The Gandharva's air-castle, Maya, a hair-circle, and a fata morgana, they’re non-entities yet they appear as if they were entities; the nature of an objective existence is thus to be regarded.
Yet another reinforcement of the Lanka’s favorite metaphors of illusionary reality. My favorite are the Gandharvas. They have quite the allegorical background:
gandharva. (P. gandhabba; T. dri za; C. gantapo/ zhongyun youqing; J. kendatsuba/ chūun’ujō; K. kŏndalba/ chungon yujŏng 乾 闥 Read more [...] 
[Cleary]: Illusion is not nonexistent; its existence is spoken of because it is of the same nature of things; unreal, like a flash of lightning, they are therefore noted as analogous to illusion.
You have to realize that for a Lankavatarian who adheres to the teachings of the Lanka, the visible-objective world, while a product of illusion, is not non-existent. It is what Tozen once described as a “concrete intellectual synthesis highly visible and touchable”. One can be assured of 
Things known as defiled or as pure are like hair-nets [that is, wrongly perceived by the dim-eyed]; they [really] have nothing to do with such notions as birth, abiding, and disappearance, or as eternity and non-eternity.
Hair-nets (keśoṇḍukam): a sling or knot of hair, such is the nature of the hair-net—in actuality little knots all tied together to form one whole. It’s a visual-distortion, such do the dim-witted perceive the apparent conceptions of birth, ect; all these phenomenal 
As long as those philosophers who get confused in their reasonings and who are unable to go beyond the realm of words, distinguish the discriminating from the discriminated - so long they do not see [the truth] of suchness.
A recurring motif throughout the Lanka concerns the Philosophers. Who are they? Are they members of a particular branch of philosophy, or are they part of a larger spectrum? Suzuki in one of his footnotes to his Studies in the Lanka asserts they are as follows:
Whenever 
65 & 66 [Cleary]: By proofs, paradigms of logic, and by proposition and reason, in terms of a dream, a castle in the air, a mirage, the moon and sun, I use such examples to say an origin is not objective. The imagined world is called a dream, confusion, or illusion, in the sense of being empty.
A Buddha states his case most logically, with reason and inference, for the purpose of forming the main proposition that the apparent objective world is airy-fairy and lacking in substance—thus 
So the flood of the Alayavijnana is always stirred by the winds of objectivity (vishaya), and goes on dancing with the various Vijnana-waves.
Familiar phraseology of the dancing waves of the Vijnanas, stirred into motion through both objective (vishaya) and subjective instigators. The Alaya-receptacle itself is usually dormant, but it houses a million-fold [images] that are ready to spring into action at the least suggestion, in effect once again “haunting” its host. Memories, fears 
Andrew Gable
What is known as multiplicity-seeds multiply in the mind (citta); in what is revealed, the ignorant imagine birth and are delighted with dualism.
Thought is derived from a multiplicity of seeds in the mind tinged with associative functions in the Alaya-receptacle. The ignorant-minded perceive birth smothered with dualistic ramifications. Perhaps the best simile for the dualistic mind-show is a character found in Edmond Spencer’s (c. 1552–1599), The Faerie Queene—Duessa. 
The world is no more than thought-construction and there rages an ocean of views as regards ego and things (dharma); when the world is clearly perceived as such and there takes place a revulsion [in the mind] this [one] is my child who is devoted to the truth of perfect knowledge.
I remember writing way back during our Complete Lanka and Discussion (found in our library) forum that Suzuki had chosen a really horrible word (revulsion) for what we Lankavatarians know as the Great Turn-About, 
[Cleary]: For mind is the womb of what’s in the triple world, for this wandering mind is seen here and yon; knowing the state of this world to be thus, unreal, one should not imagine the world.
Oftentimes I would find myself being uncomfortable with the Lanka’s admonition to silence the faculty of imagination. From time to time I’ve used this faculty in many a creative fashion, like on my YouTube Bodhichild channel. After much reflection on this, I’ve come to the realization that 
Though multitudinousness of things has no [real] existence as such, they appear to the intoxicated as like fire-flies because of their constitutional disturbance; like-wise is the world essentially [appearance].
Our apparent world is based on intoxication. Enamored with the colorful dance of the vijnanas, the perceiver can be likened unto a drunkard, stumbling about in a maze of uncertainty as to what is truly Real.
[Cleary]: Just as a magic illusion appears in straw, sticks, and A Bodhi-Pearl Welcome!
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