To continue with the original involutionary story for the Lankavatara Sutra: The first “downward” manifestation produces the “tainted” alaya-vijnana storehouse out of the “pure” alaya-jnana (Primordial Wisdom and pure Emptiness). The second downward (or involutionary) transformation is called by the Lankavatara Sutra (and many Yogachara schools) the manas, which arises out of the storehouse and becomes (when misunderstood) the self-contraction and self-view, which then looks at the alaya-vijnana and misinterprets it as a permanent self or soul, and causes the alaya-vijnana to become even further tainted (beyond containing the first forms of manifestation or samsara itself, when misunderstood). The third transformation “downward” creates the concept of objects and the senses that perceive them, of which, in standard Buddhist psychology, there are six—the five senses, plus the mind (which in Buddhist psychology is treated as another sense, the manovijnana, whose objects are simply conceptual), giving us eight levels of consciousness (or nine if you count the original, pure, unconstructed alaya-jnana, or primordial nondual Wisdom Mind). This overall view gives us a chance to work not only with manifestation, involution, or Efflux, some version of which all Great Traditions possess, but also evolution, emergence, or Reflux, which is found in an evolutionarily workable version in relatively few places, including the Lankavatara Sutra, thus giving Buddhism a truly profound approach to this issue faced by all the Great Traditions: “If Spirit is the only ultimate Reality, then why, and how, did this relative manifest world show up? What’s the actual mechanism of that?” The notion of involution/evolution, Descent/Ascent, Efflux/Reflux in all its various forms, some version of which is found in virtually every Great Tradition, is the attempted answer to that question; and some version of that—such as the Lankavatara Sutra’s—is still viable today whenever that question is sincerely asked.
