○○ V I M A L K I R T I ○○
Vimalkirti was one of the strangest people who came in contact with Gautam Buddha. He never became a sannyasin -- he remained a layman -- but even Gautam Buddha respected him.
He used to come to listen to Gautam Buddha, and he was meditating, but he could not see that there was any need to renounce the world and become a sannyasin and a beggar.
He was such a genius that he was the first layman to become enlightened. The first sannyasin to become enlightened was Manjushri, and the first layman to become enlightened was Vimalkirti.
But Vimalkirti was a very strange person. For a few days he had not come, and Buddha was concerned ... is he sick, or is there some trouble? -- why is he not coming? So he asked that one of his disciples should offer to go to Vimalkirti -- he lived in the city -- to enquire about his health and why he is not coming.
But out of ten thousand sannyasins, nobody wanted to go, for the simple reason that even to say hello to Vimalkirti was dangerous! He would make it a point of great discussion -- "To whom are you saying hello?
Are you certain I am not a dream? Can you give me any evidence that I am not a dream? If you see me in a dream, will you recognize that it is a dream and not reality?"
He used to put everybody in such a corner -- on any point. If you didn't say anything and you simply tried to avoid him, he would say, "Hey, where are you going? Is there any place to go? The truth is right here now. Where are you going?" He had tortured almost everybody.
Finally one disciple said, "I will go. Whatever he does I will take it easy, but he has to be asked after." When the disciple went he said, "Gautam Buddha has sent me to enquire about your health. As I came here, just outside your house, your family said that you are sick."
Rather than answering him, the sick Vimalkirti said, "Sick? About whom are you talking?
I don't exist at all, how can I be sick? To be sick you first have to exist -- what do you think? I have disappeared long ago in my meditations. So just go back and tell Gautam Buddha, 'Vimalkirti is no more -- there is no question of sickness or health.'" The disciple was very much disturbed, because if he tells Gautam Buddha that Vimalkirti is no more, he will think that perhaps he has died. So he told Vimalkirti, "This statement can be misunderstood. If I say simply that Vimalkirti is no more, the obvious meaning will be that Vimalkirti is dead."
He said, "That's the right meaning! Vimalkirti is dead. It was a phony name which disappeared with meditation.
When I was born I was not Vimalkirti, and when I was reborn in meditation I again became nameless, formless -- it is perfectly right. You can even say that Vimalkirti is dead."
The disciple said, "That is too much, because you are alive and I will be in trouble.
Tomorrow you may appear before Buddha, and he will ask me, 'What were you saying?'" And in this way a whole sutra, Vimalkirti's Hridaya Sutra, has developed between the disciple and Vimalkirti.
He is so clear that you cannot catch hold of him, you cannot grasp him. He is so vast that whatever you say, you are immediately caught.
OSHO...☆☆☆
The Great Zen Master TaHui
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