Through Forests of Every Color

<b><b>Nautilus Book Award Winner </b><br><br>An intimate spiritual and literary journey exploring how Zen&#160;koans&#160;make us permeable to the joys and the anguish of this life&#151;and to the primordial mystery we glimpse behind the veil of the everyday.</b><br><br> In <i>Through Forests of Every Color</i> renowned Zen teacher Joan Sutherland reimagines the&#160;koan&#160;tradition with allegiance to the root spirit of the&#160;koans&#160;and to their profound potential for vivifying subverting and sanctifying our lives.&#160;Her&#160;decades of practicing with koans&#160;and of translating them&#160;from classical Chinese imbues this text with&#160;a warm familiarity an ease still suffused with awe.&#160;&#160;<br> &#160;<br> Interlinked essays on &#147;koans&#160;as art&#148; &#147;keeping company with&#160;koans&#148; and &#147;walking the&#160;koan&#160;way&#148; intersperse with beautifully translated renditions&#160;of dozens of traditional Zen&#160;koans. Sutherland also shares innovative&#160;koans&#160;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.<br> &#160;<br> &#147;First honored is your yearning the preparation made on faith that there is something that will receive you if you make yourself ready&#148; writes Sutherland of the&#160;koan&#160;seeker. &#147;Bathed&#151;attended to washed free of complications&#151;and then aspiring to the deepest kind of beauty&#151;receptive brave dedicated openhearted. Already you&#146;ve begun to look like the thing you&#146;re looking for.&#148;