Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra shatters any neat boxes around male and female by insisting that true wisdom floats above all labels. Early on, a bodhisattva’s question about women’s capacity for awakening sparks laughter rather than outrage—laughter at the very idea that something as boundless as emptiness could be parceived through such narrow lenses. Vimalakirti then invites the goddess to display her true form. With a single syllable, she transforms into a luminous, androgynous being: neither male nor female, neither young nor old. It’s a mic-drop moment—proof that ultimate reality isn’t tethered to flesh and bone.

This radical twist still resonates today, as workplaces introduce gender-neutral restrooms and social media bios feature pronoun pins you can’t help but notice. The sutra’s method is simple: point out that distinctions disappear the instant mind stops clinging. Gender, like any other category, is a provisional label—helpful for navigating everyday life, but utterly irrelevant on the path to non-duality.

A layperson’s savvy shines through when Vimalakirti outsmarts bodhisattvas obsessed with doctrinal hair-splitting. No ivory-tower philosophy here—just streetwise insight: when the mind ceases to pick and choose, the supposed divide between “man” and “woman” washes away like chalk in the rain. That same spirit is alive in current debates on gender fluidity, where identities ebb and flow beyond rigid binaries. People recognize that who someone is can’t be boxed into X or Y chromosomes.

By treating gender as neither barrier nor guarantee of spiritual attainment, the sutra effectively turns the tables on conventional thinking. It nudges readers to carry that non-discriminating attitude into everyday life, whether interacting with colleagues in a hybrid office or scrolling through the latest discourse on TikTok. Ultimately, any clinging to male/female opposites gets shown the door—nothing to sneeze at in a world still hung up on “this” versus “that.”