ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix ABBREVIATIONS xi CONVENTIONS OF USAGE xii Introduction: Prolegomenon to the Study of Medieval Chinese Buddhist Literature 1 Part 1: The Historical and Cosmological Background 1. The Date and Provenance of the Treasure Store Treatise 31 2. Chinese Buddhism and the Cosmology of Sympathetic Resonance 77 Part 2: Annotated Translation of the Treasure Store Treatise Introduction to the Translation 137 3. The Treasure Store Treatise/Chapter One The Broad Illumination of Emptiness and Being 143 4. The Treasure Store Treatise/Chapter Two The Essential Purity of Transcendence and Subtlety 193 5. The Treasure Store Treatise/Chapter Three The Empty Mystery of the Point of Genesis 228 Appendix 1: On Esoteric Buddhism in China 263 Appendix 2: Scriptural Quotations in the Treasure Store Treatise 279 NOTES 287 WORKS CITED 345 INDEX 379
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)
| Citation | 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. |
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The database of Chinese Buddhist Texts lists this as Taisho 1857:45.145b28 Pao-tsang lun. The author states, on p. 140: "The Taishō edition used for the current translation was compiled on the basis of two woodblock editions: (1) the text contained in the Leng-yen temple edition of the Chinese canon... and (2) a printed Japanese edition that belonged to the library of Shūkyō University..."
