Sharf, R.

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PeopleSharf, R.


Robert Sharf

Robert Sharf is D. H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. He received a B.A. in Religious Studies (1979) and an M.A. in Chinese Studies (1981) from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan (1990). His graduate work included study in Japan; he was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Research into the Humanities (Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo) at Kyoto University, and also conducted fieldwork at Kōfukuji in Nara (1985-87).

Before joining the Berkeley faculty he taught in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University (1989-95) and in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan (1995-2003). He works primarily in the area of medieval Chinese Buddhism (especially Chan), but he also dabbles in Japanese Buddhism, Buddhist art, ritual studies, and methodological issues in the study of religion. He is author of Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise (2002), co-editor of Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context (2001), and is currently working on a book tentatively titled "Thinking about Not Thinking: Buddhist Struggles with Mindlessness, Insentience, and Nirvana."

In addition to his appointment in East Asian Languages and Cultures, he is Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies at UCB. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, the Journal for the Study of Chinese Religions, the Journal of Religion in Japan, and the Kuroda Institute Series published in conjunction with University of Hawai'i Press. (Source Accessed Jun 11, 2019)

Library Items

Article
Buddha-nature, Critical Buddhism, and Early Chan
This article begins with a reflection on why medieval Chinese Buddhist thought has not been more conspicuous in recent comparative work on Buddhism and Western philosophy. The Japanese proponents of "Critical Buddhism" (hihan bukkyō 批判仏教), Matsumoto Shirō 松本史朗 and Hakamaya Noriaki 袴谷憲昭, would see this neglect as merited since, in their view, East Asian Buddhism in general, and Chinese Chan in particular, is philosophically crippled owing to its embrace of tathāgatagarbha and buddha-nature thought. Indeed, Matsumoto singles out Shenhui 荷澤神會 (670-762), one of the architects of the Southern School of Chan, as an example of the early Chan advocacy of buddha-nature doctrine.
      This article is not concerned with whether buddha-nature and tathāgatagarbha thought is actually deleterious to critical philosophical work. Rather, the concern is to demonstrate that, far from embracing buddha-nature doctrine, the eighth-century founders of Southern Chan had serious concerns with it. Evidence for this is found in: (1) the writings of Shenhui, notably in his opposition to the doctrine of the "buddha-nature of insentient objects" (wuqing foxing 無情佛性); and (2) the Platform Scripture of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu tanjing 六祖壇經), particularly in the variant versions of Huineng's famous "enlightenment verse." Thus the Southern School may be viewed as a forerunner of the Critical Buddhist anti-dhātuvāda polemics. The article closes with comments on the ongoing problems Chinese Buddhist exegetes had in marrying the metaphysical monism of Yogācāra and tathāgatagarbha teachings with the anti-foundationalist thrust of Madhyamaka and Prajñāpāramitā literature.
Sharf, Robert. "Buddha-nature, Critical Buddhism, and Early Chan." Critical Review for Buddhist Studies 22 (2017): 105–50.
Book
Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism
The issue of sinification—the manner and extent to which Buddhism and Chinese culture were transformed through their mutual encounter and dialogue—has dominated the study of Chinese Buddhism for much of the past century. Robert Sharf opens this important and far-reaching book by raising a host of historical and hermeneutical problems with the encounter paradigm and the master narrative on which it is based. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism is, among other things, an extended reflection on the theoretical foundations and conceptual categories that undergird the study of medieval Chinese Buddhism.

Sharf draws his argument in part from a meticulous historical, philological, and philosophical analysis of the Treasure Store Treatise (Pao-tsang lun), an eighth-century Buddho-Taoist work apocryphally attributed to the fifth-century master Seng-chao (374–414). In the process of coming to terms with this recondite text, Sharf ventures into all manner of subjects bearing on our understanding of medieval Chinese Buddhism, from the evolution of T’ang “gentry Taoism” to the pivotal role of image veneration and the problematic status of Chinese Tantra.

The volume includes a complete annotated translation of the Treasure Store Treatise, accompanied by the detailed exegesis of dozens of key terms and concepts. (Source: University of Hawai'i Press)
Sharf, Robert, trans. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise. Kuroda Studies in East Asian Buddhism 14. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. https://archive.org/details/comingtotermswithchinesebuddhismareadingofthetreasurestoretreatiserobertsharfh._635_q/mode/2up.
Article
How to Think with Chan Gong'an
No abstract given. Below are the first relevant paragraphs:

A monk asked Zhaozhou: ‘‘Does a dog have buddha-nature?’’ Zhaozhou replied: ‘‘No.’’

This pithy exchange between an unidentified Buddhist monk and the Tang dynasty Chan master Zhaozhou Congshen (778–897) is perhaps the best-known example of a Chan gong’an, or ‘"public case." Although the passage occurs in a collection of Zhaozhou's sayings supposedly compiled by his disciples, its notoriety is due to a Song dynasty master, Wumen Huikai (1183–1260), who placed this exchange at the beginning of his famous gong’an collection, Gateless Barrier of the Chan Tradition (Chanzong wumen guan, 1228).[1] Wumen’s compilation, consisting of forty-four such exchanges and anecdotes accompanied by Wumen’s comments, is one of the most important works of Chan literature. And as the first case in Wumen’s collection, "Zhaozhou’s dog" became the single most influential gong’an in the Chinese Chan, Korean Son, and Japanese Zen traditions. It is often the first and sometimes the only gong’an assigned to monks, and many traditional commentators claim, following Wumen’s lead, that this single gong’an holds the key to all others.
      Wumen’s work was neither the earliest nor the most comprehensive compilation of Chan cases. Indeed, the Gateless Barrier is relatively short and straightforward in comparison to two earlier collections, the Blue Cliff Record of Chan Master Foguo Yuanwu (Foguo Yuanwu Chanshi Biyan lu), published in 1128, and the Congrong Hermitage Record of the Commentaries by Old Wansong on the Case and Verse [Collection] by Reverend Jue of Tiantong [Mountain] (Wansong laoren pingzhang Tiantong Jue heshang songgu Congrongan lu), published in 1224. The cases that make up these texts are each based on an individual anecdote, verbal exchange, or quandary known as the benze (original edict), to which has been added comments in prose and verse brushed by later masters. Whereas the Gateless Barrier contains forty-four such anecdotes accompanied by a brief comment and verse by Wumen, the Blue Cliff Record and Congrong Hermitage Record each contain one hundred cases including several layers of appended judgments, verses, and interlinear glosses. (The same "original edict" may appear in two or more collections, but the exegesis will invariably differ. More will be said about the structure of these collections below.) Many more gong’an collections gained currency in China, and the Chan tradition would come to speak of seventeen hundred authoritative cases (although this number was probably not meant to be taken literally). By the end of the Song the gong’an had assumed a central role in the ideological, literary, and institutional identity of the Chan school.
      Popular books on Chan and Zen Buddhism present gong’an as intentionally incoherent or meaningless. They are, it is claimed, illogical paradoxes or unsolvable riddles intended to frustrate and short-circuit the intellect in order to quell thought and bring the practitioner to enlightenment. This understanding of gong’an is allied with a view of Chan as an iconoclastic and anti-intellectual tradition that rejects scripture, doctrine, philosophy, and indeed all forms of conceptual understanding in favor of unmediated or "pure" experience. Gong’an are intended, according to this view, not to communicate ideas so much as to induce a transformative experience. To grasp at the literal meaning of a Chan case is to miss its point.
      Recently scholars have begun to question the instrumental view of Chan that underlies this approach to Chan cases, arguing that it is based on a misreading of the historical and ethnographic record.[2] Chan ranks among the most ritualistic forms of Buddhist monasticism, and a master’s enlightenment is constituted within a prescribed set of institutional and ritual forms.[3] Moreover, the notion that Chan is designed to induce a nonconceptual or pure experience can be traced in part to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese intellectuals such as D. T. Suzuki and Nishida Kitarō, who were culling from Western sources, notably William James.[4] The notion that Chan is anti-intellectual and repudiates "words and letters" is belied by the fact that the Chan tradition produced the largest literary corpus of any Buddhist school in East Asia.[5] This corpus consists in large part of "recorded sayings" (yulu) and "records of the transmission of the flame" (chuandenglu) texts—texts recounting the careers and teachings of past patriarchs from which the original edicts were drawn.
      Scholars now appreciate that Chan is more complex than early apologists and enthusiasts cared to admit; it is no longer possible to reduce Chan practice and Chan literature to a mere means intended to engender a singular and ineffable spiritual experience. Accordingly, scholars of Chan gong’an have begun to attend to the institutional context and literary history of the genre,[6] and one scholar has devoted an entire monograph to the folkloric themes that appear in a single case.[7] Be that as it may, little progress has been made in deciphering the doctrinal and exegetical intent of Chan gong’an; it would appear that scholars remain reluctant to treat gong’an as a form of exegesis at all. This reluctance may be due to the enduring legacy of an earlier apologetic mystification of the gong’an literature. The primary objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that such reluctance is misguided and that it is indeed possible to recover the original meaning and doctrinal purport of at least some of the cases. The task is not easy, however, as the cases are philosophically subtle and hermeneutically sophisticated, and the authors of the collections delighted in obscure allusions, clever puns, and deft wordplay. (Sharf, "How to Think with Chan Gong’an," 205–7)

Notes

My thanks to Charlotte Furth and Elizabeth Horton Sharf for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter and to Ling Hon Lam for his meticulous editorial attention.

  1. T 2005:48.292c20–24. The exchange is also featured in case no. 18 of the Wansong Laoren pingzhang Tiantong Jue heshang songgu Congrongan lu, T 2004:48.238b21–39a28. Textual details concerning Zhaozhou’s recorded sayings (Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi yulu) will be found below.
  2. Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy and Chan Insights and Oversights; Foulk, "Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice"; Sharf, "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism," "Whose Zen?" and "Experience."
  3. Foulk and Sharf, "On the Ritual Use"; Sharf, "Ritual."
  4. Sharf, "Whose Zen?"
  5. On the sometimes controversial place of literary endeavors in the Song monastic institution, see esp. Gimello, "Mārga and Culture"; and Keyworth, "Transmitting the Lamp," 281–324.
  6. See esp. Heine and Wright, eds., The Kōan.
  7. Heine, Shifting Shape.
Sharf, Robert H. "How to Think with Chan Gong'an." In Thinking with Cases: Specialized Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History, edited by Charlotte Furth, Judith Zeitlin, and Hsiung Ping-chen, 205–43. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007.
Article
Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters)
Modern exponents of mindfulness meditation promote the therapeutic effects of “bare attention”—a sort of non-judgmental, non-discursive attending to the moment-to-moment flow of consciousness. This approach to Buddhist meditation can be traced to Burmese Buddhist reform movements of the first half of the 20th century, and is arguably at odds with more traditional Theravāda Buddhist doctrine and meditative practices. But the cultivation of present-centered awareness is not without precedent in Buddhist history; similar innovations arose in medieval Chinese Zen (Chan) and Tibetan Dzogchen. These movements have several things in common. In each case the reforms were, in part, attempts to render Buddhist practice and insight accessible to laypersons unfamiliar with Buddhist philosophy and/or unwilling to adopt a renunciatory lifestyle. In addition, these movements all promised astonishingly quick results. And finally, the innovations in practice were met with suspicion and criticism from traditional Buddhist quarters. Those interested in the therapeutic effects of mindfulness and bare attention are often not aware of the existence, much less the content, of the controversies surrounding these practices in Asian Buddhist history.
Sharf, Robert H. "Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters)." Transcultural Psychiatry 52, no. 4 (2014): 470–84. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8gm9g5ss
Article
Is Nirvāṇa the Same as Insentience? Chinese Struggles with an Indian Buddhist Ideal
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

In this chapter I examine some medieval Buddhist doctrines that, at least on the surface, seem similarly strange and implausible. Indeed, some of the Buddhist notions to be examined below were perplexing to audiences in their own day, much as discussions of brain transplants are perplexing to us today. On the Indian side, I will begin with the notion of nirodha-samāpatti, a meditative state akin to a vegetative coma in which all consciousness has ceased. I will then turn to a class of beings known as “beings without conception” (asaṃjñika-sattvāḥ), denizens of a celestial realm who are devoid of sentience, thought, and consciousness. In both cases, an insentient state seems to be followed by (or gives rise to) a sentient state, which poses serious challenges to the classical Buddhist understanding of karma. On the Chinese side, we will consider the debate over the buddha-nature of insentient objects—can an insentient thing such as a wall or roof tile attain buddhahood and preach the dharma? This doctrine too could be (and was) seen as a threat to the coherence of Buddhist teachings.
      Modern scholars tend to approach such doctrines as the products of intelligent but misguided scholastics struggling to make sense of the universe, all the while hobbled by the dictates of tradition, scripture, and a prescientific understanding of the cosmos. They are the proverbial schoolmen calculating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But I would suggest another perspective. Such theories, I argue, serve as frames of reference for pondering issues of personal identity, ethical responsibility, sentience, and death. Given that we ourselves are still far from clarity on these issues, and given that we too devise fanciful thought experiments to help gain a conceptual toehold, perhaps it is time to look afresh at what the Buddhists might have been up to.[11] (Sharf, preamble, 144–45)
Notes
11. For an articulate defense of Buddhist scholasticism, along different lines, see Paul John Griffiths, “Scholasticism: The Possible Recovery of an Intellectual Practice,” in Scholasticism: Cross-Cultural and Comparative Perspectives, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 201–35.
Sharf, Robert H. "Is Nirvāṇa the Same as Insentience? Chinese Struggles with an Indian Buddhist Ideal." In India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion, and Thought, edited by John Kieschnick and Meir Shahar, 141–70. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Article
Is Yogācāra Phenomenology? Some Evidence from the Cheng weishi lun
There have been several attempts of late to read Yogācāra through the lens of Western phenomenology. I approach the issue through a reading of the Cheng weishi lun (Treatise on the Perfection of Consciousness Only), a seventh-century Chinese compilation that preserves the voices of multiple Indian commentators on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikāvijñaptikārikā (Thirty Verses on Consciousness). Specifically, I focus on the "five omnipresent mental factors" (pañcasarvatraga, Chin. wu bianxing xinsuo) and the “four aspects” (Chin. sifen) of cognition. These two topics seem ripe, at least on the surface, for phenomenological analysis, particularly as the latter topic includes a discussion of “self-awareness” (svasaṃvedana, svasaṃvitti, Chin. zizheng). Yet we find that the Cheng weishi lun account has little in common with the tradition associated with Husserl and his heirs. The categories and modes of analysis in the Cheng weishi lun do not emerge from or aver to a systematic reflection on the nature of “lived experience” so much as they are focused on subliminal processes and metaphysical entities that belong to the domain of the noumenal. In my conclusion I suggest that the later pramāṇa tradition associated with Dignāga and Dharmakīrti—a tradition that profoundly influenced later Yogācāra exegesis in Tibet—did indeed take a “phenomenological turn.” But my comparison shows that both traditions falter when it comes to relating conceptual content to non-conceptual experience, and thus there is reason to be skeptical about claims that phenomenology is epistemologically grounded in how the world presents itself first-personally.
Sharf, Robert H. "Is Yogācāra Phenomenology? Some Evidence from the Cheng weishi lun." Journal of Indian Philosophy 44, no. 4 (2016): 777–807. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8tt564hz
Article
Mindfulness and Mindlessness in Early Chan
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

The Chan tradition is renowned as the “meditation” school of East Asia. Indeed, the Chinese term chan 禪 (Jpn: zen) is an abbreviated transliteration of dhyāna, the Sanskrit term arguably closest to the modern English word “meditation.” Scholars typically date the emergence of this tradition to the early Tang dynasty (618–907), although Chan did not reach institutional maturity until the Song period (960–1279). In time, Chinese Chan spread throughout East Asia, giving birth to the various Zen, Sŏn, and Thiê`n lineages of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, respectively. Today these traditions continue to promote, at least in theory, meditation practices, and these have been the subject of considerable scholarly interest.[1]
      It may then come as a surprise to learn just how little is known about the meditation techniques associated with the “founders” of this tradition—the masters associated with the nascent (or proto-) Chan lineages of the seventh and eighth centuries. It was during this fertile period—which, following scholarly convention, I will call “early Chan”—that the lineage myths, doctrinal innovations, and distinctive rhetorical voice of the Chan, Zen, Sŏn, and Thiê`n schools first emerged. Although hundreds of books and articles have appeared on the textual and doctrinal developments associated with early Chan, relatively little has been written on the distinctive meditation practices, if any, of this movement.
      This essay emerged from an attempt to answer a seemingly straightforward question: what kinds of meditation techniques were promulgated in early Chan circles? The answer, it turned out, involved historical and philosophical forays into the notion of “mindfulness”—a style of meditation practice that has become popular among Buddhists (and non-Buddhists) around the globe. Accordingly, I will digress briefly to consider the roots of the modern mindfulness movement, and will suggest possible sociological parallels between the rise of the Buddhist mindfulness movement in the twentieth century and the emergence of Chan in the medieval period. (Sharf, "Mindfulness and Mindlessness in Early Chan," 933)

Notes
  1. The literature is vast; on modern Japanese Zen and Korean Sŏn meditation practice in English see, for example, Buswell 1992, Hori 2000, and Hori 2003. On the history of these practices see Bielefeldt 1988, Buswell 1987, Collcutt 1981, Foulk 1993, and Schlütter 2008.
Sharf, Robert H. "Mindfulness and Mindlessness in Early Chan." Philosophy East and West 64, no. 4 (2014): 933–64.
Article
On the Ritual Use of Ch'an Portraiture in Medieval China
L'article traite d'un genre de portraits de moines Zen appelé chinzō, genre qui fleurit sous les Sung et les Yuan, et fut introduit au Japon à l'époque de Kamakura. On connaît au Japon environ soixante-dix chinzō chinois et japonais datant du treizième au seizième siècle, considérés comme "Trésors nationaux" ou "propriétés culturelles importantes", mais qui ne représentent qu'un dizième du nombre total de portraits connus. Les portraits relevant de ce genre sont assez stéréotypés, et représentent en général un moine assis en sur une chaise haute en position du lotus. Souvent représenté de trois-quarts, mais parfois aussi de face, il est vêtu d'un habit de cérémonie, et tient dans sa main droite un attribut de son autorité, d'ordinaire un bâton, un sceptre ou un chasse-mouches. Certains chinzō représentent aussi le moine assis ou debout dans un paysage. Enfin, ils comportent généralement un "éloge" en vers et une dédicace.
      S'interrogeant sur la fonction religieuse de ces portraits, Griffith Foulk et Robert Sharf sont amenés à remettre en question l'idée que les chinzō servaient à authentifier la transmission de maître à disciple. Une étude approfondie des sources montre que la définition somme toute moderne des chinzō, visant à définir un genre limité dans le domaine de l'histoire de l'art, a fonctionné dans les faits de façon étroitement normative, alors que le terme désignait à l'origine une catégorie beaucoup plus large de portraits. Conduits de la sorte à étudier la construction moderne du genre des chinzō, les auteurs en arrivent à poser un certain nombre de questions théoriques et méthodologiques qui devraient avoir un certain impact sur l'histoire de l'art asiatique. (Foulk and Sharf, introduction, 149)
Foulk, T. Griffith, and Robert H. Sharf. ‘‘On the Ritual Use of Ch’an Portraiture in Medieval China.’’ (In French.) Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 7 (1993–1994): 149–219. https://www.persee.fr/doc/asie_0766-1177_1993_num_7_1_1064.

About this person

Selected Publications

Books:

Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise, Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism, no. 14 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002). Translated into Chinese by Xia Zhiqian 夏志前 and Xia Shaowei 夏少伟, under the title Zoujin Zhongguo Fojiao (Baozanglun jiedu) 走进中国佛教 (宝藏论解读), in the series Juequn foxue yicong 觉群佛学译丛 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe 上海古籍出版社, 2009).

Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, Asian Religions and Cultures, no. 2, co-edited with Elizabeth Horton Sharf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). Chapter contributions: "Prolegomenon to the Study of Japanese Buddhist Icons," and "Visualization and Mandala in Shingon Buddhism."


Journal articles and book chapters:

  • "Is Yogācāra Phenomenology? Some Evidence From the Cheng weishi lun," Journal of Indian Philosophy (Sept. 4, 2015).
  • "Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (And Why It Matters)," Transcultural Psychiatry 52, no. 4 (2015), 470-484.
  • "Mindfulness and Mindlessness in Early Chan," Philosophy East & West 64, no. 4 (October, 2014), pp. 933-964.
  • "Is Nirvāṇa the Same as Insentience? Chinese Struggles with an Indian Buddhist Ideal," in India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion, and Thought, edited by John Kieschnick and Meir Shahar (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), pp. 141-170.
  • "Art in the Dark: The Ritual Context of Buddhist Caves in Western China," in Art of Merit: Studies in Buddhist Art and its Conservation, edited by David Park, Kuenga Wangmo, and Sharon Cather (London: Archetype Publications, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2013), pp. 38-65.
  • "Lun Hanchuan mijiao 论汉传密教" [On Chinese Esoteric Buddhism], trans. Zhang Linghui 张凌晖, in Hewei mijiao? Guanyu mijiao de dingyi, xiuxi, fuhao he lishi de quanshi yu zhenglun 何谓密教？关于密教的定义、修习、符号和历史的诠释与争论 [What is Esoterism? On the Interpretation and Controversy over the Definition, Practice, Semiology, and Historiography of Esoterism], edited by Shen Weirong 沈卫荣 (Beijing: Zhongguo zang xue, 2013), pp. 114-142.
  • "The Buddha's Finger Bones at Famensi and the Art of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism." Art Bulletin 93, no. 1 (March, 2011), pp. 38-59.
  • "How to Think with Chan Gongans," in Thinking with Cases: Specialized Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History, edited by Charlotte Furth, Judith Zeitlin, Hsiung Ping-chen (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), pp. 205-243.
  • "Suzuki, D. T.," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., edited by Lindsay Jones (New York: Macmillan, 2005), vol. 13, pp. 8884-8887.
  • "Ritual," in Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 245-269.
  • "Thinking through Shingon Ritual," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 26, no. 1 (2003), pp. 51-96.
  • "On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch'an/Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China," T'oung Pao 88, no. 4-5 (June, 2003), pp. 282-331.
  • "The Uses and Abuses of Zen in the Twentieth Century," in Zen, Reiki, Karate: Japanische Religiosität in Europa (Bunka: Tübinger interkulturelle und linguistische Japanstudien, band 2), edited by Inken Prohl and Hartmut Zinser (Münster, Hamburg, London: Lit Verlag, 2002), pp. 143-154.
  • "Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro," in Encyclopedia of Monasticism, edited by William M. Johnston (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), vol. 2, pp. 1218-19.
  • "On the Allure of Buddhist Relics," Representations 66 (Spring, 1999), pp. 75-99. Republished in Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia, edited by David Germano and Kevin Trainor (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004), pp. 163-191.
  • "Mujǒng-chungsaeng ŭi pulsǒng e taehayǒ (Ttonŭn Sǒn ŭi kongan ŭl ǒttǒk'e pol kot in'ga?)" ("On the Buddha-nature of Insentient Things [or: How to Think about a Ch'an Kung-an]"), Korean translation by Sǒ Chǒnghyǒng, in Cheilhoe Hanguk-Sǒn Kukche-haksul-taehoe Nonmunjip, edited by Pibaek kyohak yǒn'guso (Seoul: Hyoil munhwasa, 1999), pp. 155-191.
  • "Experience," in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 94-116. Republished as "The Rhetoric of Experience and the Study of Religion," in Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps (a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 7, nos. 11/12, 2000), edited by Jensine Andresen and Bob Forman. Republished in Religious Experience: A Reader (Critical Categories in the Study of Religion), edited by Craig Martin and Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Equinox Publishing, 2012), pp. 131-150.
  • "The Scripture on the Production of Buddha Images" (Zuo fo xingxiang jing), in Religions of China in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 261-267.
  • "The Scripture in Forty-two Sections" (Sishier zhang jing), in Religions of China in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 360-371. Republished in An Anthology of Asian Religions in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 418-429.
  • "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience," Numen 42, no. 3 (1995), pp. 228-283. Republished in Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Buddhist Studies, edited by Paul Williams (London: Routledge, 2005), vol. 2, pp. 255-298.
  • "Zen to Nihon no nashonarizumu 禅と日本のナショナリズム," in Nihon no bukkyō 4: Kinsei-kindai to bukkyō 日本の仏教四: 近世・近代と仏教, edited by the Nihon bukkyō kenkyūkai 日本仏教研究会 (Tokyo: Hōzōkan, 1995), pp. 81-108. Republished in Zen to gendai 禅と現代, edited by Nishimura Eshin 西村惠信 (Tokyo: Perikan-sha, 1998), pp. 305-344. An adapted Japanese translation of "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism" (see below).
  • "Whose Zen? Zen Nationalism Revisited," in Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism (Nanzan Studies in Religion and Culture), edited by James W. Heisig and John Maraldo (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995), pp. 40-51.
  • "Sanbōkyōdan: Zen and the Way of the New Religions," Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22, no. 3-4: Special Edition: The New Age in Japan, edited by Haga Manabu and Robert Kisala (1995), pp. 417-458.
  • "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism," in Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 107-160. An earlier version appeared in History of Religions 33, no. 1 (1993), pp. 1-43.
  • "Zen and the Art of Deconstruction" (review article on The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism, by Bernard Faure), in History of Religions 33, no. 3 (1994), pp. 287-296.
  • "On the Ritual Use of Ch'an Portraiture in Medieval China" (with T. Griffith Foulk), in Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 7 (1993-1994), pp. 149-219. Republished in Chan Buddhism in Ritual Context, edited by Bernard Faure (London, New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 74-150.
  • "The Idolization of Enlightenment: On the Mummification of Ch'an Masters in Medieval China," History of Religions 32, no. 1 (1992), pp. 1-31. Republished in Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Buddhist Studies, edited by Paul Williams (London: Routledge, 2005), vol. 8, pp. 337-365.
  • "The Religion of Science: Paul Carus and The Gospel of Buddha," Tricycle (Summer, 1995), pp. 12-15.
  • "Lineage and Likeness: The Meaning and Function of Zen Portraiture" (with T. Griffith Foulk and Elizabeth H. Sharf), in Ten Directions 14, no. 1 (1993), pp. 20-25.
  • "A Study of the Treatise on One Śloka (Ekaślokaśāstra)," Spring-Autumn Papers, 4, no. 1 (1984), pp. 81-96.


Reviews:

  • Secrets of the Sacred: Empowering Buddhist Images in Clear, in Code, and in Cache, by Helmut Brinker, in Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (March, 2013), pp. 167-168.
  • Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition, by Bernard Faure, in The Journal of Religion 75, no. 2 (1995), pp. 318-319.
  • Eloquent Zen: Daitō and Early Japanese Zen, by Kenneth Kraft, in The Journal of Religion 74, no. 3 (1993), pp. 432-433.
  • Dōgen's Manuals of Zen Meditation, by Carl Bielefeldt, in Chanoyu Quarterly 68 (1992), pp. 61-65.
  • An Introduction to Buddhism, by Takasaki Jikido, in Chanoyu Quarterly 62 (1990), pp. 67-70.


Interviews:

“Losing Our Religion.” Interview in Tricycle, Summer, 2007, pp. 44-49.


Talks:

  • "Mindfulness or Mindlessness: Traditional and Modern Buddhist Critiques of 'Bare Awareness.'" Presented at McGill University, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, 15th annual Advanced Study Institute, June 3-5, 2013.
  • "Sudden/Gradual and the State of the Field: A Tribute to Luis O. Gómez." Presented at the panel "From San Juan to Sukhāvatī: Reflections on Buddhist Studies and the Career of Luis O. Gómez," held at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago, November 1, 2008.
  • "The Phenomenology of Insentience: Buddhist Meditation and Sensual Experience." Presented at Yale University, Conference on "The Senses of Religion: Knowledge, Miracles, Worship, and Sensory Experience in the World's Religions," October 27-29, 2006.
  • "The Persistence of Magic." Presented at Yale University, Workshop on "Manipulating Magic: Sages, Sorcerers, and Scholars," April 16-17, 2005.

Affiliations & relations

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