The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra stands at a crossroads where Yogācāra analysis of consciousness and Tathāgatagarbha affirmations of Buddha‑nature are woven into a single vision of mind. On the Yogācāra side, it reinforces the doctrine of “mind‑only” by presenting all experiential phenomena as manifestations of consciousness, articulated through the system of eight consciousnesses, including the ālayavijñāna or storehouse consciousness. This ālayavijñāna is not treated merely as a passive repository of karmic seeds, but as the very basis that, when transformed, becomes the ground of awakening. In this way, the text gives Yogācāra’s psychology a distinctly soteriological orientation: liberation is framed as the purification and transformation of consciousness itself. The sutra thus offers scriptural support for the view that what appears as an external world is, in truth, the play of mind, and that meditative realization is inseparable from understanding this structure of consciousness.

At the same time, the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra speaks in a strong and affirmative way about Tathāgatagarbha, the Buddha‑nature present in all beings. It presents this Buddha‑nature as an inherent potential for Buddhahood, closely linked to the pure, luminous aspect of mind that lies concealed beneath defilements. Yet it also takes care to deny that this should be understood as a permanent self, explaining such language as a skillful means for those who fear the doctrine of no‑self and emptiness. In this way, Buddha‑nature is portrayed as empty of any fixed essence while still serving as a positive expression of suchness and the possibility of universal enlightenment. For the Tathāgatagarbha tradition, this sutra became a key scriptural source for speaking of an inherent purity of mind without abandoning the fundamental insight of emptiness.

Perhaps most significantly, the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra offers a bridge between these two currents by relating Tathāgatagarbha to the deepest dimension of consciousness itself. Buddha‑nature is depicted as the pure aspect of the very mind that, in its defiled form, appears as saṃsāra through the workings of the ālayavijñāna. This allowed later thinkers, especially in East Asia, to read Yogācāra’s storehouse consciousness and Tathāgatagarbha’s Buddha‑nature as two perspectives on a single “One Mind,” deluded and enlightened aspects of the same reality. The sutra thus helped shape a vision in which awakening is not the acquisition of something new, but the uncovering of what has always been present within consciousness, once its obscurations are seen through.