The Lankavatara Sutra

by Red Pine

  322 These four are associated with different forms of consciousness: object projection with the first five forms of sensory-based consciousness; dream projection with the sixth, or conceptual consciousness; words for attachment to erroneous projections with the seventh, or self-consciousness; and words for beginningless projections with the eighth, or repository consciousness.

  323 Some commentators think “hostility” here is short for “hostility and kindness.” But this is not supported by any of our texts: the Sanskrit has simply shatru (hostility), Gunabhadra has yuan (enmity), and Shikshananda has yuan-ch’ou (hatred). None include “kindness.” Bodhiruchi chooses not to translate shatru at all. However, the place of “hostility” here is clearer when it is understood that it is based on the seventh form of consciousness, or ego-consciousness. And wherever the ego is involved, hostility, and not kindness, is the operant emotion.

  324 Section XXXIII. What is the relation between words and projections, between words and ultimate truth (parama-artha)? Ultimate truth cannot be projected because it has no characteristics. Hence, it cannot be expressed or revealed by words. It can only be known by realizing that the projections of words are nothing but the perceptions of one’s own mind. The Buddha’s initial response here seems out of place. It also appears in section LXV, where it fits better. Hence, its appearance here is probably a copyist error.

  325 Although Gunabhadra’s translation of this line is a bit ambiguous, it is clearer in Bodhiruchi and Shikshananda, which have variations of “Because projection is the cause of words.”

  326 Section XXXIV. While this does summarize the foregoing, Gunabhadra’s translation includes only these two verses. Bodhiruchi, Shikshananda, and the Sanskrit include two more and handle the second verse quite differently. Weaving their versions together results in something like this: 2. “Whatever exists has no self-existence / avoid the projection of words / everything is a dream or illusion / neither samsara nor nirvana. 3. Just as a ruler or elder / tries to keep his children happy / giving them animals of clay at first / only later real ones (a story from the Lotus Sutra about the use of skillful means). 4. Thus do I teach my disciples / devices that make them happy / only later do I instruct them / to realize the realm of reality themselves.”

  327 The Sanskrit is bhutakoti, which means “the boundary/limit/extent of what is real.” This term is sometimes used as equivalent to nirvana, but in the Lankavatara it refers to what transcends nirvana and samsara and points to the tathagata-garbha as our primordial buddha nature. Here, all three Chinese translators have shih-chi (limit of reality).

  328 Section XXXV. The Buddha uses a series of twelve similes to exemplify the unreality of the four possible standpoints on which other paths based their sense of reality: this, that, either this or that, neither this nor that. Of the twelve similes, the first seven are directed to followers of other paths and teach that perceptions of an external world are not real (thus there are no views to get free from). The remaining five are directed to Hinayana practitioners and teach that perceptions of an external world are “nothing but mind” (thus there is no buddha knowledge to realize).

  329 This version of the tetralemma common to logical schemes the world over (either x or y, both x and y, neither x nor y) will be repeated throughout the rest of the sutra. While its use in logic is usually intended to establish the validity of one of the four possibilities, the Lankavatara uses it to dismiss all four. Although the full tetralemma is only stated for the first series regarding spatial reality, it is implied for the remaining two, which concern conceptual and temporal reality.

  330 Gandharvas are gods known for their skill as musicians who are devoted to pleasure and who live in the sky. Thus, their cloud-like cities are often used as a metaphor for illusions. While the deer represent those who seek pleasure in the realm of desire, the gandharvas represent those who seek pleasure in the realm of form.

  331 While the first two similes involve the first five forms of sensory consciousness, dreams involve the sixth, or conceptual, consciousness.

  332 The reference here is to the seventh form of consciousness, which Hinayana monks seek to eliminate in order to enter nirvana.

  333 The wheel (or firebrand) represents the wheel of birth and death. This paragraph is missing in Bodhiruchi.

  334 The raindrops represent nirvana.

  335 This refers to the first six forms of consciousness, the cessation of which was considered the prerequisite of nirvana by Hinayana practitioners.

  336 The three means to knowledge of Samkhya epistemology include: accepted authority, inference or reasoning, and direct experience.

  337 The five-part syllogism of Nyaya logicians was a form of argument aimed at discovering the truth by means of proposition, reason, example, application, and conclusion.

  338 Imagined reality and dependent reality are the two modes of reality referred to here. The Buddha’s reference is to those who think perfected reality is real, and the text can be read as a critique of some Yogacarins in this regard.

  339 This and the similes that follow are also taken as examples of the teachings of apparition buddhas. Here, the Buddha is the tree, and the minds of beings are the water.

  340 This refers to a buddha’s mind, which reflects without distinction.

  341 This refers to a buddha’s oral teaching.

  342 This refers to the appearance of teachings.

  343 The Sanskrit is arya-pratyatma-jnana-vastu.

  344 This refers to the five skandhas and other conceptions of self-existence, including the body of a buddha.

  345 Pishacas are demons who have the ability to make the dead move as if they were alive. Here the pishaca is bhutata, or reality, and the power of incantation comes from alaya-vijnana, or repository consciousness.

  346 And yet there is nothing attained, nothing abandoned.

  347 This verse is expanded into two verses in Bodhiruchi, Shikshananda, and the Sanskrit by applying these and other similes to the five skandhas as well as to the three realms.

  348 The “seeds of consciousness” refer to habit-energy in the repository consciousness.

  349 In Section LXVIII, the Buddha defines the three continuities as referring to greed, anger, and delusion, which are also known as the three poisons.

  350 Referring to the skandhas, for example.

  351 Section XXXVI. The Buddha does not teach any of the four viewpoints that prevent personal realization of buddha knowledge. In place of these, he teaches dependent origination, the path, cessation, and liberation. His aim is practical, not theoretical. He turns to whatever works.

  352 This refers to the tetralemma, which is only spelled out in its entirety for sameness and difference.

  353 Basically, this is a restatement of the Four Noble Truths.

  354 This refers to the Buddha’s 108 responses to Mahamati’s 108 questions: “a statement about x is a statement about no x.” Teachings involving realms that are free from projections are presented to lead people away from their beliefs in the existence or the nonexistence of things.

  355 The paths of shravakas and pratyeka-buddhas are for eliminating the obstruction of passion, while the bodhisattva path is for eliminating the obstruction of knowledge.

  356 Tathagatas are likened to caravan chiefs because they lead practitioners across the desert of barren knowledge and because they know the location of the oases where they can rest on their way to liberation. The paths and its stages, along with the oases, however, are a mirage.

  357 Section XXXVII. To eliminate the obstructions of passion and knowledge of the previous section, the Buddha lists four kinds of meditation, one for Hinayana practitioners and members of other paths, one for beginning bodhisattvas, one for accomplished bodhisattvas, and one for those who transcend the bodhisattva path. Thus, the practice of meditation is viewed here as sequential, with the last kind tantamount to what later became known as “direct understanding.”

  358 Bodhiruchi, Shikshananda, and the Sanskrit read
this differently: “until they reach the cessation of perceptions,” which is the goal of Hinayana practitioners.

  359 The Sanskrit is artha-pravicaya dhyana (meaning-examination meditation).

  360 The Sanskrit is tathata-alambana-dhyana (suchness-based meditation). The object of this meditation is the teaching itself as a projection.

  361 No self among persons and no self among things.

  362 The threefold bliss of samadhi, enlightenment, and nirvana.

  363 The Sanskrit is patala, referring to that region of the Underworld that is the home of serpents and demons.

  364 After the kalpa-ending conflagration that destroys all worlds.

  365 All versions render this verse in six lines.

  366 Section XXXVIII. Reflecting on the threefold bliss of personal realization that marks tathagata meditation, Mahamati asks about the bliss of nirvana. The Hinayana view is that nirvana is the extinguishing of consciousness and the end of birth and death. Here, the Buddha says nirvana is not something outside birth and death but rather the transformation of birth and death, the transformation of the eight forms of consciousness into the four kinds of non-discriminating wisdom: the wisdom of perfect accomplishment (sensory consciousness), the wisdom of perfect observation (conceptual consciousness), the wisdom of perfect equanimity (will or self-consciousness), and the wisdom of perfect reflection (repository consciousness).

  367 Permanence is a characteristic. If nirvana is free from characteristics, it cannot be permanent.

  368 If nirvana is what all buddhas realize, it cannot be impermanent.

  369 Of the dozens of dharmas listed by the various schools of Buddhism, those that were considered asanskrita (uncreated or unconditioned) included space, two kinds of cessation, and nirvana.

  370 The Sanskrit has “no meaning” (nirartha), but none of the three Chinese translations agree.

  371 That is, projections of conceptual consciousness.

  372 Section XXXIX. Practitioners unable to transform the habit-energy of self-existence continue to see nirvana in terms of words or objective states and thus fail to realize nirvana.

  373 Section XL. Even the most advanced bodhisattvas rely on the powers of the tathagatas to assist and protect them, which tathagatas accomplish by appearing before them during meditation and by instructing them by means of wordless transmission.

  374 The Sanskrit is adhishthana: enabling or supporting powers; Suzuki has “sustaining.”

  375 Wordless transmission or empowerment is a custom common to many spiritual traditions whereby the touching of the forehead is considered tantamount to opening a third eye.

  376 A samadhi marked by emptiness and the absence of form and intention.

  377 This bodhisattva appears in the Avatamsaka Sutra (Chapter 26) and is supported by the Buddha in teaching the Dharma at the beginning stage of his practice. The “initial stage” of the bodhisattva path in this sutra is the eighth stage, where shravakas and bodhisattvas normally, but not always, part company.

  378 The Sanskrit is paksha-vipaksha (with and without wings).

  379 The tenth and final stage of the bodhisattva path.

  380 Michelia champaca, a member of the magnolia family. Its orange-tinted blossoms are used in the production of perfumes in India.

  381 Chief of the gods who dwell atop Mount Sumeru.

  382 Bodhiruchi and Shikshananda add “to transmit their power.”

  383 Based on usage here and elsewhere in this sutra, this would include the eighth, ninth, and tenth stages of the bodhisattva path.

  384 Section XLI. Mahamati asks the Buddha to explain how his teaching of causation differs from that of other paths and even wonders if it is not inferior. The Buddha redirects Mahamati’s attention to the source of cause and effect and the source of views about them.

  385 The Sanskrit is pratitya-samutpada. This was the basis of the Buddha’s Englightenment and the focus of his early teachings.

  386 The meaning of this last phrase is unclear, or at least ambiguous, in Gunabhadra. Bodiruchi interprets this “self” here as referring to self-generated projections, which would be a misunderstanding of the Buddha’s position in this sutra, while Shikshananda reads it as referring to an underlying self-existent substance of some kind, which is more likely.

  387 The Buddha’s teaching of dependent origination, or twelve links of the chain of existence, begins with ignorance and continues with memory, consciousness, name and form (the inside and outside of the “individual”), sense organs, contact, sensation, desire, grasping, existence, birth, and old age and death. The problem that Mahamati sees with this explanation of cause and effect is that while ignorance is the cause of memory, old age and death is the cause of ignorance. Mahamati sees circularity as a non-solution.

  388 The Sanskrit version of this classic formula is asmin sati idam bhavati.

  389 Mahamati sees another problem in the Buddha’s teaching. Do things come to exist gradually or suddenly, as the Buddha’s formula implies?

  390 Mahamati sees the causation of other schools as simpler and clearer: a supreme deity gives rise to things, and that is that. Things do not give rise to a supreme deity. Nor does an effect become a cause, as in the Buddha’s teaching.

  391 That is, once the effect appears, it becomes the cause of a new effect.

  392 Section XLII. Having heard the Buddha speak of the existence and nonexistence of external objects, Mahamati wonders about their relation to words and suggests words establish the reality of objects. The Buddha divests him of such a view. Words are not connected to anything other than the imagination that gives rise to them, and they are not essential for communication, in this or in other worlds. So much for their connection to reality.

  393 Shikshananda omits this last sentence.

  394 These terms were used by philosophers to argue about existence and nonexistence.

  395 This is one of the names of a buddhaland to the east over which Akshobya Buddha presides.

  396 This bodhisattva is often depicted riding an elephant and known for his use of skillful means rather than doctrines in teaching the Dharma.

  397 The three realms of desire, form, and formlessness through which one passes life after life. The reference here is also to the burning house in the Lotus Sutra which foolish children refuse to leave until the Buddha entices them out with carts.

  398 Section XLIII. The Buddha explains delusion. The foolish are misled by it, lesser practitioners try to annihilate it, and the wise transform it into suchness. In the background here is the Buddha’s teaching that beyond the mind there are no things and beyond things there is no mind.

  399 Bodhiruchi and Shikshananda read this as a rhetorical question and put it in the Buddha’s mouth. The contention that speech was eternal (nitya-shabda) is traced back to Katyayana, a Sanskrit grammarian and mathematician who flourished about 150 B.C. and who held that the sacred syllables of Sanskrit were indestructible and alone capable of expressing the truth. The Buddha, however, is not interested in the status of speech as eternal, but in delusion, of which speech is an example. According to the Buddha, speech is eternal as long as it is not a projection. As soon as it is a projection, it either exists or does not exist and is not eternal.

  400 By delusion (bhranti) is meant what the mind gives rise to. When people add their projections to what the mind gives rise to, they cannot help but misrepresent it. And in so doing, they become attached to their misrepresentations. The wise don’t add projections to what the mind gives rise to but accept it for what it is, the mind. Hence, for them delusion becomes reality.

  401 What humans see as water, pretas (hungry ghosts) see as fire.

  402 The Sanskrit is tattva.

  403 Foolish people do not distinguish individual or shared characteristics, only a world of objects. Such objects, however, are delusions, mistaken judgments as to what is real. Shravakas distinguish characteristics rather than objects but cannot see past characteristics. The same is true for pratyeka-buddhas
, who seek to get free of such characteristics. Only those wise enough to see “objects” and “characteristics” as delusions and merely the perceptions of their own minds can remain detached from them and cease creating the projections that conjure them into existence. Delusions, for the wise, thus become real by means of the transformation of their awareness.

  404 The three modes of reality and the five dharmas are meant. The Sanskrit for “suchness” is tathata. Earlier, the Buddha says the transformation of the habit-energy of the mind is nirvana. Here it is suchness. Just different words.

  405 The reference is to the teaching of causation, but causation that is traced back to a first cause.

  406 Cataract removal, using curved needles made of gold, was practiced in India even before Shakyamuni’s time.

  407 Section XLIV. This section is a continuation of the previous section. Bodhiruchi, Shikshananda, and the Sanskrit all read it differently. As usual, I’ve followed Gunabhadra. Mahamati wonders when the Buddha says everything is illusory if he is only referring to the characteristics of things, if there is not something to which the characteristics belong that is not illusory. Ignoring the twigs and cutting to the root, the Buddha tells him that everything is illusory because it isn’t real, that there is not something other than characteristics—all of which, of course, are the result of projection.

  408 The meaning here is that it is only as dreams or illusions that we can talk about anything at all.

  409 Mahamati wonders if characteristics belong to something that is not illusory.

  410 Section XLV. The Buddha uses doctrines as skillful means. They are didactic, not absolute. Thus, he teaches non-arising to those who believe in causes, and he teaches existence to those who might mistake non-arising for nihilism and forget about karmic consequences. However, the teaching of existence does not admit of self-existence but only the illusoriness of existence. Thus the Buddha urges his disciples to see things as they really are, the perceptions of their own minds.

  411 Mahamati wonders if something does not arise, how can it be illusory. Only Gunabhadra proceeds as if he understands this last sentence. Bodhiruchi inverts the meaning: “ ... what arises is not illusory.” Shikshananda gives up and omits the whole sentence.