Yogacara

The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra

Mahāyāna sutra

Why it matters

The sacred text handed down by Bodhidharma as the heart of Zen, uniting Yogācāra mind-only and Tathāgatagarbha Buddha-nature in one non-dual vision.

The tradition behind it

Yogacara, sometimes called the Mind-Only school, studies how experience is constructed by consciousness. It shows how habits of perception build the sense of a solid self facing a solid world, and how that construction can be seen through.

Try it in practice

• Sensation only

  Put a hand where the trouble lives in the body. Drop the story and stay with temperature, pressure, movement. Let it be sensation without a name.

Read alongside

• Living Yogacara: An Introduction to Consciousness-Only Buddhism · Tagawa Shun'ei