What happens in the sūtra
The sūtra opens in the Āmra grove at Vaiśālī, where the Buddha is with eight thousand great monks and thirty-two thousand bodhisattvas. The young householder Ratnākara and five hundred companions offer jewelled parasols, and the Buddha teaches that a bodhisattva who wishes for a pure Buddha land should purify the mind. The chapter on skilful means introduces Vimalakīrti: a wealthy householder who lives as a layman yet keeps a pure discipline, goes even into the places of ordinary life to help people, and now shows himself ill so that visitors may hear the Dharma.
The Buddha asks ten great disciples in turn, from Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana to Ānanda, then the bodhisattvas Maitreya, Prabhāvyūha, Jagatīṃdhara and the householder's son Sudatta, to visit the sick man. Each declines, recalling a time when Vimalakīrti questioned and corrected him. At last the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī accepts, and eight thousand bodhisattvas, five hundred disciples and a hundred thousand gods and humans follow him into the city.
The best-known chapters
In chapter 5, when Mañjuśrī asks where the illness comes from, Vimalakīrti answers that the bodhisattva is ill because beings are ill, as parents fall ill when their only child is ill. Chapter 6 tells how, through his supernormal power, the Buddha of the world Merudhvaja sends thirty-two thousand lion thrones into that house without crowding it. In chapter 7 a goddess scatters heavenly flowers: they fall from the bodhisattvas but cling to the great disciples. Chapter 8 says a bodhisattva goes by «non-paths» and so masters the Buddha way, and that, as the lotus grows in the mud and not on high dry land, all afflictions are seeds of Buddhahood.
Chapter 9, Entering the Gate of Non-duality, is the most famous. The bodhisattvas speak in turn of going beyond pairs such as arising and ceasing, defiled and pure, wholesome and unwholesome. Mañjuśrī says this gate lies beyond all words and all question and answer; when Vimalakīrti's turn comes he stays silent, and Mañjuśrī praises that as truly entering the gate of non-duality. Scroll 3 tells of the fragrant food fetched from the land of All Fragrances (Chúng Hương) of the Buddha Fragrance Accumulation (Hương Tích), of Vimalakīrti having come from the land Abhirati of the Buddha Akṣobhya, of the offering of the Dharma, and of the Buddha entrusting the teaching to Maitreya. Asked its name by Ānanda, the Buddha calls it the Teaching of Vimalakīrti, also the Gate of Inconceivable Liberation.
Reading the sūtra in the library
The three scrolls are long: the reading pages estimate about 85 minutes for scroll 1, 58 for scroll 2 and 40 for scroll 3, notes included. Each chapter ends with the translator's notes on terms and numbered lists; the numbers in brackets in the text point to them. A new reader can take one chapter a day, and press «Chant» to let the text scroll with the wooden fish.
The library holds the Vietnamese translation only — no Sino-Vietnamese transliteration, recording or download yet. Besides the three scroll pages, one page gathers all three scrolls of the same translation. The library also holds Thuyết Vô Cấu Xưng Kinh (說無垢稱經), another Chinese translation of the same sūtra, in Vietnamese.
