Vimalakirti's Sick Room - A Bodhisattva's Contemplations on Illness, Compassion, and Wisdom

Vimalakīrti's Sick Room

"Because all living beings are subject to illness, I am ill as well.
When all living beings are no longer ill, my illness will come to an end."

Vimalakīrti



We turn here to the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, an early Mahāyāna Buddhist text with origins traceable to approximately 100 CE, shortly after the life of Jesus Christ. Its content orbits around the layman Vimalakīrti while on his deathbed, confined to a tiny sick room yet visited by countless beings who somehow manage to all squeeze inside, listening to him teach on subjects ranging from illusions to non-dualism and beyond. While obviously not following the guidelines of social distancing, the story of Vimalakīrti's sick room is still especially relevant to the present pandemic.

Illness and Compassion

The Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra takes place primarily in a single space, a sick room occupied by the householder Vimalakīrti, who is described as a wealthy devotee. Vimalakīrti is depicted as entirely bed-bound, afflicted with illness, practically on the verge of death. While initially the exact nature of his illness remains unclear, Vimalakīrti later explains it through analogy to the existential unease afflicting sentient beings.

Because all living beings are subject to illness, I am ill as well. When all living beings are no longer ill, my illness will come to an end. Why? A Bodhisattva, because of (his vow to save) living beings, enters the realm of birth and death which is subject to illness; if they are all cured, the Bodhisattva will no longer be ill.

So long as we are subject to birth and death, we are subject to illness. A bodhisattva, an awakened being or a being in the process of awakening who willingly remains in the rounds of cyclic existence in order to liberate other beings, is only ill insofar as other beings remain ill. She vows to remain by their side, through sickness and health, and to assist them in awakening from the dream until all are free. Thus, Vimalakīrti remains bound to his sick room yet continues to teach living beings, millions of whom come to his bedside.



Illness is no impediment to the bodhisattva's continued service. In fact, in dialogue, a close, even causal association is drawn between compassion and illness.

Mañjuśrī asked: “What is the cause of a Bodhisattva’s illness?”
Vimalakīrti replied: “A Bodhisattva’s illness comes from (his) great compassion.”

Given this association, the bodhisattva path may seem undesirable for one's own good. If a bodhisattva's compassion leads to illness, then isn't that technically a form of self-harm? Indeed, we find in the modern era that compassion fatigue and burn-out increasingly afflict individuals in service-oriented professions, including healthcare, especially in light of the present pandemic. Out of compassion, they may put themselves in harm's way, risking their health and lives in order to care for the sick and ailing, occasionally succumbing to infection and dying as a result. While the bodhisattva does not flee from sickness and death, she must also exercise wise discernment while serving beings rather than recklessly throw herself into danger. Hence the appearance of Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom, in dialogue with Vimalakīrti.

Wisdom and Compassion

An essential coupling in much of Buddhism is that of wisdom and compassion. When wisdom is lacking, compassion is easily depleted as a result of its haphazard deployment. One may even lose life and limb in the process. When compassion is lacking, wisdom remains stale and lifeless. Occasionally understood by Buddhist practitioners as the two wings of a bird, wisdom and compassion are complementary qualities to be cultivated, especially on the bodhisattva path.

The choice to enter into the realm of sickness out of compassion must be tempered with wisdom in order to succeed in freeing beings. Compassion without wisdom would only perpetuate the cycle of illness, whereby both patient and doctor succumb to infection and die. Thus, the wisdom teachings of emptiness, as well as discernment in conduct, are invoked throughout the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra as a means of striking an appropriate balance. Although at a literal level, it may not seem that packing millions of beings into a tiny sick room is a medically wise or even compassionate course of action, Vimalakīrti clarifies that the illness he speaks of is metaphorical, a spiritual illness, which may be cured through contemplative practice. The beings in attendance manifest with ease, free of disease, in an entirely contemplative capacity.

While we pause here for the time being, we conclude with a brief reflection on the meaning and implications of bodhicitta, literally the mind of awakening. Such a mind is imbued with both wisdom and compassion, serving as the foundation for the bodhisattva's vows in service of all beings. As long as beings learn from the suffering that characterizes the present pandemic rather than attempting to mask its visceral reality, the seeds of bodhicitta may germinate for the freedom of all. For Vimalakīrti's confrontation with illness, bodhicitta informed by both wisdom and compassion was key.

Neoplatonist Contemplations - Withstanding Rain & Wind Across Winter Storms

"It is rather like some farmer who, having sown seeds or even planted a tree, is always setting all the things right that winter rains and sustained frosts and wind-storms have damaged."

Plotinus

Neoplatonist Contemplations

Shifting gears momentarily, we turn to the Enneads, a collection of contemplations by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus. Especially noteworthy among his reflections is a passage that speaks to multiple intersecting themes, ranging from contemplative ecology to resilience in times of hardship.

A Hellenistic philosopher native to Egypt, Plotinus is credited as the founder of Neoplatonism, a new phase in the tradition inspired by the esteemed Greek philosopher Plato. He ventured to modern-day Iran to study Persian and Indian philosophy before retiring to Rome. Plotinus composed the Enneads on a variety of topics, including ethics, cosmology, psychology, epistemology, and natural philosophy, among others.

Relevant to the ongoing environmental crisis and the more recently sparked pandemic, we here investigate the long winter to which Plotinus alludes in a short section from the Enneads, briefly examining the means toward a spring thaw and recovery.

Winter Storms

Broadly, Plotinus distinguishes between three aspects of existence: Soul, Intellect, and the "One." Our passage of interest pertains to the tendency of the soul to "administer the universe," often via comparison, analysis, rumination, and other activities, all overwhelmingly discursive. In characterizing the soul, Plotinus draws on a permacultural analogy.

Keeping a watchful eye over both the spiritual and terrestrial domains, the soul seeks to put objects in their proper order, similar to a farmer mending damages in her garden left by the cold season or inclement weather.

Much of the world remains in an extended winter storm of sorts, characterized by frozen economies, dwindling ecosystems, and a bitter epidemic at large. Interestingly, Plotinus situates the soul below the intellect, and the intellect below the "One." Each is, of course, related to the others. While the soul is concerned with satisfying its externally oriented desires through discursive activity, the intellect contemplates in a less discursive capacity. The so-called "One" is the first principle from which everything else derives, the "Good" to which everything else returns.

Despite the soul's limitations, its acting as a farmer is an image that lends itself to a contemplative ecology with implications for cultivating both mental and physical terrain.

While not the focus of his work, that things can even be set right at all despite damage from winter rains and sustained frosts and wind-storms opens several doors pertaining directly to the challenges we presently face.

On Withstanding Rain And Wind

Although the text itself does not speak explicitly on withstanding rain and wind, or the various other sorts of storms the soul inevitably encounters in its efforts to administrate the universe, we here reference the pandemic and ecological crisis it appears to have eclipsed.

First, the soul's efforts at setting things right ought to be critically scrutinized. Given that its activity, according to Plotinus, is inspired by an effort to satisfy material desires, we should be wary of efforts to fix the present situation through superficial bandages. The causes of these ecological and epidemiological disasters must be deeply probed rather than merely covered up in the name of economic prosperity.

Second, if the farmer's activity is informed by wisdom and thus complementary to the intellect's reunion and reintegration with the first principle (a metaphysical topic deserving of further investigation elsewhere), then we must thoroughly equip ourselves with the knowledge and skills necessary to restore life to frost-bitten, rain-ravaged, wind-torn farmland. Nothing less than the full commitment to revolutionize all systems, both personal and political, from the inside out will do.

Perhaps a similar message of hopeful resilience is echoed further by an additional section from the Enneads, with which we conclude.

"His suffering will not be pitiable, but the light in him will continue to shine like the light of a lantern when the wind is blowing outside in a great fierceness of rain and winter storm."

Plotinus

Sick and Withered - Wandering Dream Fields Via Japanese Haiku - Part III on Basho

Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
the withered fields.

旅に病んで
夢は枯れ野を
かけめぐる

Matsuo Bashō

Bashō

The most famous of all poets in Edo period Japan, Matsuo Bashō enjoyed a relatively privileged childhood, his father being of the samurai class or perhaps an estate farmer of the same relative standing. When Bashō was 12 years old, his father died and the young boy was passed on to a local feudal lord, whose son, Yoshitada, had taken up the aristocratic practice of composing verses. Bashō studied with Yoshitada, learning the art of haiku. When Bashō was 22, his mentor Yoshitada died, and Bashō moved once again, although exactly where remains unknown.

Bashō's forty-nine years can be divided into phases. In his twenties, he showed the promise of a budding haikuist, while in his thirties he became a prolific writer and teacher, studying Chinese poetry while dabbling in both Daoism and Zen. He is credited with reinventing Japanese haiku, breaking from the status quo and imbuing his art with new life. Even so, by his forties, Bashō grew sick of the literary life and set off on pilgrimage, documenting his voyages in a travel journal, which developed into a literary genre in Japan. His travelogue, interspersed with poetry, known as Narrow Road to the Far North, continues to be widely read.

Half literary celebrity, half homeless pilgrim, Bashō was familiar with multiple intersecting worlds. Near the end of his life, while roaming in solitude, his poetry began to increasingly reflect a sense of loneliness, intense concentration, and lightness at once. Written shortly before his death, Bashō's final haiku distills the essence of each of these themes. We thus contemplate its relevance to contemporary contexts.

Sick on a Journey

Opening the haiku, Bashō writes of being "sick on a journey," which we may read in several ways. On one hand, although quite well-off as a result of both the social class afforded to him by birth and a successful haiku career, Bashō had grown tired of the lime light, which he never fully enjoyed. Perhaps wishing to reinvent himself, much like he had reinvented the art of haiku during his literary career, he sought a simpler existence through solitary pilgrimage. In this phase of his life, Bashō traveled light and consumed minimally, shaving his head and donning rag robes. At the same time, Bashō had fallen fatally ill while on pilgrimage, eventually meeting an early death.

In an era of pandemic, we too encounter an opportunity to reinvent ourselves as the world undergoes huge, largely devastating shifts in momentum. Some of us—perhaps sick of structural inequities stemming from long-accumulating cracks in the foundations of society that are increasingly brought to light by the virus—may see the present situation as a momentous occasion for regenerative undertakings in ecology. Sick in more ways than one, we face a long and daunting journey ahead if we are to collectively recreate a sustainable future, a feat Bashō seems to have undertaken as well on his own terms.

My Dreams Wander

Bashō continues his near-death reflections by observing, "my dreams wander," suggesting the movement of his own mind's creations. While on pilgrimage, anyone's contemplative musings are likely to be stirred. The impressions left by wandering unfamiliar paths inevitably imprint upon the unconscious and express themselves through dreams, where creative energy blooms freely. Perhaps Bashō here alludes to his poetry itself, which he hopes will wander freely after he dies. Knowing his own death to be fast encroaching, he composes this haiku as a departing reflection, possibly intending to live on through his poetry in the dreams of others.

During times of novelty and uncertainty, dreams are the boundary-less container in which creative energy stirs. As many seem to be experiencing, the mind entertains myriads of possibilities in the depths of night, some perhaps soothing, others the cause of demonic fright. Present pandemic, traumas from the recent or distant past, and hypothetical futures invade and populate our dreams. On other occasions, visions of regeneration and flourishing may arise, whether while waking or sleeping. In these times of groundless fog, obscuring clarity and obstructing progress, may our dreams teach us without causing us incapacitating stagnation or regression. May they wander freely, and may where ever they happen to take us impart wisdom.

The Withered Fields

At the poem's conclusion, Bashō mentions "the withered fields" that he witnesses on his sick journey. In fact, Bashō's dreams wander these withered fields. Whether referring to the land itself, the figurative terrain across which his life has wound its course, or even his own decrepit body, beset by illness, or mind, ravaged by regrets, a sense of desolation pervades the scene. Nonetheless, Bashō's dreams appear eager to wander through such desolation.

Rather than turn away from the unpleasant realities that face us, we too may heal from letting our dreams wander the withered fields, intimately exploring the wreckage often concealed from us. Death and destruction plague our present reality. They shattered populations extending even further back than documented history shows. Such devastating events will no doubt continue to plague us into the future. By wandering their withered fields, perhaps we may trace the scars of the past and learn from them as we journey onward. Despite his own sickness and the withered nature of these fields, Bashō's dreams continued to wander, unimpeded. Perhaps ours may too in spite of all the carnage.

To Be Continued