Dàshèng rùdào cìdì kāijué 大乘入道次第開決
Decisional Opening of the Stages of Entering the Path in the Mahāyāna by 曇曠 (Tánkuàng, 撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Dūnhuáng-recovered Cí’ēn-school sub-commentary by 曇曠 Tánkuàng of Chángān Xīmíngsì 西明寺 on Zhìzhōu’s KR6n0129 Dàshèng rùdào cìdì 大乘入道次第 (T45n1864). Preserved only in the Taishō supplement (vol. 85) drawn from Stein/Pelliot Dūnhuáng manuscripts. Companion to Tánkuàng’s better-known KR6n0107 Bǎifǎ míngmén lùn kāizōng yìjì and its KR6n0109 Yìjué.
Structural Division
CANWWW preserves the related-text relation T85N2823 ↔ KR6n0129 (T45N1864), confirming the commentary relation.
Prefaces
Authorship line: “Jīng Xīmíng dàochǎng shāmén Tánkuàng zhuàn 京西明道場沙門曇曠撰” — composed by the Chángān Xīmíngsì monk Tánkuàng. The opening preface is a literary essay using the metaphor of climbing a tall building or scaling a peak: “One who would ascend a lofty edifice must first traverse the steps; one who would climb a stratified tower must pass through the levels of stairs and platforms. How much more so for the awakening-path, lofty and high — without leaning on the [doctrinal] practice-stages, the true source, distantly pure, how could it be crossed save by zīliáng (the gathering of provisions)? Therefore one accumulates time across three asaṃkhyeya-eons, makes one’s practice complete the four immeasurables, firmly cleanses the six perfections, brilliantly displays the two minds [bodhicitta] — [only] then can one obtain the round and constant [fruit] and reach the highest [path-]fruit. One cannot ‘hear the Way in the morning and at evening hope to be filled with virtue’ [a play on Confucius Lùnyǔ 4.8 zhāo wén dào, xī sǐ kě yǐ 朝聞道夕死可矣]…”
Abstract
The Kāijué is one of Tánkuàng’s principal Dūnhuáng-period works, identified by name in his autobiographical preface to KR6n0109 Bǎifǎ kāizōng yìjué (where he writes “after [my work at Liángzhōu and Liángchéng] I composed at Dūnhuáng the Rùdào cìdì kāijué and the Bǎifǎ lùn kāizōng yìjì”). It is therefore precisely datable as a Dūnhuáng-period work composed in the same productive cycle as the Bǎifǎ kāizōng yìjì / yìjué — i.e. the late-760s through to the early-770s, prior to the Yìjué of Dàlì 9 = 774 (which references it). The dating window 760–780 brackets this safely on both ends.
Doctrinally the work supplements Zhìzhōu’s compact path-treatise with the additional doctrinal arguments and clarifications that Héxī Cí’ēn study circles needed to make the text fully usable as a teaching manual. The Dūnhuáng provenance is significant: like the rest of Tánkuàng’s surviving corpus, the work was lost in the standard transmission and survives only because the Stein and Pelliot collections recovered the Dūnhuáng manuscripts.
Translations and research
- Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻, Tonkō Bukkyō no kenkyū 敦煌仏教の研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1990 — the principal monograph on Tán-kuàng with critical study of all his works including this one.
- Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠, Chūgoku Yuishiki shisōshi kenkyū. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2013.