འཕགས་པ་དྲ་མ་མད་པར་གྲགས་པས་བསྟན་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.8

intro.8

Śāriputra again becomes an object of mind-opening critique when, at the opening of the ninth chapter, Vimalakīrti catches him wondering how everyone present is going to eat before noon. Vimalakīrti miraculously makes everyone perceive another distant buddhafield, where the Tathāgata Gandhottama­kūṭa and his bodhisattvas are about to take their meal. Vimalakīrti emanates a bodhisattva, a messenger who goes to that buddhafield and invites all the bodhisattvas there back to the house in Vaiśālī, bringing a vessel of their miraculous, highly fragrant food for the assembly to enjoy. Vimalakīrti elicits from the visiting bodhisattvas an account of how Gandhottama­kūṭa teaches the Dharma only through perfumes, and explains to them how the Buddha Śākyamuni has to use much grosser expedients to tame the wild and difficult beings of his own buddhafield, the Sahā world. The visitors are surprised and impressed by the Buddha’s compassion. They express the wish to pay him their respects and Vimalakīrti, in the tenth chapter, magically transports the entire assembly, including the visiting bodhisattvas, into the Buddha’s presence in Āmrapālī’s grove so that they may do so. A discussion between the Buddha, Vimalakīrti, and Ānanda of the great variety of methods used to express the Dharma in different buddhafields ensues, and the Buddha gives the visitors, before they depart for their own buddhafield, a long teaching on “the destructible and indestructible,” explaining how bodhisattvas should neither destroy what is compounded nor rest in what is uncompounded.