Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra

The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra — An Exposition

Background

The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (梵: Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra) is a Mahāyāna scripture with a special place in the Chan tradition, especially the Northern Tibetan Chan tradition. The title “Laṅkā” refers to the island of Laṅkā in Sri Lanka, where the Tathāgata Bhagavat taught the Dharma to the bodhisattvas. This sūtra was chosen by Bodhidharma (T. 達摩), the First Patriarch of Asian Chan, as the mind-seal of Chan when he transmitted the Dharma to his disciple Huike in China in the sixth century. This choice was not accidental, but reflects the nature of the Dharma gate practiced by Chan.

The sūtra was translated into Chinese throughout the fifth to seventh centuries by outstanding Buddhist translators such as Kumārajīva. These translations provided precious material for the development of Chan, because they contain the essence of Mahāyāna thought, especially Yogācāra learning and the Tathāgatagarbha.

Main Content

The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra revolves around two pillars of thought:

First: Yogācāra — the Mind-Only nature of all dharmas. The sūtra teaches that all phenomena of the universe, from the external world to actions and sensations, are activities of consciousness. There is no separation between the object perceived and the perceiving subject, what is called “consciousness-only, mind-only” (cittamātra). This is not philosophical idealism, but a deep investigation into the way mind functions through the layers of consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna, that is, the storehouse consciousness, the repository of all seeds of past actions and all habitual tendencies). When practitioners clearly recognize this nature, ignorance dissolves.

Second: Tathāgatagarbha — the innate Buddha-nature.