Coming to Terms With Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise (Studies in East Asian Buddhism)

400 Pages·2002·6.8 MB·english

by  Robert H. Sharf

A
COMING to TERMS
Reading
with CHINESE
of the
Treasure
BUDDHISM
Store
Treatise
Robert H.
Sharf
KURODAINSTITUTE
STUDIES IN EAST ASIAN BUDDHISM 14
Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism
Kuroda Institute
Studies in East Asian Buddhism
Studies in Ch’an and Hua-yen
Robert M. Gimello and Peter N. Gregory, editors
D&gen Studies
William R. LaFleur, editor
The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism
John R. McRae
Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism
Peter N. Gregory, editor
Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought
Peter N. Gregory, editor
Buddhist Hermeneutics
Donald S. Lopez, Jr., editor
Paths to Liberation: The Marga and
Its Transformations in Buddhist Thought
Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Robert M. Gimello, editors
S&t& Zen in Medieval Japan
William M. Bodiford
The Scripture on the Ten Kings
and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism
Stephen F. Teiser
The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in
Medieval Chinese Hagiography
John Kieschnick
Re-Visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism
Richard K. Payne, editor
Original Enlightenment and the Transformation
of Medieval Japanese Buddhism
Jacqueline I. Stone
Buddhism in the Sung
Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, Jr., editors
Studies in East Asian Buddhism 14
Coming to Terms
with Chinese Buddhism
A Reading of the
Treasure Store Treatise
Robert H. Sharf
A KURODA INSTITUTE BOOK
University of Hawai‘i Press
Honolulu
© 2002 Kuroda Institute
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
06 05 04 03 02 01 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sharf, Robert H.
Coming to terms with Chinese Buddhism : a reading of the treasure store
treatise / Robert H. Sharf.
p. cm. — (Studies in East Asian Buddhism)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–8248–2443–1 (alk. paper)
1. Buddhism—China—History. 2. Buddhist literature—China. I. Title. II.
Series.
BQ622 .S53 2001
294.350951—dc21 2001027571
The Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism and Human Values is a nonprofit,
educational corporation founded in 1976. One of its primary objectives is to
promote scholarship on the historical, philosophical, and cultural ramifications of
Buddhism. In association with the University of Hawai‘i Press, the Institute also
publishes Classics in East Asian Buddhism, a series devoted to the translation of
significant texts in the East Asian Buddhist tradition.
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free
paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by Ken Miyamoto
Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
To Betsy, Eva, and Eli
Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private
property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated—overpopulated—with the
intentions of others.
—Mikhail Bakhtin
What is incomprehensible is that nothing, and yet everything, has changed.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
The French for London is Paris.
—Eugène Ionesco
Contents
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
vii

Acknowledgments
This book grew out of a Ph.D. dissertation I submitted to the Depart-
ment of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan
almost ten years ago. The passage of time has not diminished my debt
to two exemplary scholars who supervised my training in Buddhist
studies and sinology, Luis Gómez and Kenneth DeWoskin; many of
the insights in this volume are the result of working through the im-
plications of casual remarks and observations they made during my
years of graduate study. I am equally grateful to my friend and senpai
T. Griffith Foulk; our innumerable conversations spanning some two
decades have profoundly influenced my approach to all aspects of
Ch’an history and doctrine. The generous encouragement and timely
suggestions of Shuen-fu Lin and Robert Gimello greatly assisted me
in the final stages of the dissertation.
I began this study during an extended stay in Japan made possible
in part through a grant from the Social Science and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. I was privileged to have Yanagida Seizan
and Yoshikawa Tadao serve as my sponsors and facilitate my studies at
the Institute for Humanistic Studies at Kyoto University. While in Japan,
Tagawa Shunei and Moriya Eishun offered me the opportunity to study
at K7fukuji in Nara, an invaluable experience that forced me to re-
think my approach to all things Buddhist.
Livia Kohn, Anna Seidel, and Yoshikawa Tadao all read sections
from early drafts of my translation of the Pao-tsang lun and answered
a host of questions, particularly in matters pertaining to medieval
Taoism. In revising the study for publication, I received invaluable
assistance from Chen Jinhua, then a student at McMaster University,
and the two reviewers for the Kuroda Institute, Timothy Barrett and
Stephen Bokenkamp. All three scholars provided extensive sugges-
ix