Tao-sheng

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Tao-sheng or Chu Tao-sheng (355–434). Chinese Buddhist who founded the Nirvāna school (nirvāna). Recognized early as a man of great insight, he went to Ch'ang-an in 405 and collaborated with Kumārajīva. There he developed the arguments later accepted extensively, but at the time so revolutionary that he was expelled from the monastery—especially that all beings possess the buddha-nature (buddhatā), and can realize this through sudden enlightenment. Nevertheless, it can and should be prepared for through meditation and study. Because even nirvāna is empty of self (śūnyatā), he rejected Pure Land tendencies to think of ‘heavenly’ rewards, but he insisted that the state of nirvāna has to be regarded as the highest, because undisturbed, bliss.

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