Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism : : A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise / / Robert H. Sharf.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Sharf, Robert H.,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2005]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2005
• Language: English
• Series: Kuroda Studies in East Asian Buddhism ; 38
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (416 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Conventions of Usage -- Introduction. Prolegomenon to the Study of Medieval Chinese Buddhist Literature -- Part 1. The Historical and Cosmological Background -- 1. The Date and Provenance of the Treasure Store Treatise -- 2. Chinese Buddhism and the Cosmology of Sympathetic Resonance -- Part 2: Annotated Translation of the Treasure Store Treatise -- Introduction to the Translation -- 3. The Treasure Store Treatise Chapter One: The Broad Illumination of Emptiness and Being -- 4. The Treasure Store Treatise Chapter Two: The Essential Purity of Transcendence and Subtlety -- 5. The Treasure Store Treatise Chapter Three: The Empty Mystery of the Point of Genesis -- Appendix 1. On Esoteric Buddhism in China -- Appendix 2. Scriptural Quotations in the Treasure Store Treatise -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- About the Author