DISTINCTIVE MAHAYANIST ELEMENTS
IN THE VIMALAKIRTI-SUTRA
1. The role of the lay Buddhist2. Miracle stories and literary hyperbole. Eating spiritual food rather than ordinary food (Ikeda, p. 109). See Autobiography of a Yogi for similar claims among Hindu yogis.
3. Immersion in Samsara. Mahayana doctrine of Nirvana=Samsara. Vimalakirti could commit the five deadly sins without Karmic repercussions. Tantric elements, but recall proto-Tantrism from Kalup (1), p. 48. Vimalakirti’s mistress Ambalpali–making love without attachment.
4. The Bodhisattva elevated far above the monk. The monks are ridiculed for their obstuseness and their narrowness of vision. Ikeda essentially apologizes for Mahayana for this ill treatment and claims that the Lotus Sutra, his own sect’s only scripture, does not have this flaw.
5. "Expedient means"--people understand according to their own dispositions and spiritual level. Even deception may be used to make them understand. Justification for the new Mahayana sutras. "The Buddha expounds the Dharma with a single voice but each beingt understands it according to his own kind."
6. Doctrine of Buddha-lands. Ideal spiritual realms. Buddhist equivalent of Kant's Kingdom of Ends or Augustine's City of God? Not the literal "heaven" of the Pure Land of the Amitabha Buddha. Many "lands" correspond to collection of converts by various Bodhisattvas and their overflowing merit. Christians and Buddhists enter by grace; Kant's members enter by virtue of their rational autonomy.
7. New meaning of "sitting in meditation"--the 8th path of the 8-fold path. Sitting in meditation is not literally sitting in meditation. It is a general a spiritual attitude that can be used in every aspect of daily life. Thich Nhat Hanh’s walking meditation.
Vimalakirti "deconstructs" physical sitting-in-meditation on Ikeda, p. 103. Traditional sitting separated one from the world whereas we are to take a meditative attitude into the world and integrate it with our daily activities.
8. Does the sutra represent positive transcendentalism or negative transcendentalism. What does Vimalakirti’s silence to the question of nondualism indicate?
9. Vicarious suffering of the Bodhisattva. Savior religion motif. Vimalakirti is sick because of his great compassion. Like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (Chapters 51-53). Hinayana had lost sight of the virtue of compassion?
10. Bodhisattva Vimalakirti acts as the Buddha himself--e.g., converting the gods. The historical Buddha is demoted.
11. In the Dharmakaya there is no distinction between man or woman, etc. (See Gal 3:28) Equality of all beings: Feminism and egalitarianism.
12. Goddesses appear in Mahayana Buddhism.
13. Silence as the only way to explain absolute monism (the non-dual, a typically Hindu phrase). Anticipation of Zen. Also transcendentalist.
14. No strict rules of monastic discipline. Shariputra's lunch.
15. Eight vows of the Bodhisattva, replacing the six paramitas and the 8-fold path.
16. Anti-body. See Stryk, pp. 268-269. Replace the carnal body with spiritual body of the Dharmakaya.
17. Shunyata as potentiality, a no-thing-ness that is all potentially all things. A store consciousness as in Yogacara? The idea of potentially has the conceptual advantage is that it can be called, as Nagarjuna describes Nirvana, neither existent nor nonexistent, neither dependent, nor nondependent.
But if shunyata is potentiality then presumably it could be conceived in the way just above and therefore Vimalakirti’s silence is not the appropriate answer. Only a truly ineffable emptiness of the sort that Nagarjuna appears to indicate would require total silence.