Talks by Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee

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

The Basic Teachings of Zen Meditation. Presented on June 29, 1986

(Note: Although there is some remaining quiet delayed echo from the original cassette tape, this talk by Lola about the basics of Zen meditation is still a good primer for a new student of the discipline) --- Zen Roshi Lola McDowell Lee, explores the essence of Zen practice, noting that while the era of the 1960s opened Western minds to Eastern traditions, it often lacked the rigorous supervision required for deep spiritual growth. By the mid-80s, she observes a stabilization where Zen schools (Soto and Rinzai) have established roots, offering methods developed by Chinese and Japanese masters to help individuals realize a state of unity with the absolute. Lola explains that Zen meditation is not an abstract concept but a grounded practice. It begins with the physical act of sitting (Asana). By adopting a stable posture, one creates a triangle of solidity that allows the practitioner to relax into themselves. This physical stillness is the prerequisite for the mental work of observing the breath. Lola shares the parable of the minister trapped in a tower. Just as the minister used a series of increasingly stronger threads—from silk to rope—to escape, the practitioner uses the breath (silk thread) to lead to the observation of thoughts (twine) and finally to deep meditation (the rope) that leads to freedom. We must first dis-identify with the "drunken monkey" of the mind—the constant, jumping stream of unnecessary thoughts and emotions that distract us from our original nature. Zen is not about religious rewards or prejudices of good and evil, but about perceiving the universe exactly as it is. Lola explains the similarities of Zen with Western spiritual concepts, suggesting that the "Buddha mind" is identical to the "Christed consciousness" or the "Light" mentioned in the Gospel of John. She argues that every human enters the world with this light, but it is obscured by the cunning deceptions of the mind. The mind loves to play with safe, abstract questions like "What is God?" to avoid the direct, terrifyingly close question of "Who am I?" By treating these inquiries as distractions, the small mind of many sincere spiritual seekers maintains its control and keeps us from our potential. We need to find the Witness that exists behind the changing reflections of the mind. Our ordinary minds are like greased pigs—constantly changing from anger to sadness to joy. By learning to hold a focus and observe these phenomena without judgment, we can perceive a silence that transcends thoughts. Like a mirror that remains unchanged regardless of what it reflects, the Witness remains untouched by the drama of life. Realizing that this ungraspable reality is the path to true freedom leaves us with the central, irreducible question: "Who are you?" June 29, 1986

Accumulating knowledge versus attaining true wisdom. June 22, 1986

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, Lola discusses the distinction between accumulating knowledge and attaining true wisdom. Lola shares the koan about a monk who asked his teacher, “Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?” And the teacher said, yes, there is. What is it, asked the monk. And the teacher replied, it is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.. We require a different kind of perception—what Lola calls "listening with your eyes". She draws a sharp contrast between linear, "horizontal" learning—where teachers and students simply build upon accumulated information—and "vertical" spiritual growth. Vertical growth is an ascent of transcending conditioning, memorization, and ego to simply achieve a state of pure being. Many of us treat happiness like a math problem, mistakenly believing that putting two and two together through specific activities will consistently yield joy. True bliss, ananda, is an unpredictable consequence that arrives "like a thief in the night" only when the mind is unoccupied by expectation and anticipation. Lola recalls the famous story of the Buddha holding up a single flower before his congregation, speaking not a word, and transmitting the highest teaching only to Mahakasyapa, who simply smiled in understanding. A flower does not articulate beauty; it simply is beauty, blooming into the void without caring who notices. If the eye or the ear were not functionally empty, they would be incapable of receiving new images or sounds. We must empty the mind of preconceived notions. This necessity of an empty mind is brought to life through two pivotal Zen narratives. The first involves Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch, who achieved enlightenment and inherited the robe of transmission through the simple, mindful act of pounding rice in the monastery kitchen. The well known encounter between the master and a frantic, truth-seeking professor. He invites the professor to have some tea. Then he proceeds to pour tea into the professor's cup until it overflows and burns him. The ego-driven trap of making differences and establishing oneself as higher than others based on wealth, education, or even religious devotion. Lola explains the need to awaken from three specific slumbers: Sleeping in things, which is the materialistic obsession with possessions and bank balances. Sleeping in the mind, a trap for intellectuals. And sleeping in the ego, where even those who renounce the world become stubbornly attached to the concept of the self. By disidentifying with objects, the mind, and the ego, one does not destroy the world, but rather cleanses it of projected hopes and frustrations. In this state of true mindfulness—where the self disappears—an individual truly exists in the awake world. June 22, 1986

The Lesson of True Listening. June 15, 1986

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores the difference between merely seeking reality and actually experiencing it through the practice of true listening. Ancient Zen master, Tokai, is abruptly awakened from a nap by a frantic monk shouting about a fire under the kitchen floor. Rather than panicking or leaping into action regarding a future threat, Tokai requests that the monk wake him only when the fire reaches the passageway, instantly returning to sleep. People often miss this present reality because their minds are busy searching for preconceived concepts of the Buddha or God. The ultimate truth is already at our door. The vital difference between hearing and listening. Our internal voice acts like a thick fog, constantly evaluating, agreeing, or disagreeing with our surroundings. True listening is hearing with awareness, requiring us to drop our mental commentary and simply witness phenomena without the need to say yes or no. The attainable and the unattainable. The attainable represents the dualistic world of objects, ideas, ego, and physical forms—things we can mentally grasp and call our own. When we attain something, we form an attachment to it. The unattainable represents the non-dualistic, transcendent truth that lies within and behind the phenomenal world. The unattainable cannot be possessed or grasped. It can only be realized by abandoning the dualitt of subject and object, and resting in the middle way. A barrier to accessing the unattainable is our conditioning. Our deepest beliefs regarding what is right and wrong are not objective truths, but rather accidental byproducts of our geographic, cultural, and familial upbringing. Beneath the rose of our supposedly logical and righteous beliefs lies the hidden thorn of personal desire for an immortal soul that will survive death. The paradox of clinging to rules, conditioning, and dualistic judgments only creates confusion and chaos. The ultimate solution is to set aside all conditioning and simply listen. By dropping our "isms," religious labels, and mental defenses, we become vulnerable to reality as it is. In this state of pure awareness, trust arises naturally. Without the mind's interference, the chaotic events of the world effortlessly align into cosmic order, acting as perfectly and naturally as flowing water finding its way into a hole in a rock. While breaking old habits requires continuous practice, maintaining this state of active listening allows us to experience a profound unity. June 15, 1986