Dàshèng yào yǔ 大乘要語
Essential Sayings of the Mahāyāna anonymous (Dunhuang manuscript)
About the work
A single-juan anonymous Dunhuang Buddhist anthology of brief doctrinal-pedagogical sayings, preserved in the Taishō canon’s gǔyì bù 古逸部 at T85 no. 2822. The text is structured as a compact sequence of doctrinal aphorisms, each followed by an explanatory interlinear note (small-character commentary, here in parentheses).
Prefaces
The text has no preserved auto-preface or byline. It opens immediately with aphorism-and-commentary entries. Sample (paraphrased): “Water and oil have the same form — only the non-farmer does not recognize them” (a metaphor for the true and the false). “When coming, on seeing things, [mind] is born; when going, things do not appear. Clearly knowing coming-and-going, depending on marks, do not discriminate.” “The lion (king of beasts) chases the person, not the dust-clods” (a metaphor: the bodhisattva, of fine seed of consciousness, can cut off the eighth consciousness — gathering and cutting; whereas the dog chases the dust-clods, not the person — extinguishing the previous six consciousnesses but not seeing the seventh and eighth). “The bodhi-mind (jìnglǜ 靜慮 = dhyāna) is like a hair-tip” (rabbit-hair). “Buddha-nature is non-existent, like empty space; non-knowing, like rabbit-horns.” Etc.
Abstract
Authorship and date are unrecoverable. The work is one of the anonymous Dunhuang Buddhist doctrinal-instruction manuscripts preserved in Cave 17 — notBefore = 600, notAfter = 1000 (the standard bracket).
The work’s distinctive contribution is its aphoristic mnemonic format — short pithy sayings paired with interlinear commentary, designed for monastic memorization and oral transmission. The substantive doctrine combines Yogācāra eight-consciousness analysis (the lion / dog-and-dust-clods metaphor for the aṣṭa-vijñāna with the bodhisattva cutting through to the ālaya) with Mādhyamika emptiness (the rabbit-horns metaphor for the non-substantiality of buddha-nature) and standard Mahāyāna bodhi-citta theory. This combination is characteristic of the mid-to-late Táng synthetic Buddhist scholasticism that brought Yogācāra, Mādhyamika, and Tathāgatagarbha thought into a unified pedagogical structure — making the text plausibly datable to the late Tang.
The work’s pithy mnemonic format is closely paralleled in Tang-period Chán yǔlù and Tiāntái jìyào (essential-extract) traditions. Its preservation in Cave 17 suggests its use as an instructional text in late-Táng / Five-Dynasties western-frontier monastic education.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated Western-language secondary literature located. See general Dunhuang-manuscript references at KR6s0026.
Other points of interest
The lion and the dog-and-the-dust-clods metaphor for the bodhisattva’s depth of meditation (cutting through to the eighth consciousness) versus the śrāvaka’s superficiality (extinguishing only the first six) is one of the more striking late-Táng applications of folk-imagery to Yogācāra eight-consciousness doctrine. The metaphor is rare in canonical literature and appears here in the Dunhuang transmission as a particularly clear example of the late-Tang doctrinal-pedagogical synthesis that combined mnemonic accessibility with Yogācāra technical depth.