Bodhiruci (6th century) stands out as the very first major voice on the Lankāvatāra Sūtra, crafting two detailed commentaries—one on the shorter Six-Fascicle version, another on the Eight-Fascicle text—that set the stage for Chinese and East Asian engagement. Not long after, Paramārtha (499–569) arrived in Chang’an, offering a fresh translation paired with a rich exegesis that wove Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha threads into a single tapestry. His take became the lodestar for later debates.

In the mid-T’ang era, Woncheuk (613–696), a Korean monk based at the Great Cloud Monastery, threw open Paramārtha’s pages and couldn’t resist poking at the Madhyamaka versus Yogācāra tension—his sub-commentaries ruffled more than a few doctrinal feathers in the capital. Japan’s Shingon founder Kūkai (774–835) then carried the Lankā spirit into esoteric ritual, treating it less as abstract philosophy and more like a living, breathing mantra guide. Tendai circles, too, dipped in occasionally—Ennin and Saichō among them—though without quite the same fervor.

Tibetan authors rarely dove deep into this Sūtra, but sporadic residues appear in Bu-ston Rinchen Drub’s encyclopedic works of the 11th–12th centuries. A modern revival owes much to D.T. Suzuki’s early 20th-century “Essays in Zen Buddhism,” which ignited Western fascination, and to translators like Red Pine and Carl Bielefeldt, whose recent English renderings sparked lively panels at the 2019 International Workshop on Yogācāra in Taipei. Scanning these voices—from Bodhiruci’s technical precision to Paramārtha’s poetic pulse—reveals a living dialogue that keeps the Lankāvatāra Sutra as fresh today as it was fifteen centuries ago.