The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (Chinese: 楞伽經) is a sutra of Mahayana Buddhism. According to tradition, these are the actual words of the Buddha as he entered Lanka and conversed with a bodhisattva named Mahamati. This sutra figured prominently in the development of Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism. The Lankavatara Sutra is the cornerstone of Chinese Chán and its Japanese version, Zen, and was translated from Sanskrit into Japanese and English by the lauded exponent of Zen, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki.