[MD] The Lankavatara Sutra

[MarshaV]

Of the few translated verstions of The Platform Sutra, The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra that I've read, my favorites are by Red Pine.  And now The Lankavatara Sutra...  

   "Having proclaimed the illusory nature of projections, including such Yogacara categories as the five dharmas and the 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-fabricating fiction, just another illusion, and how bodhisattvas transform their consciousness into the projectionless tathagata-garbha, or womb from which the buddhas arise.  Such 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-realization" of Zen."

    (Red Pine, 'THE LANKAVATARA SUTRA' 2012)


p.s.   hmmmm, see the word 'avatar'...