Robert Sharf

Robert Sharf is D. H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at UC Berkeley, as well as Chair of Berkeley's Numata Center for Buddhist Studies. He received his B.A. (Religious Studies) and M.A. (Chinese Studies) from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. (Buddhist Studies) from the University of Michigan. He taught at McMaster University (1989-95) and the University of Michigan (1995-2003) before joining the Berkeley faculty. He works primarily on medieval Chinese Buddhism (especially Chan) but has also published in the areas of Japanese Buddhism, Buddhist art and archaeology, Buddhist modernism, Buddhist philosophy, 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); What Can’t Be Said: Contradiction and Paradox in East Asian Thought (coauthored with Yasuo Deguchi, Jay Garfield, and Graham Priest, 2021); How to Lose Yourself: An Ancient Guide to Letting Go (coauthored with Jay Garfield and Maria Heim, 2025), and co-editor (with Elizabeth Horton Sharf) of Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context (2001). A two-volume collection of Chinese translations of his articles appeared in 2022 under the titles Xiafu Chanxue zixuan ji 夏復禪學自選集 (Sharf’s selected essays on Chan studies), and Xiafu Mijiao yanjiu zixuan ji 夏復密教研究自選集 (Sharf’s selected essays on Esoteric Buddhism).