What the sūtra is about
The sūtra opens with the Buddha on the peak of Mount Laṅkā, with monks and bodhisattvas come from many Buddha-lands; the bodhisattva Mahāmati is the chief of the assembly and questions the Buddha on its behalf. The questions turn on the insight that all things are manifestations of one's own mind, and on the topics the sūtra itself gathers in a verse in scroll 4: the five dharmas, the three natures, the eight consciousnesses and the two kinds of non-self. It also speaks at length of the Tathāgatagarbha — a nature pure from the start, abiding and unchanging.
The whole sūtra is a single chapter, «The Heart of All the Buddhas' Teaching», divided into parts across the scrolls. The library's Vietnamese translation now and then adds a short explanation in brackets so that readers can follow the terms.
Passages people often look for
In scroll 1 the Buddha sets out the hundred and eight statements taught by the Buddhas of old, and when Mahāmati asks whether the purification of the stream of mind is sudden or gradual, he answers «neither gradual nor sudden, both gradual and sudden», then explains with many similes. Scrolls 2 and 3 speak of the bodhisattva's three kinds of «mind-made body». Scroll 4 holds a long passage in which Mahāmati asks about the faults of eating meat and the merit of not eating it — the passage often cited on vegetarianism in Northern Buddhism.
The sūtra and the Chan tradition
According to Chan histories, the four-scroll Laṅkāvatāra was entrusted by Bodhidharma to Huike, so the sūtra has long been linked with the Chan tradition. Because it is dense and full of technical terms, newcomers should read it slowly, passage by passage, alongside explanations of emptiness, non-self and dependent origination, and need not read it all at once.
Reading it in the library
Each scroll is its own reading page and fairly long; reading one slowly usually takes more than an hour. You may begin with the opening and Mahāmati's questions in scroll 1, pause to note unfamiliar terms, then read on. To read aloud, press «Chant» so the text scrolls at a slow, medium or fast speed; tap the screen to stop at a passage you want to reflect on. The library holds the Vietnamese translation only, with no Sino-Vietnamese transliteration, recording or download.
