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Lankavatara Sutra

 
Buddhism Dictionary: Laṇkāvatāra Sūtra
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A Buddhist scripture that has exercised a great deal of influence in the development of east Asian Buddhism. Three translations appear in the Chinese canon of scriptures: (1) a translation in four fascicles done by Guṇabhadra while residing in Yang-chou in 443 (Taishō 670); (2) a translation in ten fascicles by Bodhiruci completed in 513 (Taishō 671); (3) a translation in seven fascicles by Śikṣānanda completed between 700 and 704 (Taishō 672). As the wide variation in the lengths of the completed translations shows, the text of the sūtra was not stable, but varied over time, and it is likely that the translators worked with different Sanskrit recensions from different times or different geographical areas. The text itself lacks systematicity, and is more of a compilation or miscellany of Mahāyāna teachings recorded in no particular order. This led the Japanese scholar D. T. Suzuki to speculate that it represented nothing more than a notebook containing the jottings of a Mahāyāna master who recorded various teachings, doctrines, and stories as he (or she) came across them (D. T. Suzuki, The Laṇkāvatāra Sūtra: A Mahāyāna Text (London, 1932), p. xi).

The disorderliness of the text notwithstanding, this scripture has exercised an enormous influence in the development of east Asian Buddhist thought. It united the teaching of the tathāgata-garbha (embryonic Buddha) with that of the ālaya-vijñāna, or ‘storehouse consciousness’, into a single entity that lay at the base of both human consciousness and the external world. It expounded the doctrine of ‘mind-only’ (citta-mātra), that is, that the world and all its contents are but manifestations of the mind, and that because of this, the division of the world into perceiving subject and perceived objects is false and the source of ignorance. Because of this teaching, the Laṇkāvatāra Sūtra was an important text for the Fa-hsiang school in China and the Hossō school in Japan. It is also a pivotal work in the history of Ch'an Buddhism in China. The first patriarch of Ch'an, Bodhidharma (3rd-4th centuries), was revered as a master of the Laṇkāvatāra Sūtra, and indeed an early history of the Ch'an school is the text, Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṇkāvatāra Sūtra (Chinese, Leng-ch'ieh shih-tzu chi). This focus on the Laṇkāvatāra Sūtra remained a feature of the school until the 7th century, and a dispute over whether or not to continue its emphasis may have been a factor in the controversy between the so-called ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ Schools. This is symbolically narrated in the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch in a scene in which Hui-neng (638-713) has his enlightenment (bodhi) verse inscribed on a wall that had recently been prepared for a painter to paint scenes from the Laṇkāvatāra Sūtra. After the fifth patriarch, Hung-jen, sees the verse, he cancels the artist's commission, a gesture compatible with the Ch'an school's later self-characterization as a school that eschewed words and scriptures. One other area in which the Laṇkāvatāra Sūtra influenced Chinese Buddhism in particular is in its chapter on eating meat, which has become the standard proof-text for Chinese Buddhism's staunch adherence to vegetarianism (see also diet).

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The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (Chinese: 楞伽經) is a sutra of Mahayana Buddhism. According to tradition, these are the actual words of the Buddha as he entered Lanka and conversed with a bodhisattva named Mahamati. This sutra figured prominently in the development of Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism. The Lankavatara Sutra is the cornerstone of Chinese Chán and its Japanese version, Zen, and was translated from Sanskrit into Japanese and English by the lauded exponent of Zen, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki.

Contents

Doctrine

The most important doctrine issuing from the Lanka is that of the primacy of consciousness, often called simply "Mind Only", meaning that consciousness is the only reality. The sutra asserts that all the objects of the world, and the names and forms of experience, are merely manifestations of the mind. It is the erroneous concept of subject/object that ties us to the wheel of rebirth.

The Lankavatara Sutra represents a syncretism between Tathagatagarbha thought and the Yogacara school.[1]

Store consciousness

See also: Store consciousness

The Lankavatara Sutra describes the tier of consciousness in the individual, culminating in a "store house" consciousness (alaya-vijnana), which is the base of the individual's deepest awareness and his tie to the cosmic. This tier of consciousness is divided into eight faculties:

  1. The eye sense
  2. The ear sense
  3. The tongue sense
  4. The nose sense
  5. The body sense
  6. The Sense Center (mano-vijnana)--Apprehends psychic events and synthesizes experiences.
  7. The individualizing center of egotism (manas)--This is the deeply seated consciousness in the person which ignorantly clings to the ego-conception of reality of an external world. It is the center where all selfish ideas, egotistic opinions, arrogance, self-love, and illusions are fermented and is the source of all delusion.
  8. The storing center of ideation (alaya-vijnana). Tibetan Buddhism refers to it as the "consciousness which is the substratum of all". It is a kind of eternal repository from which can be drawn the substance of every possible image and idea (similar to Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, only with more explicit spiritual implications).

Trikaya

See also: Trikaya

The Lanka also suggests another important Mahayana doctrine, developed in later Buddhism, and that is the three bodies of Buddhahood, in effect the three levels of enlightened reality:

  1. Terrestrial or transformational dimension, ( = Sanskrit nirmanakaya) - The dimension of Buddhahood to which the unenlightened have access, and where the phenomena of the world exist.
  2. Celestial dimension, (= Sanskrit sambhogakaya) - expression of the symbolic and archetypal dimension of Buddhahood, to which only the spiritually developed have access
  3. Transcendental dimension ( = Sanskrit dharmakaya) - the ultimate level of enlightenment, which is beyond names and forms

Notes

  1. ^ Youru Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism: The Other Way of Speaking. Routledge, 2003, page 58.

References


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