Zen teacher Joan Sutherland on life's dreamlike nature and why it should be embraced. One of our Western sutras is the children’s round that goes: Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream. The image of a human life as a small skiff on the wide waters of the world has been around as long as people have had [...]
About Joan Sutherland
Seasons of Awakening
Joan Sutherland shares why we must learn to trust the ebbs and flows of awakening -- agreeing to all of its seasons and tides. In our yearning for enlightenment, we might hope that it’s a state of unfluctuating perfection that solves the problem of the constant change that roils our lives. But if we see what we’re doing as awakening, something that unfolds over a lifetime, we [...]
Koans for Troubled Times
How do we as Buddhists meet the challenges of our time? Joan Sutherland shares the history of koans, which were created to deal with a difficult period in Chinese history. From the Buddhadharma archive, originally published in Spring 2008. Several years ago, in the face of a creeping despair about the state of the world, I began to reread my favorite twentieth-century [...]
The Whole Way
Is Buddhism a transcendent path to enlightenment or a practical aid to everyday life? The Way cannot be divided like that, Joan Sutherland tells us. Like the water system of the high desert, it flows in every direction and is found wherever we decide to tap into it. Being human is a complicated affair, and Buddhism began and continues to evolve as a response to this [...]
Through the Dharma Gate
The location of the gate — the forms of meditation — is fixed and known, but what will happen there can never be known ahead of time. Joan Sutherland on the place where form and formlessness meet. As I think about the shapes and forms that meditative practices take, I keep returning to the afternoon before the fateful night in which a man named Siddhartha would sit under a [...]
Is Buddhism a Religion?
Amitabha (Amida), contained within a closed shrine. Photo courtesy of Free Sackler. Is it a religion, psychology, or way of life? The “religion without God” has baffled Western thinkers for hundreds of years. Our three experts, Charles Prebish ("Yes”), Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche ("No”), and Joan Sutherland ("Kind of”), join the debate. Yes, Buddhism is a religion A religion [...]
Our Path Is Limitless and Vast
While women may feel constrained by Buddhist institutions, the dharma itself poses no such limitations, says Joan Sutherland. By connecting with the vast view of no-self, women can discover their own meaningful expressions of the dharma. Consider how many sentences you could write containing the words “dharma” and “women.” When I put them together, the next word that wants to [...]
Gaining Perspective on Habitual Patterns
From the Buddhadharma archive, Joan Sutherland says when caught in habitual patterns try not to fixate on your reactions. Instead, cultivate awareness of everything that is happening in the moment. Sometimes it can seem as though being human is a problem that spiritual practice is meant to solve. But Buddhist meditative and related practices actually have a different focus: [...]
What Is Enlightenment?
For many of us, enlightenment is an inspiring but distant goal. Joan Sutherland explores what enlightenment is and isn’t and how we can actually experience it in our everyday lives. At the very heart of Buddhism is the promise of enlightenment. It’s the bright flame illuminating the dharma, and the rich variety of practices developed in the traditions that make up [...]
Review: She Who Hears the Cries of the World
Searching for Guan Yin By Sarah E. Truman White Pine Press 2011; 220 pp., $16 (paper) Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals By Paula Arai University of Hawaii Press 2011; 261 pp., $52 (cloth) The bodhisattva of compassion, known as Guan Yin in China and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan, is a hugely popular figure around the world, and not only [...]
