In this episode Robert Thurman leads a close line reading of the sixth chapter of “The Holy Teachings of Vimalakirti”, giving an all-levels teaching on the inconceivable nature of the Buddha’s enlightenment, Buddhist emptiness and the nature of love as taught throughout Buddhism.

Using personal stories from his time teaching in academia and studying with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Thurman reflects on the way that emptiness creates a space for love and compassion to flourish. This episode also includes an examination of the the term “womb of compassion” as found in Nāgārjuna’s “Jewel Rosary” connecting Buddha’s revolutionary physical discovery of emptiness/relativity with the wisdom that empowers the positive emotions of selfless love and compassion.

The Vimalakirti Sutra’s Inconceivable Liberation chapter (#6) is said to be a drop from the ocean of this multilevel set of presentations by the Buddha and many bodhisattvas, in which he demonstrates his permeation of the enlightened cosmos and the glory of the bodhisattva realms. For any Buddhist practitioner, particularly those of Vajrayana Buddhism and Zen, this Vimalakīrti-nirdesha Sūtra. is of the utmost importance. Unlike most sutras, its central figure is not a buddha, or even a monk, but an ordinary man, who, in his mastery of the teaching and spiritual practice, personifies the ideal human being, assuring regular people that they can reach levels of spiritual attainment comparable to those accessible to monks. The sutra opens the door to the meaning of non-duality. Thurman discusses the background of the sutra, its place in the development of Buddhist thought, and the profundities of its principal teaching: emptiness the womb of compassion.

“To any Buddhist practitioner, particularly those of Vajrayana Buddhism and Zen, this sutra is of the utmost importance. Unlike most sutras, its central figure is not a Buddha, but an ordinary man, who, in his mastery of the teaching and spiritual practice, personifies the ideal lay believer, assuring commoners that they can reach levels of spiritual attainment comparable to those accessible to monks. The sutra teaches, among other subjects, the meaning of non-duality. Thurman discusses the background of the sutra, its place in the development of Buddhist thought, and the profundities of its principal teaching: emptiness.”

-Text from “The Yoga of Ordinary Living”

Inconceivable Liberation and The Womb of Compassion – Ep. 292 is excerpted from “The Yoga of Ordinary Living” by Robert A.F. Thurman, Available via www.betterlisten.com.

“We are empty of any isolated essence, of any non-connected essence.We are free of such non-connected, isolated, alienated essence. That is what it means. Enlightenment is realizing that freedom at the deepest level. And therefore, enlightenment is realizing our inexorable interconnectedness. The vast space of reality is nothing but the surface of the interrelations of all things. All of the interconnected things are the reality of emptiness. Therefore emptiness, voidness, freedom are the womb of compassion, the sensitivity and will that refuses to accept anyone’s suffering, that automatically wills everyone’s happiness.

Emptiness is the womb of compassion, means that in realizing emptiness we are free of the illusion that we have carried from the beginning of time that I am the one.”

-Robert Thurman

Womb Realm Mandala, Shingon Tantric Buddhist school, Heian period (794-1185), Tō-ji, Kyōto, Japan, via www.wikipedia.org.