Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;The Richness of the Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutraand#8221; is an introduction to one of the seven themes in the sutra, The Way of Non-Duality, from chapter nine of the work, The Dharma Door of Non-Duality. The full the talk and#8220;The Way of Non-Dualityand#8221; was given in 1979 as part of the series and#8220;The Inconceivable Emancipation and#8211; Themes from the Vimalakirti Nirdeshaand#8221; and will be featured in Saturdayand#8217;s podcast.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
The Richness of the Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] Mr. Chairman and friends, and enemies if I have any. [laughter] Tonight, as you've already heard, tonight we come to our sixth talk. And when it's finished in an hour, rather than a quarter of time, we should be three quarters of the way through our present autumn series of talks. And we will have dealt with six out of our seven themes from the méliquériti nérdesha, a Mahayana-buddhist scripture. By this time, we've got, I think, some idea of the nature, of the méliquériti nérdesha. We've had, perhaps, even some experience of the magic of a Mahayana-sutra. And one of the things that we've noticed, I think, is that the méliquériti nérdesha is a very rich work indeed. It contains quite a number of different elements. It contains pieces of straightforward doctrinal exposition in which some of the profoundest philosophical themes of Buddhism are Adambrated. It contains also passages of lavish description, including descriptions of all sorts of magical feats and happenings. It contains poetry, even poetry, in the more formal sense of the term. It contains specimens of biography, and autobiography, and reminiscence. We might even say it contains episodes of Haidrama. And it even contains, believe it or not, quite a bit of humour. So that altogether, it is a very rich, a very complex work indeed. Especially when one considers how short, in fact, the méliquériti nérdesha is. It consists of only fourteen quite brief chapters, and the English translation. Now the whole work consists of about 100 pages, that's all. The méliquériti nérdesha is no longer, in fact, than a long short story. Death at the same time hits full of insights, hits full of inspiration. And it brings together quite a number of very important themes, as I've called them. And in the course of this series, we've time to consider only seven of these themes, taken from seven different chapters of the work. So, tonight, we come to the way of non-duality. And this theme, tonight's theme, is taken from chapter nine of the work, which is entitled, The Dharma Doha of Non-duality, The Dharma Doha of Non-duality. Last week's theme, most of you I think will recall, was history versus myth in man's quest for meaning. And it was taken from chapter five, where Vimaliquirti and Manjushri come face to face, where they have their vigorous dialectical exchanges, where Vimaliquirti explains that he is sick because beings are sick, and where he explains also how a sick bodhisattva should control his mind. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny. And thank you. [music] [music] [music] [ Silence ]