Unlearning and existential trust. Delivered Aug 10, 1986

Unlearning and existential trust. Delivered Aug 10, 1986

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores the concepts of unlearning, existential trust, and the structural dynamics of the ego. Lola describes the state of an enlightened individual as one whose nature has completely sunk back into its roots in the One. True spiritual power, she argues, is not achieved through cleverness, daring, or accumulated knowledge, but rather through an intense process of unlearning. Within every person exists this pristine, unconditioned reality—the true man of no rank. An obstacle to realizing this wisdom is the modern obsession with cleverness and interpersonal strategy. Individuals constantly construct internal scripts, planning how they will speak or act based on anticipated reactions (if I do this, they will do that). They even include their spiritual development as part of their ambitions for the future. It is an exercise in delusion for an individual ego to attempt to outsmart the source from which it emerged—and to which it must inevitably return. It’s like a tiny ocean wave attempting to outwit the vast sea, or an individual leaf plotting against its parent tree. True liberation demands that these mental structures be abandoned in favor of self-understanding and self-acceptance, which renders cunning obsolete. To dissolve the artificial armor of the intellect, we must acknowledge: I don't know. Strip away conceptual hand-me-downs, leaving an unclouded personal trueness, enabling an individual to walk through existence with the unvarnished trust of a small child holding a parent’s hand. Lola distinguishes between two dimensions of human capability: phenomenal intelligence, which governs analytical, academic operations—and numinal intelligence, which manifests as an innate, structural wisdom born into all living things. Numinal intelligence is not characterized by cunning or calculation. It manifests as a profound trust in reality. The simple act of lying back and falling asleep is a marvelous expression of our underlying trust in and connection to the totality of life. Lola tells a story of an eighty-year-old sword-master and an ambitious disciple. Despite his high technical proficiency and physical power, the disciple remained trapped within his own ego, constantly demanding a duel to claim the master's lineage. The aging master instructed the disciple to first defeat the master's former disciple who had long since discarded his sword to become a contemplative monk. The aggressive disciple angrily found this monk and demanded a duel with him. The monk calmly declined to pick up a weapon, stating that he would simply allow the disciple to attack him. Upon standing, the monk effectively transformed into a terrifying, slightly swaying pillar of energy. The disciple panicked, discarded his sword and fled. By provoking anger in the disciple, the monk instantly exposed vulnerabilities in the student's being. Lola quotes the biblical passage, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom.” Spiritual poverty is the absence of a grasping, possessing ego-self. When an individual is dominated by pride, jealousy, or desires, their vital energy is continually fragmented and leaked away. But when an individual achieves true desirelessness, their energy ceases to scatter outward. Instead instead, they move inward, compacting the consciousness into an unassailable, solid field—a pillar of strength, light, and focused meditation. It’s what Plotinus meant when he called it the "flight of the alone to the alone.” The seeker must strip away personal trappings, cultural embellishments, and egoic self-beautifications. Delivered Aug 10, 1986

The Trap of Words - Delivered August 3, 1986

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, recounts Chuang Tzu’s advice: the purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and once the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. So too with words — once an idea is truly grasped, the words that carried it should be released. Yet we find this nearly impossible. Words stick. They cling to the mind and take on a life of their own, trapping the very people who use them. She illustrates with two ancient stories. In Egyptian lore, a god wished to thank humanity for its devotion and decided to give people the gift of words — only to be warned by the great god Ra that this would put them in bondage. And the Buddha’s tale of five men who crossed a flooded river in a small boat. So grateful were they that the boat had saved their lives, they would not leave it behind. And so they hoisted the boat onto their heads and pointlessly carried it for the rest of their journey. Lola asks how many boats, ladders, and paths are we still carrying in our heads? Lola points to silence as the source of truly alive communication. When the mind is not churning with its stored content, heart can speak to heart--unlike ordinary social chatter, which acts as a relief valve for inner disturbance rather than genuinely meeting another person. Lola tells a humorous story of a Zen monk who calls a bartender repeatedly in the middle of the night asking when the bar will open. When the exasperated bartender finally shouts that he will have to wait until nine for a drink, the monk replies that he does not want a drink — he is locked in the barn and wants to get out. We are locked inside and mistakenly reaching outward. The real movement is inward. Lola describes the uncreated mind through the image of a polished mirror or a crystal ball. The mirror is originally clear and unblemished; our likes, dislikes, prejudices, envies and graspings settle on it like dust, obscuring it. Yet the mirror itself is never changed by what it reflects. But actually, the uncreated mind from the very beginning has not been anything else but pure. The created mind has accumulated so much authority that it has mistaken itself for the master of the house — when in truth it is only the manager, meant to serve something deeper. Glimpses of no-mind do arise in meditation, in a sudden beauty, in an unguarded moment with a butterfly or a ray of sunlight — but the moment the created mind rushes in saying “look what I’ve done, give me more of this,” the contact is lost. The appropriate response to such glimpses, she says, is simply gratitude. Delivered August 3, 1986

Zen is not an intellectual exercise. Delivered Jun 20, 1986

(Note on the recording: Thank you for your patience. Many of the remaining cassettes of Lola’s talks have substantial noise and echo issues. To overcome that, I’m trying out a different software to clean the audio. This software removes the noises, but it also sounds slightly clipped. Just so you know...if this sounds a little different from what you're used to. For those of you that follow her talks, I’m curious if you can accept these changes to improve the audio. Your comments are welcome. Thank you. – Bob) *** Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores the dilemma of human life: the internal division caused by human desire, and the pursuit of external validation. Chuang Tzu tells of an archer who possesses perfect skill when shooting for the simple joy of the act. However, the moment an external prize is introduced the archer grows nervous, develops double vision, and goes out of his mind. Roshi Lee points out that while the archer's physical skill remains entirely unchanged, the introduction of a prize divides him against his own nature. He becomes obsessed with winning rather than the immediate, physical act of shooting. The need to achieve a specific outcome drains him of his innate power. Lola contrasts this fractured modern state with the consciousness of early human beings, whom she describes as children of the earth. Early humans viewed nature directly, and naturally concluded that the divine was immanent within everything—living inside trees, the sun, and so on. Because they lived without complex intellectual frameworks, their world was simple. In contrast, modern human beings, burdened by education and the knowledge of good and evil, find themselves alienated. Lola explains the tragic irony of this search: the divine cannot be uncovered intellectually. It is the very subjective ground where we stand. We need to unify the heart and mind, bringing an end to this exhausting external search and returning us to our natural wholeness. Lola shares the tale of an inebriated monk who staggers home, knocks repeatedly at his own front door, and asks his wife who he is and where he lives. This, she notes, is the universal state of humanity—staggering through life and begging the external world to tell us our identity. This identity confusion stems directly from desire, which creates idealized mental images that pull us away from immediate reality. We form a false ego-image by collecting the opinions of others in a basket and calling it "ourselves." Trying to prove we are "somebody" is an endless, suffering-filled trap because there will always be someone greater to compare against. True liberation is the realization that you are actually "nobody." To be nobody is to be free of the constant need to prove your worth. In this sweet spot of non-clinging, you paradoxically realize your identity as the totality of existence. Lola describes how ancient Chinese masters structured this text into a beautiful four-fold vision of reality based on the terms Li (Absolute Reality or Emptiness) and Shi (Particular Events or Forms). In a fully awakened state, Li and Shi are completely interfused and unified. Like a golden lion in an imperial palace, she explains that the lion (the form/event) has no reality without the gold (the substance/absolute), and the gold cannot be expressed without the lion. They are structurally inseparable (interdependent). To see the world as it truly is means letting go of the false dichotomy. Zen is not an intellectual exercise. It is a hundred-foot pole that requires a final leap. Let the arrow release itself without ego involvement. We need to recognize that the door to the spiritual world is not something we need to pound on frantically from the outside; rather, we have been safely inside the sanctuary all along. Jun 20, 1986

Emptiness is not nothingness. Jul 14, 1986

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, discusses the concept of the "Unborn," the central teaching of Master Bankei. Lola recounts the story of an arrogant Abbot trying to challenge Bankei. The Abbot told his congregation, “If I put a difficult question to him, I can stymie him with just one word. So saying this, he went off to see this supposed master. And here in this large crowd, in the middle of the talk, the Abbot shouted in his booming voice, “Everyone here accepts your sermon and believes it. But someone educated like myself doesn't accept. If a person doesn't accept, how are you going to save him?” And Bankei raised his fan and says, “Come forward.” So the Abbot went forward to stand before him. And then Bankei says, come a little closer. So the abbot shuffled forward again. And Bankei looks at him and says, “See how well you accept what I say?” Indian patriarch Nagarjuna’s doctrine of Shunyata, or emptiness. This emptiness is not a nihilistic nothingness or an absence, but rather an absolute state where relativity disappears. The Prajñāpāramitā represents a noetic leap across the abyss of contradiction. To explain, Lola uses the metaphor of passing through a chain-link fence into a garden that the mind could never have previously imagined. One should not waste time speculating about what is on the other side, as the mental process is inherently dualistic and incapable of grasping the Absolute. Lola discusses the human condition through the lens of the Five Aggregates. Everything in the phenomenal world—cells, organs, and thoughts —is a temporary aggregation of elements. By examining the body, one realizes there is no permanent, self-existing entity to be found. This leads to the practice of the via negativa, or the path of negation. Through non-attachment and non-judgment, the practitioner learns to perceive the formless within form. She tells Zen story of Basso, who sat in meditation for hours hoping to become a Buddha. Frustrasted, he looked to his master who began scrubbing a brick. When asked what he was doing, the master said, like you, I’m trying to polish this brick into a mirror. The Threefold Truth—the Real (emptiness), the Unreal (the empirical world), and the Synthesis (the Middle Way). Lola explains how the Middle Way transcends and embraces both the absolute and the relative. This synthesis grants the practitioner three eyes: the Dharma eye to see interdependency, the Wisdom eye to see unchanging silence, and the Buddha eye to see the union of both. Lola ends a week-long Sesshin with a reminder that even small enlightenments are worth our gratitude. The speaker reinforces that the market of spiritual truth provides exactly what the seeker demands. If one asks for childish toys, one receives them; if one asks for gold, one receives gold. This puts the agency of spiritual growth squarely on the shoulders of the individual. The teacher cannot eat or be enlightened for the student. By turning one's light inward, the root of false thinking can be dug out, leading eventually to the Golden Wind, where the leaves of the ego have fallen and the trees are bare, yet reality remains vibrant and full. Jul 14, 1986

How to enter a gateless gate. Delivered July 6, 1986

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, opens with the core question: How does one enter the gateless gate? Lola points to a mountain stream, suggesting that "listening" is entering. She distinguishes between the someone’s simple interest in Zen and the actual acquisition of a Zen mind. Lola says the spiritual path begins only when the soul moves beyond a mild interest in Zen and raises the question: "Who am I?" This inquiry is described as poking a stick into a beehive—it disturbs thousands of inmates within the psyche, necessitating a new way to deal with the disturbance of selfhood. Lola contrasts psychology with Zen. While psychology attempts to study feelings like fear and insecurity objectively, Zen reverses this process. Zen's method is to experience the subject—subjectively, refusing to be lost in external objects or intellectualized solutions. This shift requires a venturesome spirit and the willingness to let go of the hundred-foot pole of ego-safety. Lola explains that the Bible's instruction to "knock and the door shall be opened" is a call for a decisive, total thrust of one's being against the door of reality, only to find that the gate was gateless from the very beginning. Lola outlines two specific methods of entry: Reason and Conduct. Entrance by Reason involves intense mental focus to realize that one's true nature is identical in all sentient beings. She references Bodhidharma's wall-gazing, explaining that the wall is actually the barrier of our own conditioning. To penetrate this wall is to realize there is neither self nor other. Entrance by Conduct is a four-fold path: 1. Requiting hatred through a shift in internal attitude. 2. Understanding the Buddha’s chain of causation (from ignorance to death) 3. Being obedient to karma by acknowledging inherited biology while seeking the freedom of the non-entity self. 4. And finally, not seeking— abandoning the attachment to dualities like praise and blame or summer and winter. Lola calls for radical simplicity and non-attachment, using the famous Zen phrase of chopping wood and carrying water to illustrate that enlightenment doesn't change what one does, but how it is done—from a chore to a natural, beautiful happening. She warns against imitation, noting that one cannot become Christ or Buddha by wearing borrowed clothing or mimicking lifestyles. True innocence and simplicity are states of being, not things to be cultivated through effort. Lola recounts the story of a monk who is invited to live in a king’s palace. The king is surprised how easily the poor monk accepts all his luxuries. Then they reach the border of the kingdom. The king will not leave his kingdom. The monk is perfectly willing to give it all up and leave. That is true freedom and non-attachment. He enjoyed the king's luxurious lifestyle without becoming possessive of it. Non-attachment is a matter of internal attitude rather than external possessions. The path ends where it began: in the Christed consciousnes and the simple recognition of the murmur of the stream as the ultimate entrance. Delivered July 6, 1987