The Lankavatara Sutra: Translation and Commentary (NONE)

Dharmas aren’t the problem. The problem is attachment to the distinctions on which dharmas are based.

recension

But names and appearances are essentially ungraspable and ultimately unknowable. What is not affected by anything and what transcends mistaken projections, this is what is meant by suchness. What is real, true, certain, ultimate, self-existent, and ungraspable,58 these are the characteristics of suchness.

Self-realization can begin anywhere, with any thought. And why not this very thought?

Shen-hsiu and Hui-neng, the two contenders to become the Fifth Patriarch’s successor, had written their competing poems on the monastery wall previously scheduled for scenes from the Lanka that the patriarchship and the future direction of Zen was decided.

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

concerns the absence of self-generated images or appearances. Hence, I have usually translated this term as “freedom from projections” or “projectionlessness. ”

Summarizing the process whereby practitioners follow such a teaching, the Buddha says, “Who sees that the habit-energy of projections of the beginningless past is the cause of the three realms, and who understands that the tathagata stage is free from projections or anything that arises, attains the personal realization of buddha knowledge and effo

“Who sees that the habit-energy of projections of the beginningless past is the cause of the three realms and who understands that the tathagata stage is free from projections or anything that arises, attains the personal realization of buddha knowledge and effortless mastery over their own minds. And like gems capable of reflecting every color, th