Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-6d856f89d9-8l2sj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T05:57:23.654Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

10 - Robert H. Sharf: “Experience,” from Critical Terms for Religious Studies

from Part V - The Unraveling of Experience

Craig Martin
Affiliation:
St. Aquinas College, New York
Russell T. McCutcheon
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
Leslie Durrough Smith
Affiliation:
Avila University, Kansas City, Missouri
Get access

Summary

“Experience,” from Critical Terms for Religious Studies

Robert Sharf is a professor of Buddhist studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Having earned degrees in Chinese studies and Buddhist studies, Sharf's work focuses primarily on medieval Chinese Buddhism, as well as Japanese Buddhism, Buddhist art, and the study of ritual, theory, and method in the study of religion.

Sharf is the author of Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise (2002) and co-editor of Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context (2001). In both, Sharf questions certain scholarly understandings of Asian religions that have created “master narratives” through which Buddhism, in particular, has been popularly portrayed. Similar to his work in the following essay, Sharf argues in the aforementioned books for a re-evaluation of the many theories and models that have come to define the field of Buddhist studies.

This essay, simply titled “Experience,” embarks upon an exploration of the political weight behind the rhetorical use of the term “experience” in religion, and offers an important insight into the relevance of context when examining experiential claims. Sharf begins by noting that “experience” is a category used widely as a point of contrast against things deemed “empirical” or “objective,” and inasmuch as popular understandings of religion portray it as a phenomenon that contains a mystical, experiential, or subjective component, “experience” becomes an authoritative term. Part of the popularity of the category of experience, Sharf argues, is that it has legitimized various interests endemic to the field; as evidence of this, he points particularly to its utility in phenomenological circles (see essays in this volume by Joachim Wach and Diana Eck for examples of this approach).

Type
Chapter
Information
Religious Experience
A Reader
, pp. 131 - 150
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×