Talks by Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee

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

Zen Roshi Lola McDowell Lee, opens by recounting the classic Zen koan of Master Dogo and his disciple Zengen. When visiting a deceased parishioner, Zengen asks if the person is alive or dead, to which Dogo refuses to answer either way. Even after Dogo’s passing, another master, Sakeso, repeats this refusal, telling Zengen, "No saying whatever".The story illustrates that life and death are not distinct realities, but two doors to the exact same cosmic secret. They are experiences to be lived through directly rather than intellectual problems to be solved.The human mind constantly seeks to placate itself with borrowed concepts and comfortable conclusions, missing the fundamental truth of existence. She cites Sri Ramakrishna’s metaphor of a festival crowd debating the depth of the ocean. While they argue, a man made of salt jumps into the water to discover the truth directly, dissolving in the process.Lola equates humans to this salt man; we must be willing to jump into the unknown and die daily, allowing our conditioned personalities to dissolve into the greater awareness.She notes that individuals satisfy themselves with some spiritual terminology, like karma, using it as a pacifier to explain things away and avoid facing the genuine, sometimes frightening mystery of life. Real understanding requires us to abandon the safety of the shore.She explains that the mechanics of living and dying are intimately connected to the flow of the human energy field. Lee explains that at birth, energy ripples outward, expanding into the world. In contrast, during a natural death or deep meditation, this energy field gradually compacts, subsiding and returning inward to its center to form concentrated light.When one dies, the physical body is a temporary mechanism left behind outside the temple, while unconditioned awareness effortlessly moves through the invisible door of death. Death is not an absolute end, but a transition of awareness.Lola discusses the treacherous nature of language and dualistic thinking. Relying on labels separates the thinker from reality, pushing awareness away through continuous subject-object categorization.She suggests "a-thinking" (the a being like a in amoral, or asymmetric, meaning non-. A-thinking is a wordless, subjective dwelling in non-articulated awareness. The answers to the profound mysteries of existence are found prior to the formation of words, hidden in the translucent darkness within.Lola explains that the words and stories are merely fingers pointing at the truth, and mistaking the finger for the reality it points to is a tragic error in the spiritual journey.June 8, 1986

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores the nature of truth, the limitations of the intellect, and the profound importance of trusting one's own immediate experience.She begins by introducing a classic Zen Master Tozan’s question: "What is the Buddha?" While working in a storeroom, replied, "This flax weighs three pounds." This seemingly nonsensical answer helps dismantle our reliance on logical analysis.Lola tells the story of a young student others thought stupid. He who suddenly comes alive in class to ask where numbers go when erased from a blackboard.And the story of a toddler who stumps his mother by asking how the first clock-maker knew what time it was.These questions, like the koan, point to mysteries that cannot be solved by conventional logic.Lee emphasizes that words are merely "fiats" for communication, not the truth themselves. While words carry meaning, they often trap us. If we analyze "three pounds of flax" intellectually, we find no connection to the divine. However, the koan is not a logical proposition but an expression of a state of consciousness. To understand it, one must drop comparative judgments—notions of gain, loss, right, and wrong. The answer points to the "ordinary" nature of reality. There is no other reality than this very ordinary life.Lee observes that humans are plagued by self-distrust because we remember our lies, mistakes, and failures. Yet we have an innate biological trust exhibited daily: we trust our hearts to beat, our lungs to breathe, and we go to sleep assuming we will wake up.A person living entirely in a pitch-dark room demands to be convinced that the sun exists before stepping outside. Words cannot convey the experience of light to someone who has known only darkness; one must step out into the unknown to know it. Similarly, demanding proof of God before meditating is a form of distrust that prevents spiritual discovery.Gurdjeiff described the mind as a broken phonograph record. The repetition creates grooves in the brain, offering a false sense of security. Whether the circle of repetition takes twenty-four hours or ten years, it remains a trap. The goal of religion, she argues, is to get off this self-manufactured wheel and move into the ever-new present moment.She notes that Zen masters often engage in humble, ordinary tasks like making pickles or weighing flax, defying our expectations that a sage must be an extraordinary, otherworldly figure.The koan is a tool to exhaust the intellect. By using all of one's psychic power and Hara to solve the unsolvable, the student pushes logic to its breaking point, transforming intellectualization into intuition.Lola invokes the figure of Hermes Trismegistus to discuss the birth of the Christ consciousness. She ends with a poetic and rhythmic recitation of a Hermetic hymn, calling on the powers of earth, air, fire, and water to sing praises to the "One and All," ultimately guiding the listener toward accepting the gift of God in you and awakening in freedom. Delivered June 1, 1986