For scholars of Chan Buddhism the task of rescuing History from the intricate web of myths and legends spun by its most brilliant minds seems to have always been the most pressing (and most tempting). Perhaps the most notable figures in this regard are the Chinese historian Hu Shih and the Japanese Zen historian Yanagida Seizan who, precisely for this reason, receive a fair amount of attention in Mario Poceski's new book Ordinary Mind as the Way. Poceski does not, however, invoke Hu and Yanagida to bolster his own claims about Chan or to secure his place in this intellectual lineage of sorts but to take them – especially the latter – to task for not applying the same critical tools that they used to demystify early Chan to the study of middle Chan or, more specifically, to the so-called Hongzhou school, the subject of Poceski's well-researched book. What seems to trouble Poceski most about Hu and Yanagida's views on the Hongzhou school and its putative founder Mazu Daoyi (709–788) is their tendency, despite their differing agendas, to see the rise of Mazu and his school as a kind of revolution that gave birth to a new Buddhism (sometimes referred to as ‘classical Chan’) that was, to borrow Poceski's own words, “distinctively Chinese” (p. 10). One of the major aims of Poceski's book is to thus show that such views are based on the hasty use of misleading sources – most notably the so-called “encounter dialogues” – and not corroborated by other extant sources which, if used judiciously, can offer a more accurate, nuanced, and context-sensitive picture of a school that flourished between the eighth and ninth century. And that is exactly what he delivers in Ordinary Mind as the Way.

But what Poceski delivers is anything but shocking, and rightly so. In stark contrast to the well-established image of the maverick Hongzhou school as a provincial, antinomian, and egalitarian movement, what we find in Poceski's book – in large part a reworking of his doctoral thesis – is a strikingly conservative, elitist, and, dare I say, banal Chinese Buddhist school whose presence was felt in the various regions of the Tang empire, including its capitals Chang'an and Luoyang. In Chapters One and Two, Poceski juggles a large body of epigraphical and hagiographical material, laid out neatly in the Appendix, to show that Mazu and his disciples were, indeed, conventional monastics who rose to prominence by maintaining close relations with local officials and the imperial court and by holding the abbacy of important state-sponsored monasteries. In Chapter Three Poceski offers some more general observations on the history of the Hongzhou school such as the pattern of its growth, its attitude towards other Chan lineages, and its place in what he calls the larger ‘Chan movement’. Curiously, what we also find in Chapter Three is a discussion – a discussion that one would expect to find in the Introduction – of what Poceski means by ‘school’. For Poceski, a ‘school’ in this context refers not to a sect or institution but to “a confraternity of monks with a shared vision of the Buddhist path”. (p. 104) It is to this shared vision that he turns next, after concluding his discussion of ‘History’, the title of Part I of his book.

In the second part of his book, titled ‘Doctrine and Practice’, Poceski attempts to provide a sweeping overview of the vision that Mazu and his disciples shared. Having demonstrated in Chapter Four that the Hongzhou school did not reject but rather acknowledged canonical authority and wide-held assumptions about meditation and the inherent purity of buddha nature, Poceski also attempts to show that Mazu and his disciples “were able to construct a distinct religious identity by reformulating aspects of those traditions and expressing them in innovative ways”. (p. 148) Three examples of these innovative expressions are given special attention: Mazu's “mind is Buddha” and “ordinary mind is the Way”, the subject of Chapter Five, and Baizhang Huaihai's (pp. 749–814) “three propositions” (sanju), the subject of Chapter Six. Although Poceski does a wonderful job of patching together relevant passages from various Hongzhou school sources to reconstruct the vision that these sources share, there are some lingering doubts as to whether this sense of unity and coherence can, in fact, be traced back to Mazu and his disciples. Following Yanagida's lead, Poceski, for instance, deems the Baizhang guanglu (Extensive Record of Baizhang) to be an authentic source that can be safely attributed to Baizhang and the mid-Tang period. He believes this to be the case because the Baizhang guanglu's “contents, language, use of technical terminology, and literary format” are similar to that of other Tang period texts produced by the Hongzhou school such as Huangbo Xiyun's (d. 850?) Chuanxin fayao (Essential Teachings on the Transmission of the Mind) (p. 241). But here Poceski seems to be facing a serious dilemma: are the sources authentic because they share a vision or is the shared vision authentic because it appears in these sources? This problem is compounded by the fact that the present edition of the Baizhang guanglu was published no earlier than the Song dynasty.Footnote ⁹

There are also some lingering doubts about the shared vision itself. As Poceski himself notes, there seems to have been some concern even within the Honghzou school about Mazu's famous adage, “mind is Buddha”. Such a concern, for instance, can be found in the Baizhang guanglu where Mazu's adage is labelled an “incomplete teaching” (p. 167). Poceski, however, believes that a critical assessment of this adage can be traced back to Mazu himself. As evidence, Poceski points to a famous passage in Mazu's record that reads: “‘Why does the Reverend say that mind is Buddha?’ Mazu said, ‘To stop small children's crying’. The monk asked, ‘What do you say when they have stopped crying?’ Mazu said, ‘[I say that] it is neither mind nor Buddha.’” If this passage does, in fact, reflect the teachings of Mazu then it may also explain Baizhang's critical assessment of the adage ‘mind is Buddha’, but it seems worth noting here that the passage in question bears a striking resemblance to the encounter dialogues that Poceski denounced as unreliable sources for studying the history of the Hongzhou school. In a footnote (p. 190, n. 67), Poceski does point out that the records of Mazu's disciples attribute the teaching “neither mind nor Buddha” to Mazu, but these records themselves cannot be safely dated to the Tang dynasty.

These few potential points of controversy, duly noted by Poceski himself, do not, however, diminish the high quality of his valuable research on the Hongzhou school. These points remain, and will probably remain, open for debate for many years to come. Considering the relative dearth of monograph-length studies on middle or classical Chan in English, Ordinary Mind as the Way and another recent book by Jinhua Jia on the same subject come as welcome additions to Chan studies and scholarship on medieval Chinese Buddhism as a whole. While I suspect that few Chan and Zen apologists and koan enthusiasts will be pleased by Poceski's portrayal of the Hongzhou school, his book is highly recommended for anyone who wishes gain a better understanding of a critical, formative period in the history of Chan.