One of the central figures of pre-Tang Chinese Buddhist scholastic-doctrinal thought and a foundational figure of Sinitic Mahāyāna theology. DILA Authority A001475. Honorifics: Shēnggōng 生公 (“Lord Sheng”), Lóngguāng Dàoshēng 龍光道生 (“Dragon-Light Dàoshēng,” after the Lóngguāngsì 龍光寺 in Jiànkāng). Born 355 CE; died at the Lúshān 廬山 monastery on the gēngzǐ day of the 10th month of Yuánjiā 元嘉 11 (LiúSòng 劉宋, = 28 November 434 CE), aged 80.
Studied first under Zhú Fǎtài 竺法汰 (320–387) at the Wǎguānsì 瓦官寺 in Jiànkāng — whence the surname Zhú 竺 prefixed to his ordained name; subsequently under Huìyuǎn 慧遠 (334–416) at Lúshān; finally as a translation collaborator under 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva (344–413) at Cháng’ān, where he became one of the four principal lay-translator disciples (along with Sēngzhào 僧肇, Sēngróng 僧融, and Sēngruì 僧叡).
After Kumārajīva’s death (413) Dào-shēng returned south, taking residence first at Jiànkāng and then at Lú-shān. His mature thought is associated with two doctrinal innovations of foundational importance for Chinese Mahāyāna: (1) the doctrine of sudden enlightenment (dùn-wù 頓悟) — that the bodhisattva-path culminates in a single instantaneous awakening rather than in the gradual progression through the ten bhūmis — articulated principally in the lost Dùn-wù chéng-fó yì 頓悟成佛義; and (2) the doctrine of the universal possession of the buddha-nature by all sentient beings, including the icchantika (一闡提皆得成佛) — articulated before the textual evidence of the longer Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra (which arrived in China only after Dào-shēng had advanced his position) and consequently regarded by his contemporaries as scandalous and heretical, until the textual confirmation vindicated him.
Surviving works are few; most of his exegetical corpus was lost. The principal extant work is the Fǎhuá jīng shū (KR6d0058, X27n0577, 2 juan) — the earliest substantial Chinese commentary on the Lotus Sūtra to survive, predating Fǎyún’s Yìjì (KR6d0005) by approximately a century and containing the earliest articulation of several positions that became foundational for the later Sinitic Lotus tradition. Fragments of his other works — particularly the Nièpán jīng yì-shū 涅槃經義疏 (commentary on the Mahāparinirvāṇa) — survive in citations in the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145) and the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (T2059).
Historical significance: Dàoshēng is the principal pre-Tang Chinese Buddhist articulator of doctrines that became foundational for subsequent Sinitic Mahāyāna — the universal Buddhahood doctrine, the sudden-enlightenment doctrine, and the yīchèn 一闡提 doctrine — and is consequently one of the half-dozen most important figures of pre-modern Chinese Buddhist intellectual history. His articulation of these positions as native Chinese doctrinal commitments, in advance of the textual evidence that would later be cited in their support, demonstrates the early independence of Sinitic Mahāyāna scholasticism from the immediate Indic textual base.
Sources: Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145, p. 110c–111a); Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (T2059); DILA A001475. Cf. Walter Liebenthal, “The World Conception of Chu Tao-sheng” (1956); Kim Young-Ho, Tao-sheng’s Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra (1990).