Robert Sharf, PhD, is the DH Chen Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California – Berkeley, where he also serves as Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies. His primary area of research is medieval Chan and Zen Buddhism, but he has also published on East Asian Esoteric Buddhism, Buddhist material culture, Buddhist modernism, ritual studies, and the study of religious and meditative experience. He is author of Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise (2002), co-editor of Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context (2001), and is currently working on a book titled Thinking about Not Thinking: Buddhist Struggles with Mindlessness, Insentience, and Nirvana. He is ordained in the Hossõ tradition at Kõfukuji in Nara.
