The Lankavatara Sutra

Juliet Hackney leads the WCF meditation group in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire.

The Lankavatara Sutra is one of the major texts of Mahayana Buddhism and is fundamental to the school of Chan/Zen. It’s origins are obscure, but it was written in Classical Sanskrit, which was the language of the Brahmins in India and is clearly addressed to an audience familiar with the basic concepts of the Yogacara school of Buddhism. What sets it apart from the other sutras is that it points readers beyond the teachings of the early Yogacara school to their own minds, which is still a hallmark of Chan.

It is said that the Indian monk Bodhidharma, who became the first patriarch of Chan, introduced the Lankavatara Sutra to China some time in the 5th century, and that he passed on its teachings to his successor, Huike, and told him everything he needed to know was in this book. DT Suzuki said “The reason why Bodhidharma handed this sutra to Huike as containing the essence of Zen Buddhism must be sought in this, that the constant refrain of the Lankavatara is the all importance of an inner perception or self-realization” (1 p102). It also focuses on the Bodhisattva path that still dominates Mahayana Buddhism.

Translations

The Lankavatara is referred to as containing 36,000 verses, apparently originally being a collection of verses covering all the main teachings of Mahayana Buddhism. The vast collection of verses became a source from which the Masters selected texts for their discourses. Over time the verses were largely forgotten. There are only 884 remaining, retained with their commentary discourses. The sutra only became known in the West when DT Suzuki’s Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra was published in 1929 (1) and his subsequent translation was published in 1932 (2). He described it as “A Mahayana text difficult in more than one way to understand perfectly as to its meaning...” (2 p102) It was edited by Dwight Goddard, who produced an “epitomized” version for the sake of easier reading (3).

Red Pine translated the 300 pages of discourses from the Chinese, which was published in 2012 (4). He describes it as a difficult project: “Sometimes I felt like I was trying to see through a wall” (4 p18). He has not translated the 884 four-line verses.

Having tackled both the translations I feel grateful for their efforts. The product does not make for easy reading, but it is possible to understand, and the teaching is so exciting, so relevant to this day, that it feels revolutionary! This article is entirely based on their work.

Setting

Lankavatara means Appearance on Lanka, referring to the Buddha’s reputed visit to the island of Sri Lanka. The sutra opens with the Buddha instructing one of India’s serpent kings in the Dharma. As the Buddha reappears from the serpent king’s watery realm, Ravana, the ruler of Sri Lanka, invites him to his nearby capital in the hope of receiving a similar discourse. The Buddha agrees and proceeds to the Castle of Lanka, on the summit of Mt Malaya, where he finds an assembly of Bodhisattvas and bhikshus. They are already advanced practitioners (perfect masters of the various Samadhis, the tenfold Self-mastery, the ten Powers, and the six Psychic Faculties). However, the Buddha sees their mental agitations (like the surface of the ocean stirred into waves by the passing winds) and offers them a discourse on the Truth of Noble Wisdom that is beyond the reasoning knowledge of the philosophers as well as being beyond the understanding of ordinary disciples and masters, realisable only within the inmost consciousness.

“Consciousness is a self-fabricated fiction.”

Mahamati arises as the head Bodhisattva and requests answers to 108 questions. The Buddha goes on to instruct the assembly in the illusory nature of all things which we think of as real. He responds to the questions by telling Mahamati that the questions themselves are projections of his own and others’ imaginations. As Red Pine puts it, “They are tantamount to pie in the sky. A statement about pie in the sky thus becomes a statement about no pie” (4 p4). 

The Buddha tells Mahamati “Because the various projections of people’s minds appear before them as objects they become attached to the existence of their projections.” So how do they get free of such attachments? The Buddha continues: “By becoming aware that projections are nothing but mind. Thus do they transform their body and mind and finally see clearly all the stages and realms of self-awareness of tathagatas and transcend views and projections regarding the five dharmas and modes of reality.” (4 p182-3)

Having proclaimed the illusory nature of such Yogacara categories as the five dharmas and three modes of reality, the Buddha directs Mahamati to its source, namely consciousness itself. He then explains how consciousness works and how liberation consists in realizing that consciousness is a self-fabricated fiction, just another illusion, and how bod hisattvas transform their consciousness into the projectionless tathagatagarbha, or womb from which buddhas arise.

Red Pine points out that “Such a teaching is not something everyone is prepared to hear. But Mahamati continues to ask questions and the Buddha continues to answer, yet in a way that always leads his disciple back to the two teachings that underlie this sutra: the “nothing but mind” of Yogacara and the “self-realisation” of Zen.” (4 p5).

As the Buddha guides Mahamati through the conceptual categories of Mahayana Buddhism, he tells him that these too are projections of the mind and that reaching the land of buddhas requires transcending all conjured landscapesincluding that of the tathagata-garbha. Summarising the process whereby practitioners follow such a teaching the Buddha says, “Who sees that the habit-energy of projections of the beginning-less past is the cause of the three realms, and who understands that the tathagata stage is free from projections or anything that arises, attains the personal realisation of buddha knowledge and effortless mastery over their own minds.” (4 p73)

In the Lankavatara Sutra the experience of self is divided into:

The five dharmas

 – name,
 – appearance,
 – projection,
 – correct knowledge and
 – suchness

The three modes of reality

 – imagined reality,
 – dependent reality and
 – perfected reality

The eight forms of consciousness

 – the five forms of sensory consciousness,
 – conceptual consciousness,
 – the will or self-consciousness, and
 – an eighth form known as repository or store-house consciousness, where the seeds from our previous thoughts, words and deeds are stored and from which they sprout and grow.

These concepts provide a system to account for our awareness and allow us to look at how our worlds of self-delusion and self-liberation come about, how enlightenment works, how we go from projection of name and appearance to correct knowledge of suchness, how we go from imagined reality to a perfected reality, how we transform our eightfold consciousness into buddhahood (4 p15-6).

“Let all conceptions go.”

John Daido Loori pointed out that: 

Central to the teachings is the view that words and ideas are not essential to the transmission of the dharma. This view is a reflection of the well known four tenets that Bodhidharma used to describe Zen. He said that Zen is: 1) A special transmission outside the scriptures 2) With no reliance on words and letters 3) A direct pointing to the human mind 4) And the realization of buddhahood. Bodhidharma was essentially saying that words, letters, and scriptures are at best a description of reality and not the reality itself. The truth of the teachings must be personally realised by each individual, and the only thing sutras…and teachers… can do, is to directly point to the human mind.

Red Pine explains: 

The Buddha tells Mahamati to let all conceptions go, let the five dharmas go, let the three modes of reality go, let the eight forms of consciousness go, let the tathagatagarbha go, let everything go. (4 p16). Red Pine makes the analogy with drinking a cup of tea. The cup of tea is the universe of our awareness, which is mind itself. (4 p16) The Buddha’s advice in the Lankavatara Sutra is for us to drink that cup of tea and not concern ourselves with where that experience fits into some previously constructed matrix of the mind. Of course, drinking the cup of tea of the mind doesn’t take place in space, nor does it occur in a crowd. Hence, the Buddha offers this ancient advice: “If bodhisattvas wish to understand the realm of projection in which what grasps and what is grasped are nothing but perceptions of their own minds, they should avoid social intercourse and sleep and cultivate the discipline of mindfulness during the three periods of the night.” (4 p79)

Dwight Goddard points out that the Lankavatara: (3 pxvi)

 …is not written as a philosophical treatise is written, to establish a certain system of thought, but was written to elucidate the profoundest experience that comes to the human spirit. It everywhere deprecates dependence upon words and doctrines and urges upon all the wisdom of making a determined effort to attain this highest experience. Again and again it repeats with variations the refrain: “Mahamati, you and all the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas should avoid the erroneous reasonings of the philosophers and seek this self-realisation of Noble Wisdom.”

Excerpts

My experience of reading the sutra was inspiring but profoundly disconcerting, rather like working on a koan. Reading about the mundane understanding of reality being a completely false view held by the ignorant and deluded, then going back to work the next day and continuing to live in it, can be demoralising. However there is hope! 

What is meant by the cessation of the mind system?

By the cessation of the sense-minds is meant not the cessation of their perceiving functions, but the cessation of their discriminating and naming activities which are centralised in the discriminating mortal-mind. By the cessation of the mind-system as a whole is meant, the cessation of discrimination, the clearing away of the various attachments, and, therefore, the clearing away of the defilements of habit-energy in the face of Universal Mind which have been accumulating since beginningless time by reason of these discriminations, attachments, erroneous reasonings and following acts. The cessation of the continuation aspect of the mind system, namely the discriminating mortal mind the entire world of maya and desire disappears. Getting rid of the discriminating mortal-mind is Nirvana.

But the cessation of the discriminating mind cannot take place until there has been a ‘turning-about’; in the deepest seat of consciousness. The mental habit of looking outward by the discriminating-mind upon an external objective world must be given up, and a new habit of realising Truth within the intuitive-mind by becoming one with Truth itself must be established. Until this intuitive self-realization of Noble Wisdom is attained the evolving mind-system will go on. But when an insight in the five Dharmas, the three self-natures and the two-fold egolessness is attained, then the way will be opened for this ‘turningabout’ to take place. With the ending of pleasure and pain, of conflicting ideas or the disturbing interests of egoism, a state of tranquilisation will be attained in which the truths of emancipation will be fully understood and there will be no further evil-outflowings of the mind-system to interfere with the perfect self-realization of Noble Wisdom. (3 p40-1)

Is the purification of the evil out-flowings of the mind which come from clinging to the notions of an objective world and empirical soul, gradual or instantaneous?

 The evil out-flowings that take place from recognising an external world, which in truth is only a manifestation of mind, and from becoming attached to it, are gradually purified and not instantaneously.… The evil out-flowings that arise from illusions of the mind and the infatuations of egoism, concerns the mental life more directly and are such things as fear, anger, hatred and pride; these are purified by study and meditation and that, too must be attained gradually and not instantaneously… But the good non-outflowings that come with the self-realisation of Noble Wisdom, is a purification that comes instantaneously by grace of the Tathagatas… (3 p63-4)

What is the fruitage that comes with the self-realisation of noble wisdom?

After experiencing the ‘turning-about’ in the deepest seat of consciousness, they will experience other Samadhis even to the highest, the Vajravimbopama, which belongs to the Tathagatas and their transformations. They will be able to enter into the realm of consciousness that lies beyond the consciousness of the mind-system, even the consciousness of Tathagatahood. They will become endowed with all the powers, psychic faculties, self-mastery, loving compassion, skillful means, and ability to enter into other Buddha-lands. Before they had attained self-realization of Noble Wisdom, they had been influenced by the self-interests of egoism, but after they attain self-realization they will find themselves reacting spontaneously to the impulses of a great and compassionate heart endowed with skillful and boundless means and sincerely and wholly devoted to the emancipation of all beings.” (3 p65-6)

References

1 Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra. D.T. Suzuki 1998 Reprinted 2016. Published by Vikram Jain for Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. 

2 The Lankavatara Sutra. Translated by D.T. Suzuki. Fifteenth edition 2013. Published by Vikram Jain for Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. 

3 The Lankavatara Sutra. Translated by D.T. Suzuki Compiled and Edited by Dwight Goddard Originally published 1932, with additions to glossary in 1986. Published by Monkfish. 

4 The Lankavatara Sutra. Translation and Commentary Red Pine (Bill Porter) 2012. Published by Counterpoint.