Daosheng

Daosheng (道生) (355–434), also known as Zhu Daosheng, was an influential Chinese scholar-monk during the Eastern Jin dynasty and renowned scholar of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

Mark L. Blum states:

He was popular as a lecturer with the educated classes and famous for advancing the theory of a “sudden” experience of enlightenment. Ordained at a young age, Daosheng gave his first Buddhist lecture at fifteen. In 397 he traveled to Lushan where he studied for seven years under Huiyuan (334–416) and Saṇghadeva. Daosheng then journeyed to Chang’an with three other disciples of Huiyuan to learn and assist Kumarajiva (350–409/413), probably helping in Kumarajiva’s translations of the Vimalakirti Sutra and the Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra). Of his many monographs only his commentary on the Lotus Sutra is extant; but Daosheng’s opinions are often quoted in other works, allowing scholars to reconstruct his core ideas.

Daosheng was severely criticized for his stubborn refusal to accept the accuracy of the first translation of the Mahāyāna Nirvana Sutra because of its claim that all sentient beings possess the buddha-nature except for the evil Icchantika. After returning to Lushan in 430, he was exonerated and praised for his insight when a new, expanded translation of this sūtra that had removed the icchantika exclusion was brought to him.

Daosheng was perhaps the first person in China to see the mārga (path) implications of the buddha-nature doctrine famously extolled in the Nirvana Sutra. This sūtra preaches the positive aspects of nirvāṇa as pure, eternal, personal, and so on, and Daosheng linked this with the buddha-nature concept to affirm a pure, blissful “true self” that can only be realized suddenly. If the buddha-nature is indivisible, he argued, then it is realized completely or not at all. He advocated a gradual path of training to prepare one for this sudden flash of insight, thereby completing the path in that moment of epiphany. This led to heightened interest in the Nirvana Sutra and serious debate in China and Tibet over sudden versus gradual conceptions of the path.

Sources

• Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University 
• Blum, Mark L. (2004), "Daosheng", in Buswell, Robert E., Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Macmillan Reference USA