AS A STUDENT and teacher of Zen, Joan Sutherland has spent her entire adult life with koans. That she has “loved and struggled” with koans for so long is evident in her lush and evocative Through Forests of Every Color: Awakening with (Shambhala). Almost every sentence pulses with delicate insight, illuminating for us how to “keep company with koans” so that we might uncover the most intimate depths of our heart–mind. In Sutherland’s experience, a koan transforms through sustained engagement; what begins as an invitation to question eventually “starts to look like shelter.” Through practice, koans become enduring, all-weather friends, “robust, capable of being hauled around, leaned on, and argued with”—friends that lead the way to the experience of freedom.
