Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra 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 Laṅkāvatāra 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
Laṅkāvatāra 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
Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, and indeed an early history of the Ch'an school is the text,
Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (Chin.,
Leng-ch'ieh shih-tzu chi). This focus on the
Laṅkāvatāra 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
Laṅkāvatāra 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
Laṅkāvatāra 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).
