The Vimalakirti Sutra is the text East Asian laypeople loved, and it is easy to see why. Vimalakirti is a rich householder with a family, servants and business interests, and he is spiritually superior to the entire monastic establishment; the sutra opens with the great disciples each declining to visit him because he has previously humiliated them in argument. The climax is a discussion of non-duality in which each bodhisattva offers a formulation, Manjushri says the truth is beyond words, and Vimalakirti — asked last — says nothing at all. The silence is the sutra's answer, and it became one of Chan Buddhism's founding gestures.