The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra: A Mahāyāna Text

The scripture repeatedly contrasts conceptual discrimination with direct, nondual wisdom. Important doctrines include the three svabhāvas—imagined, dependent, and perfected modes of experience—the distinction between relative and ultimate truth, tathāgatagarbha, emptiness, causation, nirvāṇa, momentariness, and the relation between language and reality. It warns against attachment to names, propositions, philosophical categories, and notions of an independently existing self or external world. 

The text also places strong emphasis on the Bodhisattva ideal, self-realization, compassion, spiritual discipline, and the Buddha’s salvific activity. Later chapters address transformation, the impermanence of phenomena, Tathāgatahood, dhāraṇīs, and the prohibition of meat-eating. The concluding Sagāthakam restates many central teachings in verse. Overall, the work combines Yogācāra-oriented psychology, tathāgatagarbha thought, nondual epistemology, and Mahāyāna soteriology into a sustained account of awakening beyond conceptual discrimination.