Hah! Good advice, but that's treading into the territory in which I have no desire to venture. I've scrupulously avoided appearing to teach anything. :) That would be a ridiculous thing to do. Stupid move....and I might be dumb, but I'm not that stupid. :) It seems like the more one tries to talk about it, the more it comes across as gibberish.

The Lankavatara is a writing the resists any attempt to distill it. Any quotes would, on their own, seem completely inscrutable.

Foyan distilled it about as well as it can be done. Huangbo distilled it with equal skill. I'm definitely not up to that grade. :)

When we are told that the masters taught only One Mind. That's the answer of the Lankavatara. But, I can see how ones discriminating mind can turn that into something it's not.... some kind of pithy reference to your own pure mind, or whatever. Or perhaps some other airy-fairy interpretation that allows for subjects and objects to be addressed. No. It means exactly what it says, there is only One Mind. There is nothing else. No thing.

That's the deep inscrutable message of the Lankavatara. No Buddha, no you, no me, no dog, no shit stick. Everything we think is real and separate is only One Mind.

So it follows then, if one were to ask, does the dog have Buddha Nature? the answer would be no. Because there is no dog to possess anything, and no separate thing called Buddha Nature to be possessed. Heresy to mainstream Buddhism, perhaps, but it's where the Lankavatara is at.

If you then ask, what is Buddha? Answer is ____ fill in the blank, because what you need to take away from this is that there is only One Thing. No this or that. Buddha is just as much shit stick or 5 pounds of flax as Buddha is you. The lion is an engraving....

Also why, other than seeing this directly, there is no attainment and nothing to be attained. And even the "seeing this directly" part, is irrelevant. Because, once again, there is only One Mind. No other thing. Seeing it or not seeing it still equally amount to nothing.

There are no questions to be answered. There are no answers. There are no questions.

See.... I'm trying to distill the Lankavatara and I still can't do it. :)

Just read it. :)