Joan Rieck

Joan "Jyō'un-an" Rieck (浄雲庵) is an American Sanbō Zen *junshike* — one of the senior Western teachers authorised within the lineage to lead the full kōan curriculum — and the primary training teacher of Henry Shukman at Mountain Cloud Zen Center^[1]. She trained directly under Yamada Kōun at the San-un Zendō in Kamakura from 1971 until his death in 1989, completing the Sanbō Kyōdan kōan curriculum across nearly two decades of seasonal residential training in Japan^[1].

Authorised as a Zen teacher (*zenkyōshi*) in 1981 under Yamada Kōun, she was elevated to associate master (*junshike*) under Kubota Ji'un in 2001^[1]. Her principal teaching bases are the Sandia Zendo in New Mexico and the Sonnenhof retreat centre in Germany's Black Forest, from which she has trained students across the United States and Central Europe over four decades^[1][2].

Her most visible scholarly contribution is the joint translation, with Henry Shukman, of Yamada Kōun's *Zen: The Authentic Gate* (Wisdom Publications, 2015) — a posthumous compilation of Yamada's introductory dharma talks and the closest thing to an authorised English-language statement of Sanbō Zen's curriculum^[1]. She is widely described by her own students as a reclusive teacher whose work has been intentionally low-profile; she remains on Sanbō Zen International's active teacher roster^[1].