has many differences, while space does not; the buddhas’ physical bodies have many differences, while unobstructed wisdom does not. Difference continues to be seen, and equality does not therefore disappear.

It is at this point that the bodhisattvas from the world of Myriad Fragrances reproach themselves. When they first saw this land, an inferior perception arose, but they later abandoned that mind and requested a portion of Dharma to carry back to their own land. What the Buddha gives them is not another method belonging only to a pure buddha-land, but two practices that must be held simultaneously: not exhausting the conditioned and not abiding in the unconditioned.

Not exhausting the conditioned means not allowing compassion to stop before saṃsāra. A bodhisattva regards meditative concentration as a hell, saṃsāra as a garden grove, and a person who comes seeking something as an excellent teacher. The bodhisattva breaks the thieves of affliction with the sword of wisdom and subdues Māra’s armies through great diligent effort, yet still shoulders sentient beings. Having few desires and knowing contentment, the bodhisattva does not abandon worldly dharmas; seeking transcendent dharmas without weariness, the bodhisattva can accord with worldly convention without damaging proper deportment. Non-exhaustion does not mean surrendering to the flow of the conditioned. It means not bringing teaching, protection of the Dharma, giving, rescue, seeking the Dharma, or teaching the Dharma to a premature end.

Not abiding in the unconditioned means not allowing wisdom to turn any contemplation into a final destination. A bodhisattva cultivates emptiness without taking emptiness as realization in which to stop, contemplates impermanence without becoming weary of wholesome roots, contemplates the world as suffering without becoming averse to saṃsāra, contemplates no-self while teaching others without weariness, contemplates quiescent cessation without entering permanent cessation, and contemplates emptiness and voidness without abandoning great compassion. Each time emptiness, suffering, no-self, or quiescent cessation is seen, an original vow remains unfulfilled and sentient beings remain to be shouldered.

The chapter therefore returns at the end to Dharma medicine. A bodhisattva must gather the medicine and also give it according to the illness, must know the illnesses of sentient beings and also eliminate them. If medicine is only gathered and never given, it does not reach the sick; if the illness is merely observed and never eliminated, great compassion does not complete its practice. Merit supports not abiding in the unconditioned, and wisdom supports not exhausting the conditioned; loving-kindness and compassion bring the bodhisattva close to sentient beings, and original vows keep the bodhisattva from stopping halfway.

Fragrant rice can perform the Buddha’s work, and even afflictions can be used by the buddhas to perform the Buddha’s work. How, then, does a bodhisattva practice? The bodhisattva neither labels all dharmas “pure” nor escapes into a silence without sentient beings. As this chapter says, knowing the illnesses of sentient beings means not abiding in the unconditioned, and eliminating their illnesses means not exhausting the conditioned. The bodhisattva contemplates all dharmas as empty and void, yet still does not abandon great compassion. At the chapter’s opening, Vimalakīrti arrives bearing the assembly in his right palm; at its end, the bodhisattvas from Myriad Fragrances return home carrying the Dharma. The path left between arrival and return is this: until the original vows have been fulfilled, merit, meditative concentration, and wisdom must not be allowed to come to nothing.

Because sunlight travels over Jambudvīpa not to dwell with darkness, but to shine and dispel the gloom.

When Śāriputra hears that Vimalakīrti originally came from the world of Wondrous Joy, his first response is astonishment: Vimalakīrti can leave a pure land and come to this place filled with anger and harm. Vimalakīrti does not speak of how much he has sacrificed. He asks only: when sunlight appears, does it mingle with darkness? No. As soon as sunlight appears, every darkness vanishes. Then why does the sun still travel over Jambudvīpa? To illumine it and dispel its darkness.

A bodhisattva is the same. To be born in an impure buddha-land is not to mingle with the darkness of folly. To face the afflictions of sentient beings is likewise not to unite with that darkness. He comes in order to teach and transform sentient beings and extinguish the darkness of their afflictions. Purity does not keep him in Wondrous Joy, and darkness does not stain him and make him dark.

But from where, ultimately, does Vimalakīrti “come”? Before the Buddha names Wondrous Joy, Śāriputra has already asked where Vimalakīrti died before being born here. Vimalakīrti asks in return: Does the Dharma you have realized undergo death and birth? Do the man and woman conjured by an illusionist undergo death and birth? Since all dharmas are like illusory appearances, how could there be a fixed person who truly disappears there and truly appears here?

The sūtra therefore says both that Vimalakīrti came from Wondrous Joy and that death is the mark of disintegration of false dharmas while birth is their mark of continuity. The absence of a real entity that comes and goes does not mean that a bodhisattva does nothing. Although he dies, he does not exhaust his roots of goodness; although he is born, he does not increase the various evils. Coming and going are like illusion, yet roots of goodness are not lost. Birth is like illusion, yet the various evils do not increase.

The question at the opening is deeper still: if one wishes to see the Tathāgata, how should one contemplate Him? Beginning from contemplating the true mark of his own body, Vimalakīrti relinquishes one by one coming and going through the three limits, the five aggregates, the four great elements, the six entrances, the three realms, the two shores, direction, great and small, seeing, hearing, perceiving, and knowing, and every form of measurement. In the end, even every effort to reveal Him through speech and discrimination reaches an impasse. If one grasps the Tathāgata as a form that can come, go, abide, and be measured, that “seeing” has not yet reached the true mark.

Immediately after saying that the Tathāgata cannot be revealed through speech, the assembly nevertheless longs to see Wondrous Joy. Vimalakīrti does not refuse. Without rising from his seat, he enters samādhi and cuts away the world of Wondrous Joy: the Ring of Iron Mountains and streams, valleys, rivers, great seas, the sun, moon, stars, celestial palaces, the human world, bodhisattvas, śrāvakas, the Tathāgata Immovable, the tree of awakening, wondrous lotus flowers, and the three jeweled stairways are all within it. The sūtra uses only two images of its own: it is cut away “like a potter’s wheel” and moved into this land “as though holding a flower garland.”

Those who have attained spiritual powers perceive what is happening and cry out for protection; those who have not attained them neither perceive nor know. Although the world of Wondrous Joy enters this land, it neither increases nor decreases, and this world is not constricted. Everything remains no different from before.

The assembly says that it has seen. The Buddha immediately responds: those who wish to obtain such a pure buddha-land should learn the path practised by the Tathāgata Immovable. “Seeing” is therefore not the endpoint. Fourteen nayutas of people arouse the mind of awakening and vow to be born in Wondrous Joy, and the Buddha gives them a prediction. Once Wondrous Joy has completed the work of benefiting beings that it was to perform in this land, it returns to its original place, and the whole assembly sees it.

The world returns, but the sūtra remains. Śāriputra says that merely hearing the sūtra in the present or after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa brings good benefit; how much more trusting and understanding, retaining, reading and reciting, explaining, and practising in accordance with the Dharma. Obtaining the scripture in one’s hands is like obtaining a treasury of the jewel of Dharma. In the room where a scroll is copied and kept, the Tathāgata is present. Responding with sympathetic joy and teaching even one four-line verse to others each bring their own benefit.

Why does Vimalakīrti come from the pure land of Wondrous Joy to a place filled with anger and harm? The chapter’s answer lies in the sunlight simile: sunlight does not mingle with darkness, yet travels in order to dispel it. Wondrous Joy need not remain forever in this land. When the Land of Wondrous Joy is manifested here, fourteen nayutas of people arouse the mind and vow to be born there. The Tathāgata is not enclosed by speech, yet the sūtra can still be heard, retained, copied, spoken, and practised.

When what is seen becomes what is practised, the path of shining and dispelling darkness is not interrupted even after Wondrous Joy returns to its original place.

The Buddha first lets the scene of offering expand almost beyond measure: Tathāgatas fill the three-thousand great-thousand world-system as densely as sugarcane, bamboo, reeds, rice, hemp, and forests. For a kalpa or slightly less than a kalpa, someone reveres, honors, praises, and makes offerings to them. After the buddhas pass into extinction, that person builds a seven-jeweled stūpa for each Buddha’s full-body relics. Each stūpa extends in length and breadth across one four-continent world and rises as high as the Brahmā Heaven. For another long period, the person makes offerings of flowers, incense, necklaces, standards, banners, and music.

Śakra says that even a hundred thousand koṭis of kalpas would not suffice to tell the full measure of this merit. The sūtra does not erase it. The offering of Dharma surpasses it not because precious things suddenly lose their value, but because the awakening of all buddhas arises from the Dharma, and the mark of awakening cannot be measured.

King Jeweled Canopy makes offerings to Medicine-King Tathāgata for five kalpas, and each of his thousand princes then makes offerings for another five kalpas. Just when everything required for the Buddha’s ease has been presented, Moon Canopy sits alone and a question arises in his mind: Is there an offering that surpasses even this?

That question carries offering from “What else can I present?” to “How can the Dharma taught by the Buddha continue without interruption after the Buddha’s extinction?”

The answer is not to stop reading and reciting, nor is it to perform only an invisible inner practice. Medicine-King Tathāgata sets out the whole path: hear the profound sūtra, trust and understand it, receive and retain it, read and recite it; use the power of skillful means to explain and distinguish it for sentient beings, make its meaning clearly manifest, and protect the true Dharma. One must also practice in accordance with what it teaches, follow the twelve links of dependent origination, not oppose cause, condition, and karmic result, leave self and what belongs to self behind, rely on meaning, wisdom, sūtras of definitive meaning, and Dharma, until one no longer raises fixed views about arising and cessation, entry and return, or exhaustion and non-exhaustion within dependent origination.

Thus, the offering of Dharma is neither keeping a sūtra outside oneself nor hiding a doctrinal meaning within one’s own mind. Hearing and retaining, explaining, and protecting the Dharma are what the sūtra calls the offering of Dharma. Going further—practicing in accordance with what is taught and not opposing dependent origination—is what the sūtra calls the supreme offering of Dharma.

After Moon Canopy hears this, he first removes the jeweled robe adorning his body and offers it to the Buddha. He then vows that, after the Tathāgata’s extinction, he will practice the offering of Dharma and protect the true Dharma. Material offering is not cast aside. The jeweled robe is still there, but it is no longer the endpoint.

Medicine-King Tathāgata predicts that Moon Canopy will protect the city of Dharma in the final period. This city is not a place fabricated outside the sūtra: Moon Canopy leaves home in faith, cultivates wholesome dharmas, and attains superknowledges, dhāraṇī, and uninterrupted eloquence. After the Buddha’s extinction, for ten small kalpas he uses these capacities to spread onward the Dharma-wheel that the Buddha had turned. To protect the city is to keep the Dharma-wheel from stopping after the Tathāgata’s extinction.

Only at the end of the chapter is it revealed that the bhikṣu Moon Canopy was the Buddha Himself in a former life. The Buddha who now urges Śakra to make the offering of Dharma to the Buddha was once the person who asked about the Dharma, heard it, practiced it, and protected it. The offering of Dharma is not a rite that others perform on behalf of a Buddha; it is a path once traveled by the Buddha-way itself.

If the three-thousand great-thousand world-system were filled with Tathāgatas and a seven-jeweled stūpa were built for every Buddha, what offering could surpass that? Let the Dharma He taught become practice in oneself, receive explanation and protection among sentient beings, and still have someone carry the Dharma-wheel onward after His extinction. Precious things are presented for the ease of the buddhas; the offering of Dharma allows the path to awakening taught by the Buddha to continue to be practiced and transmitted.

Not merely a scroll of words, but the Dharma of unsurpassed awakening gathered over immeasurable kalpas, so that after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa there will still be people who hear, accept and retain, read and recite, and practice it, as well as people who explain it widely for them.

The World-Honored One gives this entrustment to Maitreya and explicitly says that its time is the latter age after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa. At that time there will be good men and good women, as well as devas, nāgas, ghosts and spirits, gandharvas, rākṣasas, and other sentient beings, who have raised the mind of unsurpassed awakening and delight in the great Dharma. If they cannot hear sūtras of this kind, they lose wholesome benefit; if they do hear them, they give rise to abundant faith and delight, regard them as rare, and receive and retain them upon the crown of their heads. The sūtra is not to reach an abstract “later age,” but the very beings whom its words name one by one.

Yet once the sūtra reaches their hands, has it necessarily been truly received? The World-Honored One immediately speaks of two marks of a bodhisattva: one delights in the business of miscellaneous phrasing and literary ornament, while the other does not fear profound meaning and can enter it as it truly is. Being able to enter is not a claim to understand what is profound: it means that, after hearing, one’s mind is pure; one accepts and retains, reads and recites, and practices according to the teaching. The words remain, and reading and recitation remain. One who truly receives the entrustment does not stop at literary ornament as the endpoint and does not retreat before profound meaning.

A new student may hear a profound sūtra for the first time, become alarmed, give rise to doubt, refuse to accord with it, and even slander it and disbelieve. Such a person may also refuse to draw near, make offerings to, or respect one who upholds and explains the profound sūtra, and instead speak of that person’s faults and wrongdoing. Even one who already believes and understands the profound Dharma may not be free of danger: such a person may slight new students and fail to teach them, or may still grasp marks and discriminate within the profound Dharma. The former rejects before drawing near; the latter already believes and understands, yet is arrogant toward people and attached to dharmas. The sūtra calls both “self-injury.”

After hearing this, Maitreya does not merely say that he will preserve the sūtra. He promises to cause future seekers of the Great Vehicle to obtain the sūtra in their own hands, grant them the power of recollection, and enable them to accept and retain it, read and recite it, and explain it widely for others. From receiving the scroll in one’s hands to recollecting it in one’s mind; from accepting and retaining it oneself to explaining it widely to others—the entrustment extends link by link into the future.

Next, all the bodhisattvas promise to proclaim and circulate it widely throughout the lands of the ten directions and to guide those who teach the Dharma so that they obtain the sūtra. The Four Heavenly Kings then say that wherever there is a scroll of the sūtra and someone who reads, recites, and explains it—whether in a city, village, mountain forest, or wilderness—they will lead their officials there to hear the Dharma and protect that person, ensuring that within a hundred yojanas no one lying in wait for an opening finds an opportunity. The Dharma circulates through the ten directions, while protection comes down to each place where a scroll is found and each person who reads, recites, and explains it.

Finally, the World-Honored One gives the sūtra to Ānanda to accept and retain. Ānanda says that he has already accepted and retained its essence, yet still asks: What is this sūtra called? The World-Honored One gives two names—The Teaching of Vimalakīrti and The Dharma-Gate of Inconceivable Liberation. Its content is accepted and retained, and its names are accepted and retained as well. What later ages receive is not an anonymous discourse, but a sūtra with names to follow and a Dharma to practice.

When the Buddha has finished teaching the sūtra, Vimalakīrti, Mañjuśrī, Śāriputra, Ānanda, and the entire great multitude of devas, human beings, and asuras hear what the Buddha has taught and all rejoice greatly. The whole sūtra does not end with another statement from Vimalakīrti, but with the entire great assembly hearing what the Buddha has taught and rejoicing greatly.

When the Buddha gives a sūtra away, what is truly entrusted? The scroll, and also its acceptance and retention; its names, and also practice according to its teaching; explaining it widely for others, and also neither slighting new students nor grasping marks within the profound Dharma. So long as someone lets it pass from the hand into recollection, from reading and recitation into practice, and then from what one has oneself received into the benefit gained by sentient beings, this entrustment extends from the very moment when the Buddha finished teaching this sūtra into the future age.