Everything You Need to Know About Zen: A Study of the Lankavantara Sutra
with Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison
The Lankavatara Sutra is considered one of the most important texts of Mahayana Buddhism. According to tradition, it is the only sutra that depicts the Buddha’s spoken words and has been referred to as the “holy grail” of Zen.
Bodhidharma, legendary Buddhist monk and Zen’s first patriarch, credited with transmitting Chan (Zen) from India to China, passed on this sutra to his successor Huike, revealing to him that everything he needed to know was in this sutra.
Expounding two great teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, the Lankavatara Sutra conveys that everything we perceive as real is only a manifestation of our own mind, and knowledge of this realization must be experienced and cannot be transmitted through words.
Through study, lecture, discussion, and experiential learning, we will uncover a work that has inspired spiritual practitioners for more than 85 generations.
