The sutra presents skillful means most strikingly through the figure of Vimalakīrti himself, a wealthy layperson who surpasses even eminent monastics and bodhisattvas in wisdom. By remaining a householder engaged in worldly affairs, he demonstrates that awakening is not confined to monastic renunciation, but can be fully realized in the midst of ordinary life. His illness, deliberately adopted as a teaching device, becomes a powerful means to gather disciples, officials, and bodhisattvas around his sickbed, transforming that intimate space into a Dharma hall. In this way, even sickness is reinterpreted as a field of practice and a compassionate strategy to address the suffering of beings.

The sutra also illustrates upāya through its highly adaptive mode of communication. Vimalakīrti addresses different disciples, bodhisattvas, and celestial beings according to their capacities, karmic dispositions, and attachments, offering conventional teachings to some and subtle expositions of emptiness and non-duality to others. Complex philosophical points are embedded in vivid dialogues and concrete situations, so that profound doctrines appear in forms accessible to varied audiences. Everyday activities and social roles are thereby reframed as occasions for insight, showing that the path unfolds not apart from the world, but through a transformed relationship to it.

Paradox and silence function as further expressions of skillful means. The text repeatedly employs paradoxical statements and role reversals—such as a layman instructing renowned monks—to unsettle fixed views and undermine attachment to hierarchy, purity, and formal practice. In the celebrated scene on the “entrance into non-duality,” numerous bodhisattvas offer conceptual accounts, yet Vimalakīrti teaches by remaining completely silent. This silence is not mere absence of speech, but a deliberate pedagogical act that points beyond dualistic thought and verbal elaboration, directing practitioners toward direct, non-conceptual realization.

Finally, the sutra makes abundant use of dramatic and symbolic manifestations to expand the spiritual imagination of its audience. Miraculous events such as the expansion of Vimalakīrti’s small room to hold vast assemblies serve to loosen rigid assumptions about space, limitation, and identity. These displays, together with episodes that expose the subtle attachments of advanced disciples, continually press practitioners to examine their own clinging and to see that wisdom and compassion must be united. Throughout, the narrative itself becomes an enactment of upāya, using story, dialogue, wonder, and even apparent contradiction to guide beings toward the non-dual vision at the heart of the Mahāyāna.