Featured Contributors

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Joan Sutherland, Roshi

Teacher, scholar, and Classical Chinese translator Joan Sutherland, Roshi, first connected with the koan tradition as a teenager. “The koans see awakening as the world calling itself home,” she said. Her article, “How The Blue Cliff Record Came to Be,” recounts the story behind the oldest koan collection. “A koan collection is a kind of field guide and traveler’s phrase book for the journey,” she said when describing its importance. “The collections are full of stories and characters that can become lifelong traveling companions, and they encourage us to add our own notes in every available margin.” Sutherland also founded The Open Source network and Santa Fe’s Awakened Life center, and cofounded the Pacific Zen School. Now retired, she lives on the coast of northern California and works on her website, Cloud Dragon: The Joan Sutherland Dharma Works.

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Stephen Batchelor

Contributing editor Stephen Batchelor practiced as a Tibetan and Son (Zen) Buddhist monk for over a decade before leaving monastic life in 1985. He went on to become one of the most essential voices in secular Buddhism with his book Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening, and subsequent works. Batchelor’s book Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times traces the connections between Greek philosophy and the dharma. In “A Dialogical Self,” an excerpt from this book, he writes, “To practice either Buddhist or Hellenistic philosophy becomes a full-time exercise in remaining sufficiently detached, mindful, and vigilant to respond appropriately to whatever life throws at you.”