April - July 2011 | Cerro Gordo Temple | Santa Fe, NM

The Sutra that Vimalakirti Spoke is a two-thousand-year-old sacred text that is startlingly strange. Vimalakirti is a bodhisattva lying on his sickbed and isn't the whole point of enlightenment to elevate someone beyond the limitations and sorrows of ordinary life? But Vimalakirti doesn't seem to want to be elevated; he says, "I am sick because the whole world is sick." The implications of his explanation, which is also an expression of love and a vow, reverberate throughout the text. In a series of talks given in 2011, we take up this story of a deeply awake householder who explored the very agonies and beauties of human life we're still talking about today. This is a somewhat unorthodox vision of the Vimalakirti sutra, focusing on its radical allegiance to life and to healing the human heart.

Vimalakirti & The Awakened Heart (2016) is an excellent accompaniment for these recorded talks

(PDF transcriptions not available)