ABSTRACT
The Teaching of Vimalakcrti is a work which has been widely used among the schools and sects of Mahayana Buddhism, and Kumarajcva’s Chinese version remains popular in Japan to this day.1 One reason for this is undoubtedly the fact that the leading figure in it, Vimalakcrti, is a layman with whom other laymen in ordinary walks of life can identify themselves. As a layman however he is by no means the model of subservient piety which clergy the world over have traditionally preferred, but instead a devastating leveller. Leading monastic disciples of the Buddha dare not visit Vimalakcrti when he is ill, for fear of being worsted in debate on the meaning of the Buddha’s doctrine. Only Mañjulrc will go to see him, and when these two meet together the result is a major discourse on the Mahayana logic of equality associated with the term LEnyatA or ‘emptiness’. Vimalakcrti is also a model of the skill required to cultivate the qualities of a buddha-to-be in the contingencies of daily life, and is famed for his ability to perform ‘contradictory acts’ as Lamotte has termed them.2 The household life is supposed to be full of hindrances, but the portrait of this housholder who is at the same time a freely ranging bodhisattva has proved to have great attraction for the practically minded. In all this the idea of skilful means ( fang-pien) is closely associated with the way in which his behaviour and self-understanding are characterised.
