The Zen Center that I attend from time to time offers an intensive study period in the spring and fall in the Buddhist tradition of Ango. Participants are asked to intensify their daily practice in a number of ways, including increased dedication to sitting practice, body practice and a daily concentration and mindfulness practice. In addition, a Buddhist text is chosen for all participants to study together as part of a general theme for the Ango session. The program is open to anyone and also includes participation in retreats and other events, as well as art practice as another avenue to engage the theme and focus of the training session.
I signed up for the Ango held this past fall. The text chosen for the program was the Vimalakirti Sutra, a classical text in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism written sometime on or by the first century CE. I found the text to be very profound and engaging right off the bat and have been referring back to it and re-reading portions of it ever since. So I thought it would be of use, to myself at least, to work through the text and post thoughts and reactions to it here. This is really the first Buddhist text I have read in any depth and am just working to a basic understanding of many of the concepts, so this is certainly not a scholarly project! But I have found it to be highly useful to approaching practice and understanding the aims of it. So I can offer that, at least, for what it’s worth!
The zen center chose to use Robert Thurman’s English translation as the primary text, which is one of several available. I found the body of his translation on-line here. The text itself can also be found in various e-book collections. The link above and the ebook versions I found do not include notes and other background information found in the published version. So I did buy that too after reading through the text a couple of times and found that to be a very worthwhile purchase!
The Vimalakirti Sutra appears to be a written text, though the original Sanskrit text has not been found to date. The text has been translated to Chinese several times dating back to 650 CE and earlier. The work was also translated to Tibetan in the ninth century. Thurman used the Tibetan version to anchor his translation to English but referred to other English and French translations of the Chinese versions.
I’ve not looked at other translations thus far, and would not be in a position to judge one version over another in any case! But I did find Thurman’s translation to be very moving. The footnotes indicate many passages that were modified or added or missing in other versions over time, so I think he does truly try to capture the essence of the work. There are some talks by Thurman on the sutra available on You Tube and other sites where he discusses how his written translation was his interpretation at that time, so I think it is fair to say that any translation is subject to relativity! And it appears that the text was subject to some change over time in the snapshots provided by the various translations. Very fitting, I suppose, for a Buddhist teaching!
The text is not very long – about 35,000 words. Thurman organizes it into 12 chapters plus an epilogue. When I first got the text, I copied each chapter into an email and sent it to myself one chapter at a time. With Google Mail, I find I can enter a key word or two and find passages of interest within the context of my Inbox! So from here, I’ll post on each chapter in a separate blog entry with some thoughts, notes and many questions. Now I’ll get to work on Chapter 1, Purification of the Buddha-Field.
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