In the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, “intrinsic purity” (prakṛtipariśuddhi) is presented as the fundamental nature of mind and all dharmas. Mind, in its own nature, is originally pure, while defilements are adventitious and arise through ignorance and false imagination. This purity is not something newly produced or added from outside; it is uncovered when discriminative thinking and conceptual elaboration subside. Even when consciousness appears defiled by greed, hatred, and delusion, its intrinsic purity remains untouched and unaltered, serving as the basis for the possibility of liberation.

This teaching is closely tied to the Yogācāra analysis of ālayavijñāna, the storehouse consciousness. The ālayavijñāna is described as the repository of karmic seeds and defiled activity, yet its deepest nature is intrinsically pure and unconditioned. When its false discriminations are seen through, this very consciousness is realized as tathāgatagarbha, or Buddha‑nature. In this way, the sutra integrates the doctrine of Buddha‑nature with the “mind‑only” perspective, without positing a permanent self or substantial inner entity.

The language of intrinsic purity is also used to characterize the non‑dual suchness (tathatā) of all phenomena. Dharmas are said to be pure because they are empty, unborn, and beyond the dualities of pure and impure. Thus, intrinsic purity is ultimately another way of speaking about emptiness: the non‑arising nature of phenomena that remains unstained by the play of karmic seeds and defiled mental states. From this standpoint, enlightenment is not the acquisition of a new reality, but the direct realization of the already pure nature of consciousness through non‑discriminative wisdom.

At the same time, the sutra is careful about how Buddha‑nature is spoken of. Descriptions of an inner “embryo of the Tathāgata” function as skillful means for those attached to the idea of a self, and are to be understood properly as pointing to emptiness rather than to a hidden metaphysical substance. Intrinsic purity, then, is both the ground of the path and the goal of realization: the ever‑present, unstained nature of mind that becomes evident when the clouds of ignorance and conceptual fabrication are dispelled.