Nautilus Book Award Winner
An intimate spiritual and literary journey exploring how Zen koans make us permeable to the joys and the anguish of this life—and to the primordial mystery we glimpse behind the veil of the everyday. In
Through Forests of Every Color, renowned Zen teacher Joan Sutherland reimagines the koan tradition with allegiance to the root spirit of the koans and to their profound potential for vivifying, subverting, and sanctifying our lives. Her decades of practicing with koans and of translating them from classical Chinese imbues this text with a warm familiarity, an ease still suffused with awe.
Interlinked essays on “koans as art,” “keeping company with koans,” and “walking the koan way” intersperse with beautifully translated renditions of dozens of traditional Zen koans. Sutherland also shares innovative koans culled from Western literature, as well as teachings on how to create idiosyncratic koans or "turning words" from the circumstances of one's own life.
“First honored is your yearning, the preparation made on faith that there is something that will receive you if you make yourself ready,” writes Sutherland of the koan seeker. “Bathed—attended to, washed free of complications—and then aspiring to the deepest kind of beauty—receptive, brave, dedicated, openhearted. Already you’ve begun to look like the thing you’re looking for.”
"Joan and her sangha self-published Acequias and Gates in a four-color, hardcover version, with the essays reading from the front to the middle and the koan curriculum reading from the back to the middle. This new edition will pare away the full koan curriculum in favor of a smaller selection, interspersed with the essays. Joan will write new material to help tailor the book to a wider, trade audience"--
“Joan Sutherland has always seemed to be one of the ancient Chinese sages, reborn. They studied the mind and heart and found a way even in difficult times. She tells us the koans, healing stories, poems, and jokes that are so helpful to us now. It’s nice to be in the hands of a good writer too. If we’ll just step into the mystery, she’ll guide us on moonlit paths. She shows us a gate inside the obstacle, a path where there is no path. She is a true guide to the practices for our time.”—John Tarrant, author of
Bring Me The Rhinoceros “Joan Sutherland’s Koan Salon in Santa Fe was something new, an innovation in a very old tradition that loved and respected both the ancestors and the participants. The field in that room was alive and expansive. Something enlightening was going on. I’m excited that this book will introduce many more people to her work.”—Natalie Goldberg, author of
Writing Down the Bones “A clearer path or a better guide would be hard to find. Of course, you still won’t be getting out of this forest alive.”—Red Pine, author of
Three Zen Sutras 
