Cloud Dragon

Welcome to Cloud Dragon

We don't have a temple in the usual sense. Where we gather and what we'll pass on is made of our dharma, our lives, and our art. And so this website is a part of our temple of the imagination — the pamphlet rack in the foyer, maybe — helping to spread something we hold dear through the fields of time and space.

Cloud Dragon : The Joan Sutherland Dharma Works was created to make the groundbreaking teachings of Joan Sutherland, Roshi widely available. Her work is a fresh imagining of the koan tradition, rooted in its original understanding of all of life as a process of awakening. Endarkenment is as essential as enlightenment to awakening, and much of her work is an exploration of the power held in the radiance of the dark.

Since her retirement in 2014, Cloud Dragon is the place to access Joan Sutherland's writings, videos, and the audio archive of her talks and readings, as well as a growing body of transcripts of those talks. For ongoing practice there’s The Open Source network of communities, led by her dharma heirs. See the window below, Places to Go, for more information.

Announcements

"How 'The Blue Cliff Record' Came to Be"
Joan's essay is featured in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Fall 2025. Read Here

Radiant Light Conference: What Zen Women Carry Into the World
Benediktuschof, Germany, August 28-31, 2025
Joan will give an online talk,Endarkenment & the Lunar Dharma.

Gates
Our Miscellaneous Koans collection is available free of charge as a PDF in the original Acequias & Gates format.