Talk:Vimalakirti Sutra

message: T 474.14.519-536 by Zhi Qian, not Lokaksema, the data from the DDB is wrong. Check here  --Xinstalker (talk) 23:07, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: 佛說維摩詰經

message: Apparently a Theravadin got into this page and basically rewrote the summary, stating that it's all "highly polemical", and was indignant because the Buddha's disciples don't show the most wisdom in the sutra. Of course, all terms are in Pali as well, which is a dead give-away. They bring their own language around with them everywhere, even when they are defacing Mahayana pages.
The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra basically reflects the standard world view of Mahayana Buddhism, and that is bound to offend some uptight individuals. When it was written, of course it was skillful means to demonstrate higher wisdom than what was conventional at the time. To do that, the Mahayana sutras always burn bridges, killing off not only conceptualization, but cutting down anything that we might be clinging to (including notions of holiness and greatness). Then, as well as now, there will be Buddhists who can't deal with this sort of thing.
An example of how the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra does this is when Vimalakirti tells Purna Maitreyaniputra not to put dirty food in clean bowls. In other words, not to give lesser teachings to people with open minds who can handle the higher wisdom. This is likening the teachings on suffering and liberation to dirty food. However, it is entirely in line with the rest of the Mahayana sutras, in which the Buddha always teaches the simplest higher routes first, and then lower routes when his students do not understand. To an outsider like a Theravadin, it's simply scary polemics, but what else can we expect from a person with such preconceptions?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tengu800 (talk • contribs) 14:06, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Your deletion of the quoted material was inappropriate. The scholars who have worked on this sutra and who are quoted--Watson, Garfield, McCrae and Mather--are all Mahayana specialists, and they all agree the sutra is polemical and say so clearly. Their work appears in reputable publications, all of which are entirely encyclopedic. There is no basis for deletion of this material.Sylvain1972 (talk) 19:39, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Except that there's far too much of it. See the bullets under WP:QUOTEFARM, particularly: "quoteboxes should generally be avoided as they draw special attention to the opinion of one source, and present that opinion as though Wikipedia endorses it." The point of view that this sutra is polemical is a valid one, but that POV should be presented in a summary style with citations of references that support it, not in a litany of lengthy quotations of those references. Of course, opposing views should be similarly presented, to the degree that they are notable. /ninly(talk) 05:08, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

text: Wikipedia:Quotations is a project page, "not a Wikipedia policy or guideline," so it has no particular authority in this discussion, and I happen to think it is poorly worded and wrongheaded. Further, in this case, there are no opposing views, as far as I can see. Certainly none have been presented. To the contrary, a consensus of at least four scholars has been demonstrated showing agreement that the sutra is polemical and portrays Hinayana characters negatively. One could hardly expect otherwise, because this is straightforward and abundantly clear.Sylvain1972 (talk) 17:47, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Theravadin Vandalism

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Vimalakirti Sutra. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20150415131330/http://theordinaryenlightenment.asuscomm.com:8080/works.htm to http://theordinaryenlightenment.asuscomm.com:8080/works.htm
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.bdkamerica.org/digital/dBET_Srimala_Vimalakirti_2004.pdf
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.shin-ibs.edu/documents/BL2/04Nattier.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 01:40, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I spend several hours revising this article. My changes were substantial, and the article was almost entirely transformed when I finished. I tried to make sure that I did not eliminate anything that was not actually historically or empirically incorrect in the process. I now understand that through my inexperience with Wikipedia, I did not adequately explain or justify individual changes as I worked, and so I would now like to try and give a summary of all the changes I made, in the hope that other users will respect them and not arbitrarily reverse them.
1. The former draft contained various historical or factual inaccuracies. For instance, it stated incorrectly that the earliest (lost, and actually probably legendary) Chinese translation was by Lokaksema, but in fact it was ascribed to Yan Fotiao. I corrected, and provided further information about the reasons that the Yan Fotiao version should be regarded as spurious (it was first "documented" in the unreliable Lidai sanbao ji of Fei Changfang, T2034). Another example is the titles of the text: the old draft persistently called the text the "Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra", but this title does not exist in primary versions: the actual title, as documented in the rediscovered Skt, is "Vimalakirti-nirdesa". The old draft even had inaccurate Tibetan and devanagari titles multiplying the illusion that this title was historically founded. 
2. The old draft gave information on ancient and modern versions of the text, and translations in various languages, in a scattered and disordered fashion, with considerable repetition. I reorganised this information into what I regard as a logical order, namely (1) Sanskrit (the closest thing we have to the original); (2) Chinese translations (our oldest extant translations); (3) Tibetan; (4) modern languages (esp. English and one French); (5) other languages (including Japanese). I also supplemented this information, and gave considerably better, more accurate references for many of the texts concerned. I also added to this section a reference to Nattier's scholarly article discussing four of the modern English translations. 
Another, more minor instance in which the old draft was somewhat poorly organised was in its discussion of the impact of the text on the Chan/Zen tradition, including the reference to the text in the practice of naming the post and quarters of Zen abbots. I concentrated this discussion, too, in a single place.
3. The old draft had only a very scant synopsis of the text of about four paragraphs, which omitted many details. I replaced this with a chapter-by-chapter summary, which, though still reasonably succinct (given the length and richness of the text itself), painted a much more accurate and informative picture of the content and nature of the text. This summary was my own original work, but based upon close examination of, and familiarity with, two modern translations, along with Sanskrit and two Chinese premodern versions. I also consulted, but did not slavishly copy, the summary in Felbur's article in the Brill Encyclopedia of Buddhism (to which I also added a reference to my revised draft), to ensure I did not omit any key details.
4. I greatly expanded the discussion of East Asian commentaries (no commentaries exist in other sub-traditions, as I noted in my revision). The earlier draft only included a random reference to one of these numerous works, that of Prince Shotoku (and the article did not note that it is ascribed to him). I included in this expanded discussion a list of the most important commentaries, focusing especially on early commentaries (down to the Tang dynasty), and some references to modern studies of the commentaries (though my references to this literature are admittedly still not exhaustive).
5. I also supplemented the section (which I retitled; see below) "Other Signs of Influence in East Asia" to add discussion of some additional facets of the problem, not mentioned in the earlier draft: impact on visual arts; impact on poetry; and Mei Lanfang's creation of a modern Chinese opera based upon a chapter of the text.
6. I reorganised the structure of sub-headings to some degree to reflect the new structures I had imposed in eliminating redundancy, as mentioned above, and to accommodate some of the additions (especially, changing the title of the section "Influence in East Asia" to "Other Signs of Influence in East Asia", since I had expanded the discussion of commentaries to an independent section, and commentaries are also evidence of influence). 
7. I attempted to add links to various other Wikipedia articles on figures, texts, concepts etc. that were mentioned in the course of the discussion.
8. I added approximately ten references to scholarly literature.
9. I added numerous small details, e.g. the translation of the name of the protagonist, Vimalakirti; the fact that versions of the text also exist in Khotanese and Sogdian; an expanded range of topics discussed by the text in paragraph 2; a fuller listing of scholarly treatments of the rediscovered Sanskrit; the accurate title, translator and Derge/Peking numbers of the Tibetan; title and Taisho numbers of Chinese versions; reference to the fact that Lamotte's French had been re-translated into English by Boin-Webb; references to two modern Japanese translations directly from the rediscovered Sanskrit; etc.
Michael Radich
73.202.128.4 (talk) 23:46, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you very much for your input. I reverted 2 unsourced additions of content per WP:BURDEN and WP:OR (, ) because they appeared to violate wikipedia core policies: verifiability and "no original research". I appreciate your efforts to improve the article!  JimRenge (talk) 01:02, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks very much! Michael.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.202.128.4 (talk) 02:30, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes 9 April 2019