Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra — Translation Notes

These notes record recurring translation decisions for the Ru-Yi English translation of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (楞伽阿跋多羅寶經), Taishō T0670, translated into Chinese by Guṇabhadra (求那跋陀羅) in 443 CE. They exist so that vocabulary stays consistent across all fifty parts, and so that this sūtra’s own terminology — much of it matched to the Dasheng Qixin Lun collection’s precedent, some of it coined fresh here — is recorded for any later text in the same doctrinal lineage to inherit.

The text, and why only one version

Three Chinese translations of this sūtra survive in the Taishō canon: Guṇabhadra’s (T0670, 443 CE, four fascicles), Bodhiruci’s (T0671, 513 CE, ten fascicles), and Śikṣānanda’s (T0672, 700–704 CE, seven fascicles). This collection translates only T0670 — the oldest of the three, the version tradition holds Bodhidharma handed to Huike as the seal of mind at the very root of the Chan lineage, and the version later Chan tradition has always meant when it invokes “the Laṅkāvatāra” without further qualification. T0671 and T0672 are not covered here.

The base text runs to roughly 44,400 Chinese characters across four fascicles, not counting the front matter (title, translator credit), the two Song-dynasty prefaces by Jiang Zhiqi and Su Shi that precede the sūtra proper in the CBETA source file, the fascicle-boundary colophons between each of the four fascicles, or the CBETA colophon and donation notice at the close. None of these are part of the root text and none are translated.

A parallel-session note on Parts 1–4

Parts 1 through 4 (fascicle 1’s opening) were drafted and published by a separate, concurrent Claude session working in this same repository before this collection’s remaining forty-six parts were begun. Rather than duplicate or overwrite that work, this collection’s continuation (Parts 5 onward) adopted their established conventions exactly: the kicker format (“Part N of the collection · Fascicle X of 4 · 楞伽阿跋多羅寶經 T0670”), the status pill format, and several terminology choices already in use by the time Part 5 began — most notably “own-nature” for 自性, “the truly real consciousness” for 真識, and “the manifesting consciousness” for 現識, all introduced in Parts 1–4’s treatment of the three kinds of consciousness in fascicle 1. Readers moving from Part 4 to Part 5 should notice no seam in terminology or format.

Reading-note sourcing

Per this site’s commentator-vetting convention, reading notes are grounded in a named commentator rather than presented as unattributed analysis. Every reading note in this collection is drawn from the Ming-dynasty monks Zongle’s (宗泐) and Ruqi’s (如玘) joint commentary, the Lengqie Abatuoluo Baojing Zhujie (楞伽阿跋多羅寶經註解, T1789) — a line-by-line exegesis commissioned by the Hongwu Emperor and completed in 1391, running continuously alongside the base text across all four fascicles. Where their commentary cites the alternate translations (T0671 or T0672, most often via the phrase “《入楞伽》云”) for a clarifying parallel, this collection’s reading notes reproduce that citation in translation as well, since it is part of how Zongle and Ruqi themselves read the passage.

Structure

Total: 42,814 characters, verified in full against the base text via a depth-counted extraction of every page’s source column, diffed with difflib.SequenceMatcher against the base text — 100% coverage, no gaps, confirmed both per-page and via merged multi-page checks across each fascicle and across the whole sūtra.

Core terminology

Renderings are matched first to the Dasheng Qixin Lun collection’s precedent, since the two texts share the tathāgatagarbha/ālayavijñāna doctrinal core; where this sūtra’s own vocabulary has no site precedent, a rendering is coined fresh and recorded here.

What Zongle and Ruqi’s commentary structure contributes

Zongle and Ruqi’s commentary consistently locates each passage’s specific doctrinal target — which outsider theory, which prior misunderstanding, which later cross-reference — rather than offering generic paraphrase, and frequently cites Bodhiruci’s or Śikṣānanda’s alternate translation (via “《入楞伽》云”) for a sharper or clearer wording of the same passage. Where their commentary makes such a citation, this collection’s reading notes reproduce it in translation as well, since it is part of how the commentators themselves arrived at their reading. Their own closing words, quoted in full at the end of Part 50, return to the single teaching that runs through the whole of their line-by-line exegesis: nothing exists apart from mind, and every choice a practitioner makes either follows that understanding or turns away from it.

A note for future texts in this doctrinal lineage

Several renderings established across this collection — “the storehouse-consciousness” for both 識藏 and 藏識, “the linked chain” for 鉤鎖, “the five dharmas” for the 相/名/妄想/如如/正智 fivefold scheme, and the three-grade pāramitā vocabulary — have no prior site precedent outside this collection and were decided with an eye toward reuse should this site later take up the Ratnagotravibhāga (Bao Xing Lun, 寶性論) or other texts in the same tathāgatagarbha lineage as the Dasheng Qixin Lun and this sūtra. Future translators working on such texts should check this glossary, and the Dasheng Qixin Lun glossary it builds on, before coining fresh renderings for the same terms.