"THE GREAT LOVE OF A BODHISATTVA"
Lewis Richmond
Adapted from a talk given Oct. 10, 2003
at Green Gulch Zen Temple

The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, an important Mahayana (“Great Vehicle”) Buddhist text, is a paean to the spiritual possibilities of householder life. Its hero, Vimalakirti, was a wealthy householder living at the time of the Buddha, with a wife, children, a large house, and all the accoutrements of worldly accomplishment. Nevertheless, the Sutra describes him as wiser than all the Buddha’s great monk disciples. In a series of dialogues with the great luminaries of ancient Buddhism—Shariputra, Subhuti, and Manjusri, among many others—Vimalakirti repeatedly manifests his consummate grasp of the non-dual nature of all reality.

This Sutra, which is in the same general family of Sutras as the Heart Sutra, was quite popular among the educated elite in ancient China, since it extolled the notion that someone can live in the world as a householder with a family and a job and yet still accomplish the highest reaches of Buddhist wisdom. While there are many dramatic, even humorous, passages in the text that have been much commented on and written about, the passage I want to investigate today addresses a core question for any serious student of Buddhism: If, as the Buddha taught, the nature of the self and of other beings is insubstantial, impermanent, and fundamentally “empty of own-being,” then why and how should we care for each other and love one another?
Or to put it more simply, what is the role of love in Buddhism?

Vimalakirti begins this passage by describing this insubstantiality of beings :
Manjusri, a bodhisattva should regard all living beings as a wise man regards the reflection of the moon in water, or as magicians regard men created by magic. He should regard them as being like a face in a mirror, like the water of a mirage, like the sound of an echo, like a mass of clouds in the sky,like the previous moment of a ball of foam, like the appearance and disappearance of a bubble of water…like the track of a bird in the sky…like dream visions seen after waking…like the perception of color in one blind from birth…Precisely thus, Manjusri, does a bodhisattva who realizes ultimate selflessness consider all beings.

When we first encounter this kind of teaching, it may feel quite otherworldly and strange. If other people are like bubbles of water or balls of foam, why should we care about them at all? Are Buddhists people who wander through life seeing other people as nothing more than dreams or mirages? What does this mean for us in terms of our daily life and ordinary human relationships?
Manjusri helps us frame our question by querying Vimalakirti further, saying, “Noble sir, if a bodhisattva considers all living beings in such a way, how does he generate the great love toward them?”
It’s helpful in understanding what comes next by putting ourselves in Manjusri’s place, to inhabit his frame of mind. Like Manjusri, we shouldn’t just accept what Vimalakirti said at face value. If our practice is alive and vivid, and we hear Vimalakirti’s description of living beings as balls of foam, a serious question should immediately arise for us, just as it did for Manjusri. We should ask, “How can this be, that living beings are like clouds or foam? My whole life is involved with other people. They seem completely real to me. All my relationships with them depend on that. So what is Vimalakirti talking about?”
If we fail to ask this question, then we are stuck thinking, "Well, living beings are quite insignificant after all, like clouds in the sky. I shouldn't have any particular feeling about them; they’re all just insubstantial." It sounds as though we shouldn’t care. But, like Manjusri, we know intuitively that compassion is the essence of the Dharma, we know that not caring cannot be the right understanding. So Manjusri asks Vimalakirti, “Well, then, how can we love living beings?”
Vimalakirti begins his reply as follows:
" Manjusri, when a bodhisattva considers all living beings in this way, he thinks, ‘Just as I have realized the Dharma, so should I teach it to living beings.’ Thereby, he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings. "

This is very interesting. If we’re alert, we immediately notice the abrupt shift in Vimalakirti’s point of view. He has just finished saying that living beings are as insubstantial as a ball of foam, but when he is challenged to explain how we should love them, suddenly he’s talking about “living beings” in a much more conventional way. In other words, living beings are back! So there seems to be a shift here. What’s this about? As Kumarajiva, an early translator of this Sutra, points out, living beings feel real to themselves, or in his words, they have “the living being feeling.” So, as Bodhisattvas wanting to help them, we immediately inhabit that realm, we go back into that “living being feeling” too. In Vimalakirti’s words, we generate the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings.
Vimalakirti continues:
Thereby, he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings; the love that is peaceful because free of grasping; the love that is not feverish because free of passions. . . the love that is nondual because it is involved neither with the external nor with the internal; the love that is imperturbable because totally ultimate."

Before, when he was likening living beings to balls of foam, Vimalakirti was talking about the understanding of a bodhisattva. But in this passage, with its description of various kinds of spiritual love, we are now clued in to the emotional feeling of a bodhisattva. So this is a hint for us about an important terrain of practice that has to do with our emotional life, with a purified sense of radical openness and compassion. In this passage and the one that follows, Vimalakirti evokes how a person mature in Dharma actually feels.
Vimalakirti continues:
"Thereby, he [the Bodhisattva] generates the love that is firm, its high resolve unbreakable, like a diamond; the love that is pure, purified in its intrinsic nature; the love that is even, its aspirations being equal; the Tathagata's [i.e. the Buddha’s] love, that understands reality; the Buddha's love that causes living beings to awaken from their sleep; the love that is spontaneous because it is fully enlightened spontaneously; the love that is enlightenment because it is unity of experience; the love that has no presumption because it has eliminated attachment and aversion; the love that is great compassion because it infuses the Mahayana with radiance; the love that is never exhausted because it acknowledges voidness and selflessness; the love that is giving because it bestows the gift of Dharma free of the tight fist of a bad teacher ; the love that is effort because it takes responsibility for all living beings; the love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time; the love that is without formality because it is pure in motivation."

Each of these phrases represents some commentary or teaching about the emotional transformation, or the feeling tone of a realized person. So these are all clues not only for ourselves to look at in our own life and ask, What is the quality of our emotional life? What is the quality of our feeling for people? It is also a way to recognize in a potential teacher what qualities we should be looking for.
Now let’s examine just a few of these phrases more closely.

The love that is enlightenment because it is unity of experience; the love that has no presumptions because it has eliminated attachment and aversion. This provides some clue or some guideline about the way in which our way of encountering other people is transformed through practice. In particular, it's turning the conventional notion of the insubstantiality of living beings on its head. What it's basically saying is that an awakening to the insubstantiality of beings and things—a “unity of experience”--actually opens us up emotionally. We might think somehow it detaches us or distances us from living beings, but actually it does the opposite. Or, as Vimalakirti says, we feel the love that has no presumptions because it has eliminated attachment and aversion. In ordinary people, attachment and aversion are opposites; that push-pull is constantly confusing us. So when these are cleared up there is all at once no sense of separation between ourselves and other people. In that realized state, at last we can truly love them without confusion.
My teacher Shunryu Suzuki liked to talk about how Dogen, the 13th century Japanese Zen Master, loved plum blossoms. Dogen would watch the plum blossom budding out in early Spring. He would gaze at it, just appreciating its beauty. An ordinary person might see the plum blossom with “attachment and aversion”—attachment to the plum’s beauty, aversion to its impending fading away. Dogen’s way was detachment, Suzuki Roshi said; to use Vimalakirti’s phrase, it was an attitude “that has no presumptions.” "Detachment," Suzuki Roshi continued, "means to live with people the way you see beauty of the plum. If you want to appreciate the living flower, or the living being, you cannot be selfish. Your mind should be instead in a state of selflessness."
Often I'm asked, "What is this detachment thing in Buddhism? It sounds cold or hard. I don’t like it." Actually, as Suzuki Roshi explains, detachment in Buddhism means just the opposite of cold and hard. The plum flower in Spring is opening very slowly and steadily, but at the same time it's dying. To fully appreciate the plum blossom, to love it, we need to give up our sense of wanting the flower to be beautiful, or wanting it to linger—both of which are involved with our own ideas and desires--and just appreciate the way the flower actually is. So detachment actually means love in its true sense—love, as Vimalakirti says, which has eliminated attachment and aversion. We see the plum blossom and tears come to our eyes. It's just so beautiful, and it's dying, and we’re completely one with that.

. . .It infuses the Mahayana with radiance. Usually, love is thought of as being something passionate, something we have to struggle to control. But in Dharma, says Vimalakirti, through the realization of emptiness, love is transformed into “the love that is great compassion.” Why is it so? Because it infuses the Mahayana with radiance. A teacher mature in Dharma radiates. You can see it, you can feel it. It's very much like the radiance of falling in love, but it's not the ordinary falling in love where we're still involved in attachment and aversion; it's a radiance that is “imperturbable because totally ultimate.”
Earlier the Sutra has explained that Vimalakirti can take his consummate wisdom anywhere. He goes to racetracks to enlighten gamblers; he goes to bars to enlighten drunkards. He's a businessman among businessmen; he participates in government. He goes to schools to educate the children; he goes to hospitals to care for the sick; he goes everywhere. So Vimalakirti embodies that level of practice in which, not only is he imperturbable wherever he goes and whatever he does, but there's a kind of radiance about him. Without the radiance, Buddhism is rather dry. Manjusri could be an example of that. In this passage he comes off as a little dry in his understanding; he's not completely opened up emotionally, he doesn't radiate the way Vimalakirti does.

. . .The love that is without formality because it is pure in motivation. The best teachers teach as the situation presents and requires; they don’t stick to some formal method. In this vein, I am reminded of this story that Ed Brown Sensei, a fellow student of Shunryu Suzuki, tells in one of his books. There was a beautiful rock at Tassajara Zen Monastery in front of the office—everybody loved it, it was a great rock. Ed didn't have a stepping stone for his own cabin, so it was kind of awkward to enter. One day he went to his cabin and the beautiful office stone that everybody loved was right there as a stepping stone for his cabin. He asked around and found out that Suzuki Roshi had ordered it moved there.
When Ed asked Suzuki Roshi about it, Roshi said, "Oh, well, you needed a stone."
Ed was embarrassed, and said, "But Suzuki Roshi, that's the office stone. Everybody loves that stone."
Suzuki Roshi replied, "Oh, we can get another stone for the office. I wanted you to have this stone."
So, it's that quality of noticing. Think how cared for, how loved, Ed must have felt at that moment. The thing that mattered to Suzuki Roshi was taking care of Ed, his relationship to Ed. He was not so concerned about the stone that everybody liked so much. We'll get another stone, was his feeling. The plum blossom of Ed was right in front of the teacher, and so the teacher moved it without formality. It wasn't as though there was a big ceremony around it; he just moved the rock.

. . .The love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time. Is there some proper time for attainment? Let’s take a look at one of the classic Zen koans, the one about wild geese. Ma Tsu and Bai Chang were standing together and some geese flew over.
Ma Tsu asked, "What are they?"
Bai Chang said, "They're wild geese."
Ma Tsu continued, "Where have they gone?"
Bai Chang said, "They've flown away."
Ma Tsu reached out and grabbed Bai Chang's nose and twisted it. He said, "They've been here from the very first."
Bai Chang had a spiritual realization at that moment.
This is Bai Chang's enlightenment story, one of the best-known in Zen. It all sounds very wonderful, quite spontaneous. But actually, these two people have been intimate, in a teacher-student sense, for a long time. Ma Tsu knows Bai Chang, and Bai Chang knows Ma Tsu. Both of them know each other really well. This moment comes, and it looks like an “opportune time.” If a teacher and student know each other very well, then it can be this way. But we should not think of this “moment” as a moment in the ordinary sense. The moment that happens between Ma Tsu and Bai Chang is a timeless moment; it has “been there from the very first.” A commentary to this passage in the Sutra about “attainment at the proper time” says, "It causes attainment at the proper time because it is always the proper time." Every moment is the proper time, but usually we can't see it. It’s a kind of secret for us.
There is a term in Buddhism: "self-secret.” It means there aren't actually any secrets. It's all completely open to us right now. The problem is, we create the secret through our attachment, through our inability to see through things, our hesitation to open up. So practically speaking, the Dharma appears to be a secret. But it's not that way because it's really secret; it's a secret because we make it a secret. So we say “self-secret.” This is a very interesting turn of phrase, a very accurate term to describe what's going on in this Sutra. We get the sense that when Manjusri questions Vimalakirti about the bodhisattva’s great love it’s a bit of a self-secret to him. Manjusri doesn't quite get it because it's not something you get, it's something you have to open up to, that you feel.
Children of a certain age like to play a game where they put something over their head and think they're invisible. They put a bag on their head and say, "You can't see me! You can't see me!" Well, actually, of course we can see them, it's just they can't see us. Self-secret is something like that. We walk around with a bag on our head and we think there's some secret we have to discover so that we can see. Sometimes we're desperate to find out that secret. And all that's required is to take the bag off our head and we realize we can see perfectly well, we just had a bag over our head.

. . .The love that is spontaneous because it is fully enlightened spontaneously. This means “it’s always available.” We can lift the bag off of our head any time. The geese fly over every day, all the time. Any time is a good time for things to open up for Bai Chang. And who is Bai Chang in the story? Bai Chang is you or I; these teaching stories are always about us. The moment of opening up is the so called “opportune moment,” but it is always there. Every day there are geese, every day they are flying by, but how can we really see them just as they are, the way Dogen saw the plum blossom? When we notice the geese afresh we realize, as Ma Tsu says, they've been there from the very first. Where have we been? So, I think the key point of this passage is to help us remember that, in the end, practice really isn't about getting something we didn’t already have from the very first. We might say to ourselves, “I’ll be different once something big happens to me, I’ll be better, happier, more OK.” This understanding is not wrong, exactly, but it is a little narrow. It's not the understanding that Vimalakirti is talking about. That narrow way of thinking is still inside the self-secret, some mumbling from inside the bag over our head.

. . .The love that is nondual because it is involved neither with the external nor with the internal. Once the bag comes off, we’re opened up and can experience the love that is “non-dual because it is involved with neither the external nor the internal.” The term “non-dual” is a kind of spiritual buzzword these days, but practically speaking, “the love that is non-dual” doesn't mean anything unless we’re already inside it. And even when we’re inside it, saying “non-dual” doesn't add that much. As a mere term or phrase, it’s not something that can help us. But if we hear that it's “not involved with the external or the internal,” it's more of a clue. In our ordinary state of consciousness our love is conditional, it has presumptions, we think, “I’m here and you’re there.” That’s the sense of “internal and external.” We fall in and out of that kind of love. The love that is non-dual isn't involved in a sense of “I'm here and you're there.” Instead of living beings being like balls of foam or clouds in the sky, instead of that description seeming like a kind of deficit or a put-down of living beings, it's the opposite. It's a full embrace of living beings--their true quality, the way they actually exist.

So I think the main point of this whole passage is that Manjusri's wisdom is good, but until it's opened up emotionally with Great Love, the Great Metta that Vimalakirti evokes, there's something incomplete about it, there's something not quite finished. It's only when we have this kind of sparkling care for living beings that we can be complete and open in our relationships with other people. And then the Dharma comes alive, not as something to understand, but as something to live, wherever we go, whatever we do.
The radiance Vimalakirti speaks of isn't something we put on or turn on, it's something that we just are. So much so that we may not even notice it. Dogen says, "Don't think that you'll always notice your own enlightenment." The best kind of radiance, the kind that's most effective in helping beings is one that just is there, like a candle, or like a lamp. The lamp doesn’t make a big deal about shining; it isn’t proud of itself. It just shines of its own accord.

To conclude, it can be quite helpful to study a Sutra like this, to look closely at each individual phrase. But we have to remember that in the end the Sutra is not it. In Zen we say, “A special teaching outside the scriptures, no reliance on words and letters.” In the end the best way to understand the Sutra is to practice, to sit in meditation, and then it all comes from inside. We start to speak the Sutra from our own experience, which is just how the Sutra was originally created, as the words of Buddhist adepts trying to help us by sharing their understanding of practice. We shouldn't think that somehow, by scrupulously studying what they say over and over, we're going to get it. The best way, perhaps, is to get it first and then read it.
Suzuki Roshi would sometimes begin a lecture by saying, "Well, whatever I say, it's not going to help you. But I'm supposed to give a lecture, so I’ll say something." And, of course, we always found what he said very helpful. But, typically, when he'd talk about a text like this, he would read the first sentence or two, and talk a bit about the meaning, but before long he’d be talking about something more immediate--the sound of the birds outside, perhaps. He studied hard before every lecture--that was his practice--but his lectures ended up being not so much about the text, but about the practice itself. He was always pointing us back to the need to tell the Sutras from inside our own body and mind. If we just read the sutra from the outside, it's a self-secret. The bag's over our head.
It's good to study, and it's good to be inspired, particularly if we pay close attention to the details of how the Sutra is being told. But in the end, it's somebody else's understanding, not our own. The best way is to study it, respect it, put it down and go back to our meditation cushion, where the real work happens, the real penetration, the real opening that will make us realize that we are Buddha, we’ve always been Buddha, we will always be Buddha. Just like a plum blossom, opening up and closing down and falling off. It’s a plum blossom all the way through.
This, I think, is the best way to understand old Vimalakirti, Manjusri’s questions, and the Great Love of a Bodhisattva.


Chikudo Lew Richmond is an ordained disciple of Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki, and a lineage holder in that tradition. He is the author of three books: WORK AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE, A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction on the Job; HEALING LAZARUS, A Buddhist’s Journey from Near Death to New Life; and A WHOLE LIFE’S WORK, Living Passionately, Growing Spiritually. Lew leads The Vimala Sangha, based in Mill Valley, CA--www.vimalasangha.org.

[Quotations from The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra are from the Robert Thurman translation.]