The Lankāvatāra Sūtra approaches the problem of perception and reality through the Yogācāra doctrine of “mind-only” (cittamātra / vijñapti-mātra). What ordinarily appears as an external, independently existing world is presented as a projection or representation within consciousness. The eight forms of consciousness, including the sensory modes and the mental consciousness, generate the appearance of a subject confronting external objects, but this duality is treated as a construction rather than an ultimate fact. Perception, in this view, is not a transparent window onto an outside reality but a conditioned display of consciousness itself.

A central role is given to the ālaya-vijñāna, the storehouse consciousness, which holds karmic “seeds” (bīja) and habit energies (vāsanā). From this deep level of mind, seeds mature into the complex stream of experiences that are then misread as an objective world populated by solid entities and a separate “I.” The sutra links this misreading to discriminative thinking (vikalpa): through naming, conceptualization, and habitual categorization, consciousness reifies its own fluid projections into apparently fixed things. Thus, the problem lies less in the mere arising of appearances and more in the way consciousness misconstrues them.

To clarify the relation between perception and reality, the text employs the three natures (trisvabhāva). At the level of imagined nature (parikalpita), the duality of subject and object and the belief in self-existent entities dominate ordinary perception. The dependent nature (paratantra) points to the causal flow of consciousness and its projections, arising from conditions and karmic seeds. The perfected nature (pariniṣpanna) is the realization that this duality is empty of inherent existence, revealing a non-dual mode of reality that is not captured by conceptual fabrication.

Alongside this analysis, the Lankāvatāra Sūtra affirms Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha) as the pure, luminous basis obscured by defiled, discriminative consciousness. This Buddha-nature is described as the true ground of perception when freed from conceptual overlay, not as a hidden substance behind phenomena but as suchness (tathatā) seen without distortion. Liberation is framed as a “turning-about” (parāvṛtti) in the deepest consciousness, in which the storehouse consciousness is transformed into non-discriminative wisdom (nirvikalpa-jñāna). When this transformation occurs, perceiver, perception, and perceived are recognized as mutually dependent constructions, and reality is directly known as non-dual, empty of self-nature yet endowed with Buddha-nature.