The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra presents tathāgatagarbha as the pure, inherent potential for enlightenment present in all sentient beings, yet it does so in a way that carefully avoids positing a permanent self. It acknowledges that the Buddha sometimes speaks of a “tathāgatagarbha, permanent, blissful, self, and pure” as a way to encourage beings who are fearful of the teaching of no-self, but insists that such language is provisional and must not be reified. Properly understood, this Buddha-nature is not a hidden soul or separate entity inside beings, but the true nature of mind and phenomena, already pure and luminous beneath adventitious defilements. The text thus portrays Buddha-nature as both the ground of the possibility of Buddhahood and as something that must not be grasped as an eternal essence.

In Yogācāra terms, the sutra closely links tathāgatagarbha with ālaya-vijñāna, the storehouse consciousness. In deluded experience, this basis functions as the repository of karmic seeds and the support for saṃsāric appearance; when purified, its true aspect is Buddha-nature. The process of liberation is described as a turning at the deepest level of consciousness (parāvṛtti), in which the basis is transformed and its pure, enlightened dimension is revealed. In this way, Buddha-nature is not introduced as something added from outside, but as the intrinsic, non-dual suchness of the very consciousness that, when obscured, gives rise to confusion.

The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra further identifies tathāgatagarbha with śūnyatā (emptiness), tathatā (suchness), dharmadhātu (the realm of reality), and dharmatā (the true nature of phenomena). These terms are treated as pointing to the same non-discriminative wisdom that transcends subject–object duality and conceptual fabrication. To say that all beings “possess” Buddha-nature, then, is to say that the ultimate nature of their mind is already identical with this non-dual suchness once obscurations are removed. The sutra repeatedly cautions that if this is grasped as a real, permanent Self, one falls into wrong view; yet when understood as empty, luminous suchness, it becomes the very heart of the bodhisattva path and the key to recognizing the ever-present possibility of awakening.