those who have freed themselves of the habit-energy and misconceptions that are perceptions of their own minds.

and usually refers to the appearance of a deity upon earth—and from which we get the word avatar.

Followers of other paths cling to the belief in a self and the view that the world is real and that material elements, substances, and tendencies exist.47 Or they insist that ignorance and the chain of causation are real. They make distinctions where there is only emptiness. Lost in projections, they become captives of the actors and actions of the

But what sets the Lanka apart is that it points readers beyond the teachings of the early Yogacara to their own minds. Pointing directly at the mind was and still is a hallmark of the Zen school of Buddhism. And the man who brought Zen to China was from the area just north of Lanka near the seaport of Kanchipuram.

But most of it does not mean all of it. Sometimes I felt like I was trying to see through a wall.

peregrinations,

Apparently Zen was too simple to be noticed in the land of its origin, where it remained an invisible teaching.

For a wise man should ask questions, not only for his own benefit but also for the benefit of others.

the Buddha is not so concerned with philosophical argument as he is with putting an end to suffering, which arises from projection and which ceases upon understanding the true nature of one’s own perceptions.