The Trap of Words - Delivered August 3, 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

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