The Lankavatara Sutra: New Perspectives

Unfortunately, however, if an impressive LS commentary has been penned since D.T. Suzuki’s in his Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra and The Lankavatara Sutra in the early 1930s, I haven’t encountered it. What separates Suzuki’s analysis from those of other LS exegetes is his understanding of LS’s Cittamatra philosophy. Unlike other authors on the said subject, he groks the important distinctions between the Yogacara Cittamatra of the LS and the Yogacara Vijnaptimatra/Vijnanavada of Asanga, Vasubandu, and others. Most importantly, he understands that, per the LS, all existents are manifestations of a universal Mind, and not projections of one’s individual mind, as other Yogacara schools have it.

Dr. Suzuki makes the important point that the LS does not represent an end point in the development of Yogacara philosophy, but rather a transitional one. For example, he informs us that “the Trikaya is not yet systematized in the Lankavatara Sutra.” Regarding the LS’s stage of development, he writes:

“The Lankavatara Sutra is not a systematized treatise devoted to the exposition of a definite set of doctrines, but a mine containing all assorts of metals still in the state of requiring analysis and synthesis. It is full of suggestive thought which must have been fermenting at the time in Mahayana thinkers’ minds and hearts. The two great schools of Mahayana Buddhism, the Madhyamika and the Yogacara, lie here in an incipient stage of development and differentiation.”

Just as the LS does not represent a final stage in the evolution of Yogacara, likewise Suzuki’s exegesis of the Lankavatara Sutra does not represent the final word on the LS--and Suzuki himself would be the first to admit this. So while Suzuki’s writings are must-reading for those seriously interested in the LS, they are far from comprehensive or definitive, hence there is much that can be said to further explicate and elaborate the sutra’s teachings. With this in mind, I’m moved to provide my own exegesis of some of the LS’s more abstruse teachings.

Descent into Lanka

To the spiritual cognoscenti, it is clear that the LS is about the descent of the Divine (as the Dharmamegha, or “Dharma Cloud”) into the Tathagatagarba (or Heart-cave), which precipitates full Enlightenment, or Bodhicitta. The term "Lankavatara Sutra" means "descent into Lanka," and Lanka (a solitary, or sacred, "island," like Sri (meaning "Holy") Lanka is a metaphor for the Tathagatagarba, the "place," or "locus", or "womb," where one is "reborn" as a Buddha. In the Hindu Yoga Sutras (Patanjali), reaching this "island,"(a.k.a. Hridayam, or Heart-center) is termed kaivalya, which means "isolation" from the defilements that taint the seven forms of consciousness that precede the en-Light-ening eighth one (Alaya-vijnana) in the Yogacara system or schema. Yogacara means "the practice of yoga," and the highest yoga, Di-"vine" yoga, is the union of the "vine" of the Dharma Cloud (or Shakti, or Sambhogakaya, or Clear-Light Energy, or Holy Spirit, or Mother Light) with the "vine" of the yogi's consciousness (or soul, or complex of psychical seed tendencies, or son light) in the Heart-cave (or Tathagatagarba). This union results in the severing of the Heart-knot (which Gautama called the Heart-release), thus permanently disentangling one's Self (or Buddha-nature) from the defilements of the first seven forms of un-en-Light-ened consciousness. This yoga, like Patanjali's Classical Yoga, describes final Enlightenment as the yogi's union with the Dharmamegha (or Dharma Cloud) in the Heart-center (Hridayam, not Anahata), which equates to the Tathagatagarba.

Who or What descends into Lanka to en-Light-en the bodhisattva (the enlightenment-seeking disciple)? The Bhagavan (Red Pine's term in his text The Lankavatara Sutra: Translation and Commentary), which D.T. Suzuki, in his translation of the Lankavatara Sutra, translates as the "Blessed One." The Bhagavan, or Blessed One, as Blessing Power (the Sambhogakaya, or Clear-Light Energy, or Dharma Cloud, or Shakti) does. On the first page of Chapter One, Red Pine writes, "The Bhagavan had been expounding the dharma for seven days in the palace of Sagara, the Serpent King.” The seven days represent the seven forms of consciousness prior to the en-Light-ening eighth. Sagara is one of eight serpent kings who acted as protector of the Dharma (really, protector of the realization of the Dharmakaya). Sagara's residence was at the bottom of the ocean, which is analogous to the Tathagatagarba, the irreducible root of Consciousness in a human. Sagara, the eighth Serpent King, represents the Heart (or Gordian) knot, the final guardian of the Gate to the Dharmakaya. The Serpent King is another name for Kundalini, the "Coiled One"--and when the final, Heart "coil" is "straightened " by the Blessing Power (or Clear-Light Energy) of the Blessed One, then the bodhisattva morphs into a Buddha, a Tathagata dwelling timelessly in, and as, the Dharmakaya, universal, transcendental Mind, or Awareness.

MIND Versus mind

The real problem with contemporary scholars who write on the LS is that they have no grasp of Yogacara's Mind-Only (Cittamatra) Dharma. For example, in the first paragraph of Chapter One in his book Lankavatara Sutra: Translation and Commentary, Red Pine translates a sentence in the sutra: "[Bodhisattvas] skilled in the knowledge that external objects are perceptions of one's own mind..." Contrast this with D.T. Suzuki's translation: "The Bodhisattva-Mahâsattvas... all well understood the significance of the objective world as the manifestation of their own Mind."

Unbeknownst to Red Pine, Mind (the Alaya, the Unborn Substratum) is a metaphysical substance, and the world is the objectification, or manifestation, of this Mind. This point of view, called "cittamatra" (or Consciousness-only), is in diametrical opposition to Red Pine's point of view, called "vijnaptimatra," which is that the world is nothing but ideas, with no Reality or realities behind them, and that all "dharmas" (or things) are mere mental projections, or cognitions, or representations, of one's individual mind. External objects are not, as Red Pine asserts, perceptions of one's own mind. If you believe that the computer you're using now wouldn't exist just as it is after you stopped perceiving it, then you have evicted yourself from reality.

Red Pine doesn't understand that universal, transcendental Mind (with a big "M"), the Unmanifest Dharmakaya, has spontaneously manifested as the universe of existents. In other words, the All, which is Mind-"Substance," has spontaneously modified itself as stepped-down vibrations of energy and matter into the totality of phenomena. And this egregious misunderstanding effectively destroys his entire analysis of the Lankavatara Sutra, rendering it essentially worthless. Red Pine has read Buddhist scholars such as Florin Sutton (author of Existence and Enlightenment in the Lankavatara Sutra) and Dan Lusthaus (see my one-star Amazon review of his Buddhist Phenomenology), and these so-called "experts" on Yogacara have doubtless infected his brain with their exoteric, non-Spiritual, psychologized interpretations of the Mind-Only teaching.

The viewpoint that Mind, the Alaya, or Dharmakaya, has become everything (though rejected by modern scholars) is hardly heterodox. It is the same one espoused by--just to name a handful of legendary gurus--Zen masters Hui Neng and Huang Po, Yogacara masters Saraha and Padmasambhava, and Dzogchen master Longchen Rabjam. Here's a quote from Saraha, from Principal Yogacara Texts (see my four-star Amazon.com review):

"Thus know that the whole appearance is the Dharmakaya. All sentient beings are the Buddha. All cosmic arisings and events are from the beginning not other than the Source of Phenomena (Dharmadhatu). For this reason, everything that one can identify conceptually is as unreal as are the horns on a rabbit."

The Eight Consciousnesses

According to the excellent Wikipedia.org article Eight Consciousnesses: “All surviving schools of Buddhist thought accept – "in common" – the existence of the first six primary consciousnesses (Sanskrit: vijñāna). The internally coherent Yogācāra school associated with Maitreya, Asaṅga, and Vasubandhu, however, uniquely – or "uncommonly" – also posits the existence of two additional primary consciousnesses, kliṣṭamanas and ālayavijñāna, in order to explain the workings of karma. The first six of these primary consciousnesses comprise the five sensory faculties together with mental consciousness, which is counted as the sixth.”

The first five consciousness—eye, ear, tongue, nose, and body—pertain to the senses, and the sixth consciousness, mano-vijnana, is the mental consciousness that cognitively processes the sense-data. Mano-vijnana is mind functioning in relation to the sensible world.

The seventh consciousness, termed manas or klista-manas, is deluded awareness, consciousness beset by klesas (mental afflictions or disturbing emotions). The root cause of the klesas is the self-contraction, the formation of awareness into a separate-self sense that (to one degree or another) is suffering. In reaction to this constricted separate-self sense, craving arises in an attempt to heal the dis-ease that the contraction engenders. But it never touches the contraction; at best, it only it only provides brief desensitization to it in the forms of fascination, consolation, and distraction. After a craving is satisfied, another, and then another, arise as the self-contracted individual is caught in a vicious cycle of becoming (samsara), as he goes from one (limited, and thus unsatisfactory) state of consciousness to another, while not recognizing his activity as a reaction to the contraction.

Klista-manas is the self-reflecting, self-reifying, self-seeking activity of the separate self in dilemma. As such, it is akin to the ahamkara in Patanjali. Because klista-manas, as self-reflection, includes the capacity to analyze and judge, when confronted with the truth about itself as self-contraction, it can apply its discriminating intelligence (akin to the buddhi in Patanjali) to the challenge of obviating the self-contraction.

The eighth consciousness, Alaya-vijnana, must be understood from two perspectives: the unenlightened (meaning prior to Enlightenment) and the Enlightened (meaning after Enlightenment). Before a bodhisattva attains Bodhicitta, full Enlightenment, the Alaya-vijnana functions as a storehouse consciousness that contains the seeds (bijas), or subconscious mental impressions (samskaras in Sanskrit), which concatenate into vasanas (habit energies or behavioral tendencies), which, in response to internal and external stimuli, “sprout” into mind in the form of klista-manas and mano-vijnana. After a bodhisattva’s full Enlightenment, concomitant with his karmic seeds having been “fried,” and thus rendered non-binding, the Alaya-vijnana functions as the immanent Alaya (the Unborn Realm, or universal Mind). At this point, the term Alaya-vijnana is somewhat misleading, because in the case of a Buddha, vijnana, which implies divided or dualistic consciousness, no longer implicates him in samsara.

The Alaya-vijnana is located in the spiritual Heart-center/cave (Hridayam in Hinduism, Tathagatagarbha in Buddhism). For Enlightenment, or Bodhicitta, to be Realized, meaning the “conversion” of the Alaya-Vijnana into the unbound, immanent Alaya, the bodhisattva must experience Dharmamegha samadhi, the full descent, or downpouring, of the Dharma Cloud (or Sambhogakaya) into the Tathagatagarbha (the womb of Buddhahood). In the Tathagatagarbha, contracted citta, which is a synonym for the unconverted Alaya-vijnana, is transformed into Bodhicitta (En-Light-ened Consciousness) by virtue of its union with the Light-Energy of the Sambhogakaya. The bodhisattva, who Realizes Bodhicitta in the Tathagatagarbha, becomes a Tathagata, a Buddha who dwells for evermore in Suchness, or Isness, the Unborn Realm of the Alaya.

The "Jungianization" of Yogacara

The Lankavatara Sutra is the most authoritative and influential text of the Yogacara (or "Mind-only") school of Indian Mahayana Buddhism, but it is a deep and abstruse work--and this has led to very different interpretations of its core tenets pertaining to the true nature of Mind (or Consciousness). And in his text Existence and Enlightenment, author Florin Sutton (a professor of Asian studies) argues (as his core thesis) that "Universal Consciousness [or Mind] is best understood as the consciousness which is common to all men, and, in this sense, universal (i.e., the subconscious in its most basic or pure state, the `Alaya'), rather than some universally present `stuff’, `entity,' or `substance,' existing independently outside the realm of human mental activity."

From my perspective Dr. Sutton, couldn't be more wrong regarding Universal Consciousness, the Alaya. Universal Consciousness is the universal, transcendental, divine "Mind-Stuff," the unmanifest "All" that has manifested as the "all" (the universe of existents), but yet is utterly and forever independent of it.

Elsewhere, Dr. Sutton writes: "The undefiled Tathagata-garbha [Womb of Buddhahood] (when taken as essence) [can be] understood to designate the Unconscious in its original state." This is reminiscent of Carl Jung's westernized psychological nonsense in his foreword to W.Y. Evans-Wentz's The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation.

Dr. Sutton's misunderstanding of Yogacara is hardly limited to the Alaya and the Tathagatagarbha; it extends into other areas of Buddhadharma as well. For example, a chapter in his book is entitled "Dharmadhatu; the Spacial or Cosmic Dimension of Being." Unbeknownst to Dr. Sutton, the Dharmadhatu is not a cosmic dimension or space; it is the acosmic Dharmakaya as the spaceless "context" in which phenomena arise.

Dr. Sutton not only has a problem understanding Yogacara, he also seems to lack even a rudimentary understanding of Hinduism. For example, he defines the Atman as the "empirical Self." Anyone with a clue about Hinduism knows that the Atman is the metempirical (or noumenal) Self, not the empirical (or phenomenal) Self.

If modern Buddhism scholars, such as Dr. Sutton, bothered to study Hindu yoga philosophy, they would understand the various schools of Buddhism from a more nuanced, more integral perspective. But, unfortunately, most of them are married to a viewpoint that precludes the consideration of Buddhadharma in a spiritual context that extends beyond the boundaries of Buddhism.

The LS as a Hybrid

The Lankavatara Sutra is not a “pure” and systematized treatise, but a hybrid or mishmash that reflects distinctive elements from three different schools: Yogacara, Madhyamika, and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Hence, if you want to understand the LS, you not only need to study Yogacara and Madhyamika, but also Patanjali. And the text I recommend for this is Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali by Swami Hariharananda Aranya. To anyone who has studied Patanjali and Advaita Vedanta, it is obvious that the Mind that the Blessed One (or Buddha) discourses on in the LS is the same metaphysical "Substance" as the Self, or Atman. In fact, throughout this quasi-Hinduized text, awakening to, and as, Mind is equated to Self-realization, which is a synonym for Nirvana, or Buddhahhood.

The Lankavatara Sutra is not an easy, amenable read. It is, as Buddhist scholar Edward Conze puts it, "an unwieldy system of viewpoints, paths, and categories, explained in difficult technical terminology." It is convoluted, repetitious, replete with contradictions, and flies off on speculative metaphysical tangents that have no bearing on the central theme of Mind-realization. A major reason for the contradictions is that the text is the work of more than one author, at different times. For example, as D.T. Suzuki points out, the section against meat eating is clearly a later addition to the root text, and was added to mitigate criticism against Buddhism for condoning flesh consumption.

A major problem with this text is that it briefly mentions, but fails to elaborate and integrate, important elements of the Buddhahood project, such as baptism and the Dharmamegha (or Dharma Cloud). A couple times in the text, the Blessed One, in a sentence, mentions Buddhas baptizing bodhisattvas, but nothing more is said, and no details are provided, about this Spirit (or Shakti)-transmission.

The Blessed One equates Mind Awakening with the Tenth or final stage of Buddhahood, known as the Great Dharmamegha. This is likewise the final stage of Self-realization in Patanjali's Yoga system; hence Buddhism coincides with Hindu yoga at this point.

What is the Dharmamegha? Although I'm not a fan of the late Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), he summarizes it nicely: "Dharmamegha means that the Self-nature has started showering you, and you yourself become bathed in it, drown in it."

In the Lankavatara Sutra, the Blessed one describes the Bodhisattva's final stage thus: "Going through the successive stage of Bodhisattvahood, he finally reached the state of the Dharma Cloud [Dharmamegha]."

To the spiritual cognoscenti, the Dharmamegha (or Dharma Cloud) is the unobstructed descent of Anugraha Shakti, or the Holy Spirit, or the Sambhogakaya—the Blessing/Blissing Power that transforms a Buddha into a Blessed One. When this Clear-Light Energy unites with contracted Mind, or Siva, (Alaya-vijnana, or citta) in the Tathagatagarbha (the womb of the Buddhas, which is akin to the Hindu Heart-cave, or Hridayam), then Mind shines freely as Bodhicitta, or Siva-Shakti.

If you’re interested in learning more about the energetic dimension of Awakening, which the LS briefly alludes to but doesn’t elaborate (such as Buddhas baptizing bodhisattvas, and the Dharmamegha), then I suggest that you check out texts on Dzogchen, Hindu Kashmir Shaivism, Ramana Maharshi's esoteric teachings, and Adi Da's Daism. These texts will provide you with a “meta-view,” so to speak, of the fragments of “pneumatology” found in the LS.

The LS and Zen

When Bodhidharma brought Chan Buddhism to China in the 5th or 6th century, his teachings centered on meditation and the Lankavatara Sutra. Of this, D.T Suzuki in his Studies on the Lankavatara Sutra, writes:

“The study of the Lankavatara may best be approached in its especial relation to the teaching and history of Zen Buddhism. It was principally due to Bodhidharma, father of the Zen in China, that the sutra came to be prominently taken notice
of by students of Buddhism, and it was mainly by his followers that its study was systematically carried on and its commentaries written.”

But due to the Lankavatara’s inaccessibility, its decline of influence in Zen was inevitable. Of this, Suzuki writes: “When even scholars of the first grade found the Lankavatara so hard to read, the natural result was to leave it alone on the shelf
for the worms to feed on it.” The coup de grace to the Lankavatara’s influence in Zen occurred when the sixth patriarch of Zen, Hui Neng, figuratively anointed the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedikd) as the principal text of the tradition. Suzuki, in his Studies on the Lankavatara Sutra, provides an illuminating statement from Buddhist scholar Chiang Chih-chi on this transition of texts. He writes:

“’The statement made by Chiang Chih-chi in his preface to the Chin-shan edition of the Lankavatara sheds light on the history of the sutra and also on the state of affairs in the Buddhist thought-world of his day (1085), and we give the following extract:

‘’Of old when Bodhidharma was here from the West, he handed the mind-seal over to the second patriarch, Huik'e, and afterwards said: 'I have here the Lankavatara in four fasciculi which I now pass to you. It contains the essential teaching concerning the mind-ground of the Tathagata, by means of which you lead all sentient beings to open their eyes to the truth of Buddhism.' According to this we know that Bodhidharma was not one sided, both the Buddhist sutra and Zen were handed over to his disciple, both the mystical and the letters were transmitted. At the time of the fifth patriarch, the Lankavatara was replaced by the Vajracchedikd which was given to the sixth patriarch. When the latter [while peddling kindling wood] heard his customer recite the Vajracchedikd, he asked him whence he got the text. He answered, ' I come from Mt. Wu-tsu, east of Wang-mai, in the province of Chin where Hung-jen the Great Master advises both monks and laymen to study the Vajracchedikd, which will by itself lead them to an insight into the nature of being and thus to the attainment of Buddhahood.' Thus the holding of the Vajracchedikd started with the fifth patriarch, and this is how the sutra came into vogue and cut short the transmission of the Lankavatara.''’

This transition of texts signified the de-esotericization of Zen. As renowned integral philosopher Ken Wilber puts it, when the Diamond Sutra displaced the Lankavatara, “Zen lost the philosophical and psychological sophistication of the Lankavatara system and focused almost exclusively on nonconceptual Awareness.” The ramifications of this transition were (and are) far-reaching. Consequently, much of the material in Zen Mind, Thinker’s Mind directly or indirectly focuses on them.