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

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).