The publication between 2009 and 2013 of the Haneda manuscripts housed the Kyo-U Library (
Kyōu shooku) in Osaka was a momentous occasion for Dunhuang studies.
[1] This collection of over seven hundred documents, assembled by Haneda Tōru (1882-1955) on the basis of the famed collection of Li Shengduo (1859-1937) with further materials later added, is the world’s fifth most significant repository of Dunhuang manuscripts after those in London, Paris, Beijing, and St. Petersburg.
[2] Now that these sources are at long last available to scholars, many exciting discoveries await historians of medieval China and medieval Chinese Buddhism in particular.
[3] In this article I introduce a previously unknown, late seventh-century (as I shall argue) Buddhist text from this collection: Hane[da] manuscript no. 598, a single scroll bearing at its conclusion the title "Method for the Contemplation of Dust
[4] as Empty" (
Chen kong guan men).
[5] The
Dust Contemplation, as I will call it, is a unique and surprisingly concrete set of instructions for the practice of Buddhist meditation based on the doctrines and technical vocabulary of the early Chinese
Yogācāra tradition, particularly (but not exclusively) those often linked by modern scholars to the so-called Shelun commentarial tradition (Shelunzong), which drew primary inspiration from the
Yogācāra scriptures translated by
Paramārtha (Zhendi; 499–569) and which flourished during the late sixth and early seventh centuries.
[6] (Greene, introductory remarks, 1–2)
