Posted by Golden Lotus
Feb 12 2007 3 :58pm
Lankavatara sutra is one of the BuddhaÂ’s high level dharma teaching which was mainly preaching to the Maha-Bodhisattva. It is even higher dharma teaching than the Shurangama Sutra which was preaching to Ananda and other disciple before they attained the Arahant.
So if we can have a better understanding of the Shurangama sutra first, it will help us to comprehend Lankavatara more easily. The goal of Shurangama was guiding the disciple to attain Arahant and further to attain the eighth stage Bodhisattva who can prove the No Birth Dharma. A No Birth Dharma Bodhisattva is who can realized the illusive consciousness and pass through the Five Aggregate. Passing Five Aggregate mean transcend samsra, three realms, and cease the birth and death cycle.
Therefore the eighth stages Bodhisattva also called no retreat stage which is never falling back to samsara. However, this is a turning point for the Bodhisattva turn to Nibbana or further fulfills his previous life's vow to benefit the sentient being and finally attain the Buddhahood.
In order to keep the Bodhisattva from turning to Nibbana, all of Ten direction Buddha start to empower the Bodhisattva and fresh his previous vow and donÂ’t back off to Nibbana. Meanwhile also preaching a lots dharma to him to encourage to attain the fully enlightenment as a Buddha.
So it is the time for Buddha to preaching the Lankayatara dharma to them. Persuading them the Nibbana is not a right place to go. So it is also the time Buddha start to condemn the two vehicles disciple, Arahant and pacceka-buddha. In other words, not all Mahayana sutra condemn the two vehicles. Only tiny part of very high level of Mahayana teaching do.
The main purpose of Buddha is that he donÂ’t want the Bodhisattva copy them back off to nibbana. So Buddha call the two vehicles disciple rotten Buddha seed. If every Bodhisattva also go into nibbana, then there is no future Buddha. So it is called rotten Buddha seed.
This is the background information why the Buddha start to preaching the Lankavatara sutra. I will try to explain three type of dharma body later or tomorrow.