Sacred Texts: Buddhism

A Buddhist Bible: The Lankavatara Sutra: Chapter II. Fals...

Dwight GoddardTaoism and ZenZen Buddhism

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This is an excerpt from the *Lankavatara Sutra*, a foundational Mahayana Buddhist scripture presented as a dialogue between the Bodhisattva Mahamati and the Buddha (the Blessed One/Tathagata). The text's central argument is that most philosophical error stems from failing to recognize that the objective world arises from mind itself — not from external causes or self-existent substances — and that clinging to dualistic distinctions between being and non-being is the root of ignorance and suffering. The Buddha systematically dismantles two dominant philosophical camps: those who assert that something arises from nothing through causal combination (Brahmanical realists), and nihilists who deny continuity and karma altogether, concluding both are trapped in erroneous word-based discrimination. A distinctive and extended section argues that words and language are themselves conventional, causally conditioned, and incapable of expressing highest Reality — pointing to Buddha-lands where communication happens through gesture, glance, or silence rather than speech. The sutra closes the excerpt by outlining a sixfold analysis of causation, distinguishing external from internal causal factors, while insisting that apparent individual things are only discriminated as such by the ignorant. The text's most striking claim is its epistemological radicalism: not just that ordinary people are wrong, but that philosophical argument and logic themselves are the disease, and that liberation requires direct self-realization of Noble Wisdom beyond all predication.

A Buddhist Bible: The Lankavatara Sutra: Chapter II. Fals...

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