Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series

Otherwise, how do we account for the establishment of such a firm faith in self-realisation or self-deliverance as this? “He has destroyed all evil passions (āsava); he has attained to heart-emancipation (ceto-vimutti) and intellect-emancipation (pannā-vimutti), here in this visible world he has by himself understood, realised, and mastered the Dharma, he has dived deep into it, has passed beyond doubt, has put away perplexity, has gained full confidence, he has lived the life, has done what was to be done, has destroyed the fetter of rebirth, he has comprehended the Dharma as it is truly in itself.”f34

This is why the Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra tries so hard to tell us that language is altogether inadequate as the means of expressing and communicating the inner state of Enlightenment. While without language we may fare worse at least in our practical life, we must guard ourselves most deliberately against our trusting it too much beyond its legitimate office. The Sutra gives the main reason for this, which is that language is the product of causal dependence, subject to change, unsteady, mutually conditioned, and based on false judgment as to the true nature of consciousness. For this reason language cannot reveal to us the ultimate signification of things (paramārtha). The noted analogy of finger and moon is most appropriate to illustrate the relation between language and sense, symbol and reality.

If the Buddha’s Enlightenment really contained so much in it that he himself could not sufficiently demonstrate or illustrate it with his “long thin tongue” (prabhūtatanujihva) through his long peaceful life given to meditation and discoursing, how could those less than he ever hope to grasp it and attain spiritual emancipation? This is the position taken up by Zen: To comprehend the truth of Enlightenment, therefore, we must exercise some other mental power than intellection, if we are at all in possession of such. Discoursing fails to reach the goal and yet we have an unsatiated aspiration after the unattainable. Are we then meant to live and die thus tormented for ever? If so, this is the most lamentable situation in which we find ourselves on earth. Buddhists have applied themselves most earnestly to the solution of the problem and have finally come to see that we have after all within ourselves what we need. This is the power of intuition possessed by spirit and able to comprehend spiritual truth which will show us all the secrets of life making up the content of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. It is not an ordinary intellectual process of reasoning, but a power that will grasp something most fundamental in an instant and in the directest way. Prajñā is the name given to this power by the Buddhists, as I said, and what Zen Buddhism aims at in its relation to the doctrine of Enlightenment is to awaken Prajñā by the exercise of meditation.

We read in the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka: “O Śāriputra, the true Law understood by the Tathagata cannot be reasoned, is beyond the pale of reasoning. Why? For the Tathagata appears in the world to carry out one great object, which is to make all beings accept, see, enter into, and comprehend the knowledge and insight gained by the Tathagata, and also to make them enter upon the path of knowledge and insight attained by the Tathagata.... Those who learn it from the Tathagata also reach his Supreme Perfect Enlightenment.”f35 If such was the one great object of the Buddha’s appearance on earth, how do we get into the path of insight and realise Supreme Perfect Enlightenment? And if this Dharma of Enlightenment is beyond the limits of the understanding, no amount of philosophising will ever bring us nearer the goal. How do we then learn it from the Tathagata? Decidedly not from his mouth, nor from the records of his sermons, nor from the ascetic practise, but from our own inner consciousness through the exercise of dhyana. And this is the doctrine of Zen.

When the doctrine of Enlightenment makes its appeal to the inner experience of the Buddhist and its content is to be grasped immediately without any conceptual medium, the sole authority in his spiritual life will have to be found within himself; traditionalism or institutionalism will naturally lose all its binding force. According to him, then, propositions will be true, that is, living, because they are in accordance with his spiritual insight; and his actions will permit no external standard of judgment; as long as they are the inevitable overflow of his inner life, they are good, even holy. The direct issue of this interpretation of Enlightenment will be the upholding of absolute spiritual freedom in every way, which will further lead to the unlimited expansion of his mental outlook going beyond the narrow bounds of monastic and scholastic Buddhism. This was not however, from the Mahayanistic point of view, against the spirit of the Buddha.

The constitution of the Brotherhood will now have to change. In the beginning of Buddhism, it was a congregation of homeless monks who subjected themselves to a certain set of ascetic rules of life. In this Buddhism was an exclusive possession of the élite, and the general public or Upāsaka group who accepted the Threefold Refuge Formula was a sort of appendage to the regular or professional Brotherhood. When Buddhism was still in its first stage of development, even nuns (bhikshuṇī) were not allowed to come into the community; the Buddha received them only after great reluctance, prophesying that Buddhism would now live only half of its normal life. We can readily see from this fact that the teaching of the Buddha and the doctrine of Enlightenment were meant to be practised and realised only among limited classes of people. While the Buddha regarded the various elements of his congregation with perfect impartiality, cherishing no prejudices as to their social, racial, and other distinctions, the full benefit of his teaching could not extend beyond the monastic boundaries. If there was nothing in it that could benefit mankind in general, this exclusiveness was naturally to be expected. But the doctrine of Enlightenment was something that could not be kept thus imprisoned, it had many things in it that would overflow all the limitations set to it. When the conception of Bodhisattvahood came to be emphatically asserted, a monastic and self-excluding community could no longer hold its ground, a religion of monks and nuns had to become a religion of laymen and laywomen.

An ascetic discipline leading to the Anūpādhiśesha-Nirvāṇa had to give way to a system of teaching that would make any one attain Enlightenment and demonstrate Nirvana in his daily life. In all the Mahayana Sutras, this general tendency in the unfoldment of Buddhism is vehemently asserted, showing how intense was the struggle between conservatism and progressivism.

This spirit of freedom which is the power impelling Buddhism to break through its monastic shell and bringing forward the idea of Enlightenment ever vigorously before the masses, is the life-impulse of the universe,—this unhampered activity of spirit, and everything that interferes with it is destined to be defeated. The history of Buddhism is thus also a history of freedom in one’s spiritual, intellectual, and moral life. The moral aristocracy and disciplinary formalism of primitive Buddhism could not bind our spirit for a very long period of time. As the doctrine of Enlightenment grew to be more and more inwardly interpreted, the spirit rose above the formalism of Buddhist discipline. It was of no absolute necessity for one to leave his home life and follow the footsteps of the wandering monks in order to reach the supreme fruit of Enlightenment. Inward purity, and not external piety, was the thing needed for the Buddhist life. The Upāsakas were in this respect as good as the Bhikshus. The fact is most eloquently illustrated in the Vimalakīrti-Sūtra. The chief character here is Vimalakīrti, a lay philosopher, outside the pale of the Brotherhood. None of the Buddha’s disciples were his matches in the depth, breadth, and subtleties of thought, and when the Buddha told them to visit his sickroom, they all excused themselves for some reason or other, except Mañjuśrī, who is Prajñā incarnate in Mahayana Buddhism.

That the lay-devotees thus asserted themselves even at the expense of the Arhats, may also be gleaned from other sources than the Vimalakīrti, but especially from such Sutras as the Śrīmālā, Gaṇḍhavyūha, Vajrasamādhi, Candrottara-dārikā, etc. What is the most noteworthy in this connection is that woman plays an important rôle on various occasions. Not only is she endowed with philosophising talents, but she stands on equal footing with man. Among the fifty-three philosophers or leaders of thought visited by Sudhana in his religious pilgrimage, he interviewed many women in various walks of life, and some of whom were even courtesans. They all wisely discoursed with the insatiable seeker of truth. What a different state of affairs this was when compared with the reluctant admission of women into the Sangha in the early days of Buddhism! Later Buddhism may have lost something in austerity, aloofness, and even saintliness, which appeal strongly to our religious imagination, but it has gained in democracy, picturesqueness, and largely in humanity.

The free spirit which wanders out beyond the monastic walls of the Brotherhood now follows its natural consequence and endeavours to transcend the disciplinary rules and the ascetic formalism of the Hinayanists. The moral rules that were given by the Buddha to his followers as they were called for by the contingencies of life, were concerned more or less with externalism. When the Buddha remained with them as the living spirit of the Brotherhood, these rules were the direct expressions of the subjective life; but with the Buddha’s departure, they grew rigid and failed to reach the inner spirit of their author, and the followers of Enlightenment revolted against them, upholding “the spirit that giveth life.” They advocated perfect freedom of spirit, even after the fashion of antinomians. If the spirit were pure, no acts of the body could spoil it; it could wander about anywhere it liked with absolute immunity. It would even go down to hell, if it were necessary or expedient for them to do so, for the sake of the salvation of the depraved. It would indefinitely postpone the entering into Nirvana if there were still souls to save and minds to enlighten. According to “the letter that killeth” no Buddhists were allowed to enter a liquor shop, or to be familiar with inmates of the houses barred from respectability, in short, even for a moment to be thinking of violating any of the moral precepts. But to the Mahayanists all kinds of “expediency” or “devices” were granted if they were fully enlightened and had their spirits thoroughly purified.

They were living in a realm beyond good and evil, and as long as they were there, no acts of theirs could be classified and judged according to the ordinary measure of ethics; they were neither moral nor immoral. These relative terms had no application in a kingdom governed by free spirits which soared above the relative world of differences and oppositions. This was most slippery ground for the Mahayanists. When they were really enlightened and fathomed the depths of spirituality, every deed of theirs was a creative act of God, but in this extreme form of idealism, objectivity had no room, and consequently who could ever distinguish libertinism from spiritualism? In spite of this pitfall the Mahayanists were in the right in consistently following up all the implications of the doctrine of Enlightenment. Their parting company with the Hinayanists was inevitable.

The doctrine of Enlightenment leads to the inwardness of one’s spiritual experience, which cannot be analysed intellectually without somehow involving logical contradictions. It thus seeks to break through every intelligent barrier that may be set against it, it longs for emancipation in every form, not only in the understanding but in life itself. The unscrupulous followers of Enlightenment are thus liable to degenerate into votaries of libertinism. If the Mahayanists remained here and did not see further into the real nature of Prajñā, they would have certainly followed the fates of the Friends of Free Spirit, but they knew how Enlightenment realises its true signification in love for all beings and how freedom of spirit has its own principle to follow though nothing external is imposed upon it. For freedom does not mean lawlessness, which is the destruction and annihilation of itself, but creating out of its inner life-force all that is good and beautiful. This creating is called by the Mahayanists “skilful device” (upāya-kauśalya), in which Enlightenment is harmoniously wedded to love. Enlightenment when intellectually conceived is not dynamical and stops at illumining the path which love will tread. But Prajñā is more than merely intellectual, it produces Karuṇā (love or pity), and with her co-operation it achieves the great end of life, the salvation of all beings from Ignorance and passions and misery. It now knows no end in devising all kinds of means to carry out its own teleological functions.

The Saddharma-Puṇḍarīka regards the Buddha’s appearance on earth and his life in history as the “skilful devices” of world-salvation on the part of the Supreme Being of Eternal Enlightenment. This creation, however, ceases to be a creation in its perfect sense when the creator grows conscious of its teleological implicationsf36; for here then is a split in his consciousness which will check the spontaneous flowing-out of spirit, and then freedom will be lost at its source. Such devices as have grown conscious of their purposes are no more “skilful devices,” and according to the Buddhists they do not reflect the perfect state of Enlightenment.

Thus the doctrine of Enlightenment is to be supplemented by the doctrine of Device (upāya), or the latter may be said to evolve by itself from the first when it is conceived dynamically and not as merely a contemplative state of consciousness. The earlier Buddhists showed the tendency to consider Enlightenment essentially reflective or a state of tranquillity. They made it something lifeless and altogether uncreative. This however did not bring out all that was contained in Enlightenment. The affective or will element which moved the Buddha to come out of his Sāgaramudrā-Samādhi,—a samadhi in which the whole universe was reflected in his consciousness as the moon stamps her image upon the ocean,—has now developed into the doctrine of Device. For the will is more fundamental than the intellect and makes up the ultimate principle of life. Without the “devising” and self-regulating will, life will be the mad display of a mere blind force. The wantonness of “a free spirit” is thus now regulated to operate in the great work of universal salvation. Its creative activity will devise all possible means for the sake of love for all beings animate as well as inanimate. Dhyana is one of those devices which will keep our minds in balance and well under the control of the will. Zen is the outcome of the dhyana discipline applied to the attainment of Enlightenment.

The term “Zen” (ch‘an in Chinese), is an abbreviated form of Zenna or Ch‘anna,[2.2] which is the Chinese rendering of “dhyāna,” or “jhāna,” and from this fact alone it is evident that Zen has a great deal to do with this practice which has been carried on from the early days of the Buddha, indeed from the beginning of Indian culture. Dhyana is usually rendered in English meditation, and, generally speaking, the idea is to meditate on a truth, religious or philosophical, so that it may be thoroughly comprehended and deeply engraved into the inner consciousness. This is practised in a quiet place away from the noise and confusion of the world. Allusion to this abounds in Indian literature; and “to sit alone in a quiet place and to devote oneself to meditation exclusively” is the phrase one meets everywhere in the Āgamas.

The following conversation between Sandhana, a Buddhist, and Nigrodha, an ascetic, which is recorded in the Udumbarika Sīhanāda Suttanta,f37 will throw much light on the habit of the Buddha. Says Sandhana, “But the Exalted One haunts the lonely and remote recesses of the forest, where noise, where sound there hardly is, where the breezes from the pastures blow, yet which are hidden from the eyes of men, suitable for self-communing.” To this, the ascetic wanderer answers: “Look you now, householder, know you with whom the Samana Gotama talks? with whom he holds conversation? By intercourse with whom does he attain the lucidity in wisdom? The Samana Gotama’s insight is ruined by his habit of seclusion. He is not at home in conducting an assembly. He is not ready in conversation. So he keeps apart from others in solitary places. Even as a one-eyed cow that, walking in a circle, follows only the outskirts, so is the Samana Gotama.”

Again we read in the Sāmañña-phala Suttaf38: “Then, the master of this so excellent body of moral precepts, gifted with this so excellent self-restraint as to the senses, endowed with this so excellent mindfulness and self-possession, filled with this so excellent content, he chooses some lonely spot to rest at on his way—in the woods, at the foot of a tree, on a hill side, in a mountain glen, in a rocky cave, in a charnel place, or on a heap of straw in the open field. And returning thither after his round for alms he seats himself, when his meal is done, cross-legged, keeping his body erect, and his intelligence alert, intent.”

Further, in the days of the Buddha, miracle-working and sophistical discussions seem to have been the chief business of the ascetics, wanderers, and Brahman metaphysicians. The Buddha was thus frequently urged to join in the debates on philosophical questions and also to perform wonders in order to make people embrace his teaching. Nigrodha’s comment on the Buddha conclusively shows that the Buddha was a great disapprover of empty reasoning, devoting himself to things practical and productive of results, as well as that he was always earnestly engaged in meditation away from the world. When Chien-ku, son of a wealthy merchant in Nalanda, asked the Buddha to give his command to his disciples and make them perform for the benefit of his townspeople, the Buddha flatly refused, saying, “My disciples are instructed to sit in solitude quietly and to be earnestly meditating on the Path. If they had something meritorious, let them conceal it, but if they had faults, let them confess.”f39

An appeal to the analytical understanding is never sufficient to thoroughly comprehend the inwardness of a truth, especially when it is a religious one, nor is mere compulsion by an external force adequate for bringing about a spiritual transformation in us. We must experience in our innermost consciousness all that is implied in a doctrine, when we are able not only to understand it but to put it in practice. There will then be no discrepancy between knowledge and life. The Buddha knew this very well, and he endeavoured to produce knowledge out of meditation, this is, to make wisdom grow from personal, spiritual experience. The Buddhist way to deliverance, therefore, consisted in threefold discipline: moral rules (śīla), tranquillisation (samādhi), and wisdom (prajñā). By Śīla one’s conduct is regulated externally, by Samādhi quietude is attained, and by Prajñā real understanding takes place. Hence the importance of meditation in Buddhism.

That this threefold discipline was one of the most characteristic features of Buddhism since its earliest days is well attested by the fact that the following formula, which is culled from the Mahāparinibbāna-Sutta, is repeatedly referred to in the Sutra as if it were a subject most frequently discussed by the Buddha for the edification of his followers: “Such and such is upright conduct (śīla); such and such is earnest contemplation (samādhi); such and such is intelligence (prajñā). Great becomes the fruit, great the advantage of intellect when it is set round with earnest contemplation. The mind set round with intelligence is set quite free from the intoxications (āśrava), that is to say, from the intoxication of sensuality (kāma), from the intoxication of becoming (bhāva), from the intoxication of delusion (dṛishti), from the intoxication of ignorance (avidyā)f40.”

Samadhi and dhyana are to a great extent synonymous and interchangeable, but strictly samadhi is a psychological state realised by the exercise of dhyana. The latter is the process and the former is the goal. The Buddhist scriptures make reference to so many samadhis, and before delivering a sermon the Buddha generally enters into a samadhi,f41 but never I think into a dhyana. The latter is practised or exercised. But frequently in China dhyana and samadhi are combined to make one word, ch‘an-ting;[2.3] meaning a state of quietude attained by the exercise of meditation or dhyana. There are some other terms analogous to these two which are met with in Buddhist literature as well as in other Indian religious systems. They are Saṁpatti (coming together), Samāhita (collecting the thoughts), Śamatha (tranquillisation), Cittaikāgratā (concentration), Dṛishta-dharma-sukha-vihāra (abiding in the bliss of the Law perceived), Dhāraṇi or Dhāraṇa (abstraction), etc. They are all connected with the central idea of dhyana, which is to tranquillise the turbulence of self-assertive passions and to bring about a state of absolute identity in which the truth is realised in its inwardness, that is, a state of Enlightenment. The analytical tendency of philosophers is also evident in this when they distinguish four or eight kinds of dhyana.f42

The first dhyana is an exercise in which the mind is made to concentrate on one single subject until all the coarse affective elements are vanished from consciousness except the serene feelings of joy and peace. But the intellect is still active, judgment and reflection operate upon the object of contemplation. When these intellectual operations too are quieted and the mind is simply concentrated on one point, it is said that we have attained the second dhyana, but the feelings of joy and peace are still here. In the third stage of dhyana, perfect serenity obtains as the concentration grows deeper, but the subtlest mental activities are not vanished and at the same time a joyous feeling remains. When the fourth and last stage is reached, even this feeling of self-enjoyment disappears, and what prevails in consciousness now is perfect serenity of contemplation. All the intellectual and the emotional factors liable to disturb spiritual tranquillity are successively controlled, and mind in absolute composure remains absorbed in contemplation. In this there takes place a fully-adjusted equilibrium between Samatha and Vipasayana, that is, between tranquillisation or cessation and contemplation. In all Buddhist discipline this harmony is always sought after. For when the mind tips either way, it grows either too heavy (styānam) or too light (auddhatyam), either too torpid in mental activity or too given up to contemplation. The spiritual exercise ought to steer ahead without being hampered by either tendency, they ought to strike the middle path.

There are further four stages of dhyana called “Arūpa-vimoksha” which are practised by those who have passed beyond the last stage of dhyana. The first is to contemplate the infinity of space, not disturbed by the manifoldness of matter; the second is on the infinity of consciousness as against the first; the third is meant to go still further beyond the distinction of space and thought; and the fourth is to eliminate even this consciousness of non-distinction, to be thus altogether free from any trace of analytical intellection. Besides these eight Samāpatti (“coming together”) exercises, technically so called, the Buddha sometimes refers to still another form of meditation which is considered to be distinctly Buddhist. This is more or less definitely contrasted to the foregoing by not being so exclusively intellectual but partly affective, as it aims at putting a full stop to the operation of Samjñā (thought) and Vedita (sensation), that is, of the essential elements of consciousness. It is almost a state of death, total extinction, except that one in this dhyana has life, warmth, and the sense-organs in perfect condition. But in point of fact it is difficult to distinguish this Nirodha-vimoksha (deliverance by cessation) from the last stage of the Aruppa (or Arūpa) meditation, in both of which consciousness ceases to function even in its simplest and most fundamental acts.

Whatever this was, it is evident that the Buddha like the other Indian leaders of thought endeavoured to make his disciples realise in themselves the content of Enlightenment by means of dhyana, or concentration. They were thus made to gradually progress from a comparatively simple exercise up to the highest stage of concentration in which the dualism of the One and the Many vanished even to the extent of a total cessation of mentation. Apart from these general spiritual exercises, the Buddha at various times told his followers to meditate on such objectsf43 as would make them masters of their disturbing passions and intellectual entanglements.

We can now see how Zen developed out of this system of spiritual exercises. Zen adopted the external form of dhyana as the most practical method to realise the end it had in view, but as to its content Zen had its own way of interpreting the spirit of the Buddha. The dhyana practised by primitive Buddhists was not in full accord with the object of Buddhism, which is no other than the attaining of Enlightenment and demonstrating it in one’s everyday life. To do away with consciousness so that nothing will disturb spiritual serenity was too negative a state of mind to be sought after by those who at all aspired to develop the positive content of the Buddha’s own enlightened mind. Tranquillisation was not the real end of dhyana, nor was the being absorbed in a samadhi the object of Buddhist life. Enlightenment was to be found in life itself, in its fuller and freer expressions, and not in its cessation. What was it that made the Buddha pass all his life in religious peregrination? What was it that moved him to sacrifice his own well-being, in fact his whole life, for the sake of his fellow-creatures? If dhyana had no positive object except in pacifying passions and enjoying absorption in the unconscious, why did the Buddha leave his seat under the Bodhi-tree and come out into the world? If Enlightenment was merely a negative state of cessation, the Buddha could not find any impulse in him that would urge him to exertion in behalf of others.

Critics sometimes forget this fact when they try to understand Buddhism simply as a system of teaching as recorded in the Agamas and in Pali Buddhist literature. As I said before, Buddhism is also a system built by his disciples upon the personality of the Buddha himself, in which the spirit of the Master is more definitely affirmed. And this is what Zen has in its own way been attempting to do—to develop the idea of Enlightenment more deeply, positively, and comprehensively by the practice of dhyana and in conformity with the spirit of general Buddhism, in which life, purged of its blind impulses and sanctified by an insight into its real values, will be asserted.

Of the many Sutras that were introduced into China since the first century A.D., the one in which the principles of Zen are more expressly and directly expounded than any others, at least those that were in existence at the time of Bodhi-Dharma, is the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. Zen, as its followers justly claim, does not base its authority on any written documents, but directly appeals to the enlightened mind of the Buddha. It refuses to do anything with externalism in all its variegated modes; even the Sutras or all those literary remains ordinarily regarded as sacred and coming directly from the mouth of the Buddha are looked down upon, as we have already seen, as not touching the inward facts of Zen. Hence its reference to the mystic dialogue between the Enlightened One and Mahākāśyapa on a bouquet of flowers. But Bodhi-Dharma, the founder of Zen in China, handed the Laṅkāvatāra over to his first Chinese disciple Hui-k‘ê as the only literature in existence at the time in China, in which the principles of Zen are taught. When Zen unconditionally emphasises one’s immediate experience as the final fact on which it is established it may well ignore all the scriptural sources as altogether unessential to its truth; and on this principle its followers have quite neglected the study of the Laṅkāvatāra. But to justify the position of Zen for those who have not yet grasped it and yet who are desirous of learning something about it, an external authority may be quoted and conceptual arguments resorted to in perfect harmony with its truth.

There are three Chinese translations of the Sutra still in existence. There was a fourth one, but it was lost. The first in four volumes was produced during the Lu-Sung dynasty (A.D. 443) by Guṇabhadra, the second in ten volumes comes from the pen of Bodhiruci, of the Yüan-Wei dynasty (A.D. 513), and the third in seven volumes is by Śikshānanda, of the T‘ang dynasty (A.D. 700).[2.4] The last-mentioned is the easiest to understand and the first the most difficult, and it was this, the most difficult one, that was delivered by Dharma to his disciple Hui-K‘ê as containing the “essence of mind”. In form and in content this translation reflects the earliest text of the Sutra, and on it are written all the commentaries we have at present in Japan.

The special features of this Sutra, which distinguish it from the other Mahayana writings, are, to give the most noteworthy ones: first, that the subject-matter is not systematically developed as in most other Sutras, but the whole book is a series of notes of various lengths; secondly, that the Sutra is devoid of all supernatural phenomena, but filled with deep philosophical and religious ideas concerning the central teaching of the Sutra, which are very difficult to comprehend, due to tersity of expression and to the abstruse nature of the subject-matter; thirdly, that it is in the form of dialogues exclusively between the Buddha and the Bodhisattva Mahāmati while in the other Mahayana Sutras the principal figures are generally more than one besides the Buddha himself who addresses them in turn; and lastly, that it contains no Dharanis or Mantrams—those mystical signs and formulas supposed to have a miraculous power. These singularities are enough to make the Laṅkāvatāra occupy a unique position in the whole lore of the Mahayana school.

In this characterisation of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, I am referring to the first Chinese text of Guṇabhadra. The two later ones have three new chapters in addition: one of which forming the first chapter is a sort of introduction to the whole Sutra, giving the main idea of what is discussed in the body of the text itself; the remaining two are attached to the end. Of these, the one is a short collection of Dharanis, and the other which is the conclusion is known as the Gāthā chapter written throughout in verse and summarises the contents of the whole Sutra. It has, however, no paragraph making up the “regular ending” in which the whole congregation unites in the praise of the Buddha and in its assurance of observing his instructions. There is no doubt that these three new chapters are of later growth.

The main thesis of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra is the content of Enlightenment, that is, the Buddha’s own inner experience (pratyātmagati) concerning the great religious truth of Mahayana Buddhism. Most of the readers of the Sutra have singularly failed to see this, and contend that it principally explains the Five Dharmas, the Three Characteristics of Reality (svabhāva), the Eight Kinds of Consciousness (vijñāna), and the Two Forms of Non-Ego (nairātmya). It is true that the Sutra reflects the psychological school of Buddhism advocated by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, when for instance it refers to the Ālayavijñāna as the storage of all karmic seeds; but such and other references in fact do not constitute the central thought of the Sutra, they are merely made use of in explaining the “noble understanding of the Buddha’s inner experience” (pratyātmāryajñāna). Therefore when Mahāmati finishes praising the Buddha’s virtues before the whole assembly at the summit of Mount Laṅkā, the Buddha is quite definite in his declaration of the main theme of his discourse in this Sutra. Let us however first quote the song of the Bodhisattva Mahāmati since it sums up in a concise and definite manner all the essentials of Mahayana Buddhism and since at the same time it illustrates my statement concerning the union of Enlightenment and Love.