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Vimalakirti & the Awakened Heart
The author creates a chapter by chapter commentary on the Vimalakirti sutra, a Buddhist text written around the beginning of the Mahayana. The book is an aid to meditators.
- GenresBuddhism
107 pages, Paperback
Published November 13, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 26, 2018
Vimalakirti and the Awakened Heart
In fall of 2017 I taught a six-week class on the Vimalakirti sutra where we read the text of the sutra and discussed the many teachings contained therein. We read from Robert Thurman's translation (The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture) and from this gorgeous book of reflections and elaborations on the sutra by Roshi Joan Sutherland.
The Sutra that Vimalakirti Speaks is an ancient (~2nd cent. CE) Mahayana Buddhist text written by Indian hands featuring an awakened lay teacher, Vimalakirti, who lives during the time of the Buddha. It presents the major teachings of Mahayana Buddhism in a precise, dramatic, and even humorous form. For two millennia it has enjoyed immense popularity among Buddhists in India, central/SE Asia, Japan, and especially China where its stories were the basis for a style in art and literature prevalent during several centuries.
Mahayana sutras are not easy reading and although the Vimalakirti sutra is shorter than many, it is still thick with fantastical Mahayana language and imagery woven into the story line. Roshi Joan's book brings much of this down to earth and squarely into daily life showing how these esoteric teachings can be applied by each of us in today's world. Everyone in the class adored the book and was so glad to have Roshi Joan's insightful and profound reflections help them contextualize, understand, and apply the teachings. There are no references, no bibliography, and only a few footnotes so this is not an academic book but rather a collection of her teachings on the sutra.
Sutherland's book roughly follows the sutra's chapters and story line, but it is very fluid and free-flowing, riffing on various themes from each of the sutra chapters. Each chapter of Joan's book is chalk-full of nuggets of wisdom drawn from the story, from Vimalakirti's illness of a bodhisattva, the meaning of "the pure land", Vimalakirti's small compassion and great compassion, and the teachings of another major character in the story, the Goddess, whose playful teaching addresses the transcendence of gender, and a profound teaching on the meaning of silence. Throughout the sutra and Joan's book, there are teachings on nonduality, a central theme of Mahayana teaching. She also brings her extensive knowledge of the Zen koan tradition to bear on the sutra's teachings.
Of interest to Zen students: Vimalakirti, although an Indian, can be considered a proto-Zen Master (apart from the Buddha himself) in that he specializes in a type of subtle discourse that lucidly balances on the razor's edge of paradox yet is also highly logically coherent. Also, his message is particularly appealing to our secular age because he was a man of the world, not a monk or a saint. Vimalakirti helps clear up the confusions surrounding the central Buddhist concept of emptiness, presenting it not as nihilism but rather, in the translator's words, "as the joyous and compassionate commitment to living beings born from an unwavering confrontation with the inconceivable profundity of ultimate reality."
I highly recommend Roshi Joan Sutherland's book but only if you also read the Vimalakirti sutra in concert with it. If you're looking for more background on the sutra, I can also recommend Sangharakshita's (Inconceivable Emancipation: Themes from the Vimalakirti-Nirdesa) which brings its own important background understanding to the sutra.
Roshi Joan asks that if you want to purchase her book that you do so through her website since her organization will get the bulk of the proceeds: https://joansutherlanddharmaworks.org....
In fall of 2017 I taught a six-week class on the Vimalakirti sutra where we read the text of the sutra and discussed the many teachings contained therein. We read from Robert Thurman's translation (The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture) and from this gorgeous book of reflections and elaborations on the sutra by Roshi Joan Sutherland.
The Sutra that Vimalakirti Speaks is an ancient (~2nd cent. CE) Mahayana Buddhist text written by Indian hands featuring an awakened lay teacher, Vimalakirti, who lives during the time of the Buddha. It presents the major teachings of Mahayana Buddhism in a precise, dramatic, and even humorous form. For two millennia it has enjoyed immense popularity among Buddhists in India, central/SE Asia, Japan, and especially China where its stories were the basis for a style in art and literature prevalent during several centuries.
Mahayana sutras are not easy reading and although the Vimalakirti sutra is shorter than many, it is still thick with fantastical Mahayana language and imagery woven into the story line. Roshi Joan's book brings much of this down to earth and squarely into daily life showing how these esoteric teachings can be applied by each of us in today's world. Everyone in the class adored the book and was so glad to have Roshi Joan's insightful and profound reflections help them contextualize, understand, and apply the teachings. There are no references, no bibliography, and only a few footnotes so this is not an academic book but rather a collection of her teachings on the sutra.
Sutherland's book roughly follows the sutra's chapters and story line, but it is very fluid and free-flowing, riffing on various themes from each of the sutra chapters. Each chapter of Joan's book is chalk-full of nuggets of wisdom drawn from the story, from Vimalakirti's illness of a bodhisattva, the meaning of "the pure land", Vimalakirti's small compassion and great compassion, and the teachings of another major character in the story, the Goddess, whose playful teaching addresses the transcendence of gender, and a profound teaching on the meaning of silence. Throughout the sutra and Joan's book, there are teachings on nonduality, a central theme of Mahayana teaching. She also brings her extensive knowledge of the Zen koan tradition to bear on the sutra's teachings.
Of interest to Zen students: Vimalakirti, although an Indian, can be considered a proto-Zen Master (apart from the Buddha himself) in that he specializes in a type of subtle discourse that lucidly balances on the razor's edge of paradox yet is also highly logically coherent. Also, his message is particularly appealing to our secular age because he was a man of the world, not a monk or a saint. Vimalakirti helps clear up the confusions surrounding the central Buddhist concept of emptiness, presenting it not as nihilism but rather, in the translator's words, "as the joyous and compassionate commitment to living beings born from an unwavering confrontation with the inconceivable profundity of ultimate reality."
I highly recommend Roshi Joan Sutherland's book but only if you also read the Vimalakirti sutra in concert with it. If you're looking for more background on the sutra, I can also recommend Sangharakshita's (Inconceivable Emancipation: Themes from the Vimalakirti-Nirdesa) which brings its own important background understanding to the sutra.
Roshi Joan asks that if you want to purchase her book that you do so through her website since her organization will get the bulk of the proceeds: https://joansutherlanddharmaworks.org....
December 31, 2017
beautiful prose, many embedded lessons. a book to savor and/or read outloud.
July 7, 2021
Excellent !
Want to read
December 7, 2021I am a Tibetan student and very want to read this book. Please let me download or read this book.
sopachentsa@gmail.com
sopachentsa@gmail.com
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2025
Sutherland has a gift for making the obscure, thoughtfully understandable. I think this book will give me guidance for some time.
December 27, 2016
Review of Vimalakirti & the Awakened Heart
A book written by Joan Sutherland
"So how do you see God? Do you realize that everything you see is God?"
- Taizan Maezumi, in the talk "Pure in Heart"
"The Sutra that Vimalakirti Speaks" is part of Mahayana literature. It expresses a turning away from the model of spiritual work purposed toward abandoning the sea of suffering: one pays for a ticket to get off the ride. The Mahayana approach is to vow to share in sorrow and joy. As an example, a meal gatha from the Tiep Hien:
"Having eaten, I am satisfied and content. I vow to live for the benefit of all beings."
The Sutra has a faerytale quality. Miraculous events occur right and left: other dimensions, a Goddess, amazing space management, accessing other lands... . And yet, the story revolves around an ordinary man, sick in bed, receiving guests.
The book is 107 pages. The cover by Laura Star is beautiful. Joan's writing style is exhilarating and gorgeous. She is completely suffused with koan tradition, the author of Acequias & Gates, a reference for koan work. The central event of the sutra, Vimalakirti's silence, is included in the Blue Cliff Record, a koan collection. Joan explores implications of the sutra chapter by chapter. Meditators can find encouragement and direction throughout the commentary.
[excerpt]
"Clouds gather on North Mountain,
rain falls on South Mountain.
Whatever we're doing,
we're doing it within this vast field of interpermeation."
[end excerpt]
URL: http://joansutherlanddharmaworks.org/
A book written by Joan Sutherland
"So how do you see God? Do you realize that everything you see is God?"
- Taizan Maezumi, in the talk "Pure in Heart"
"The Sutra that Vimalakirti Speaks" is part of Mahayana literature. It expresses a turning away from the model of spiritual work purposed toward abandoning the sea of suffering: one pays for a ticket to get off the ride. The Mahayana approach is to vow to share in sorrow and joy. As an example, a meal gatha from the Tiep Hien:
"Having eaten, I am satisfied and content. I vow to live for the benefit of all beings."
The Sutra has a faerytale quality. Miraculous events occur right and left: other dimensions, a Goddess, amazing space management, accessing other lands... . And yet, the story revolves around an ordinary man, sick in bed, receiving guests.
The book is 107 pages. The cover by Laura Star is beautiful. Joan's writing style is exhilarating and gorgeous. She is completely suffused with koan tradition, the author of Acequias & Gates, a reference for koan work. The central event of the sutra, Vimalakirti's silence, is included in the Blue Cliff Record, a koan collection. Joan explores implications of the sutra chapter by chapter. Meditators can find encouragement and direction throughout the commentary.
[excerpt]
"Clouds gather on North Mountain,
rain falls on South Mountain.
Whatever we're doing,
we're doing it within this vast field of interpermeation."
[end excerpt]
URL: http://joansutherlanddharmaworks.org/
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews