The Buddha answers that while consciousness rises and ceases, it possesses an intrinsic quality that remains unaffected by those forms of consciousness tied to the contents he has just now denied.

Written in language that would later become part of the Yogacara school of Buddhism, the Lanka provides a view of how the mind works and how the path to enlightenment works, but it uses such devices to get our attention. They are not the teaching. Think of the Lankavatara as Zen tea in a Yogacara cup.

It should be clear from this and the foregoing that the teaching Ravana would hear is not that of “mind-only,” which he already understands, or thinks he understands, but that of personal realization, which distinguishes this sutra from all others.

The Buddha is not an object of sensation / to see no names is to see the Buddha

Magic and prophecy were the major reasons why those in power financed sutra translation—the powers associated with sutras and mantras had political and military applications.

salutary

“Mahamati, there is nothing that actually arises or ceases. The sequence of stages and all the phenomena in the three realms are nothing but perceptions of one’s own mind. But fools are unaware of this. And because they are unaware, I and other buddhas talk about a sequence of stages and talk about the phenomena of the three realms.

and from every hair and pore, a blazing radiance that resembled a world-destroying conflagration, rainbows in the sky, or the sun at dawn.52

“If they taught the truth / in beings’ minds would be no truth169