Vimalakirti

     Mgr. Etienne Lamotte

De Vimalakirti soetra is van oudsher een bron van inspiratie voor alle Zen scholen en andere Boeddhistische stromingen.

Het feit dat Vimalakirti een leek was, dat hij leefde ten tijde van Boeddha Shakyamuni en dat hij zomaar in staat was - naast zijn talrijke andere wonderlijke vermogens - bodhisattva Manjushri een lesje te leren, maken hem tot een boeiende leraar.

Hier een fragment uit de inleiding van het boek:

For the Buddhas, liberating knowledge is not to be sought in the solution to the great philosophical problems which, for all time, have preoccupied the human mind:
- is the world of beings eternal or transitory, limited or unlimited?
- does the holy one emancipated from desire exist or not after death?
- is the life principle the same as or different from the body?
The Buddhas have placed these difficult questions among the "undetermined points" (avyakrtavastu) on which they refused to commit themselves.

These lofty speculations surpass the capacity of human reason, distract the mind and provoke endless discussions. They are of purely theoretical interest and do not culminate in any practical result: "They make no contribution to disgust for the world, renunciation, stopping, stillness, higher consciousness, perfect awakening, Nirvana".
The only really efficacious knowledge consists in the liberating vision of the four Noble Truths: the universality of suffering, its origin, its extinction and the path which leads to this extinction.

Following their reasoning, the Buddhas have established that the world of existences is a purely subjective phenomenon, taking place in the mind.
The mind, or to be more exact, the series (samtana) of successsive thought moments is the seat of the passions (klesa) and the false views (mithyadrishti). Intoxicated by the three-fold poison of cracing (raga), hatred (dvesha) and delusion (moha), the mind lives and experiences the nightmare of Samsara which, subjective though it may be, is painful nonetheless.
"Everything that arises is nothing but suffering; suffering is that which persists and that which goes away; no other thing than suffering arises; no other thing than suffering dissipates".

But there is no suffering without thought, and this led Shakyamuni to say: "The world (of beings) is led by the mind, manoeuvred by the mind. Everything obeys an one and only dharma: the mind".
Vitiated by the passions and false views, the mind starts to function, and as a consequence of its actions, experiences suffering. Freed from the passions of the false views, the mind calms, suffering disappears, Nirvana is achieved.
In other words and according to a canonical formula: ''Through defilement of the mind are beings defiled; through purification of the mind are they purified".

It is at this point, in the direct prolongation of the teaching of the Buddhas, that the Madhyamikas, for whom Vimalakirti is one of their most remarkable spokesmen, come in.
To be effective and suppress suffering, the calming (upasama) of the mind is nothing but the stopping of its functioning (cittapravrttisamuccheda).

Chapter VIII of the Vimalakirtinirdesa is significant in this respect. Asked to explain themselves over that Non-duality (advaya) which transcends extremes and keeps an equal distance between existence (bhava) and non-existence (abhava), thirty-two Bodhisattvas gathered in Vimalakirti's home attempt in turn a definition which, valuable though it may be, still does not touch the heart of the matter.
The best answer comes from Majushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. "Penetrating Non-duality", he says, "is excluding all words, not saying anything, not thinking anything, not expressing anything, not teaching anything, not designating anything" (VIII, § 32).
Would he not have done better to keep quiet? Anyway, Vimalakirti puts a final end to this talk by enfolding himself in the silence of the wise (aryanam tushnimbhava).

This silence of which the Buddhas so often gave an example by not answering the questions posed to them (sthapaniya vyakarana) has nothing in common with the disdainful reticence of western rationalism: it is a silence that has matured with time, that takes the middle way between aiffirmation and negation, and results from the previous cutting off of discussion and all practice (XI, § 1: sarvavadacaryoccheda).
This serene quitness, free of pride and aggression, is the mark of the Buddha's disciples.

Etienne Lamotte: The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa), rendered into English by Sara Boin from the French translation (L’enseignement de Vimalakīrti) with introduction and notes by Etienne Lamotte (Pali Text Society, 1976)

HIER item over Lamotte's vertaling van de Shurangama soetra
HIER (franstalige) biografie van Lamotte (pdf, 1 mb)