Joan Sutherland, Roshi

Joan Sutherland, Roshi, is founder of Awakened Life, a community and program center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and founder of the Open Source, a network of practice communities that also includes sanghas from Colorado, Northern California, and Arizona. She holds frequent koan and meditation retreats and teaches through both Awakened Life and the Open Source.

 Sutherland is also one of the founders of the Pacific Zen School, an innovative contemporary koan school. She is deeply involved in re-imagining the koan tradition, as well as exploring its relationship to creativity, and integrates mythopoetics and contemporary mind and consciousness discoveries with meditation.

Before becoming a Zen teacher, Joan Sutherland worked as a scholar and teacher in the field of archaeomythology, and for nonprofit organizations in the feminist antiviolence and environmental movements. She is also a translator of Chinese and Japanese texts, and writes regularly for Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma.