Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, gives a detailed discussion of the philosophical and historical backgrounds of religious traditions as they developed in India—Vedas, Brahmanism and Hinduism.

Lola explains the meaning of many of the Hindu terms and explores the Isha Upanishad.

Shakti, the Great Mother or feminine energy of the universe. We all have in us a power. That is shake.

Hindu Tantra versus Buddhist Tantra.

Prakriti and Purusha.

Maya.

As mentioned in the Bible, your actions in this world show your faith.

A medicine is true if it cures. Your experience, not words, is what matters. Consciousness does not evolve without effort.

Everything in your body is used material, recycled from the past.

Surya (the sun god) and Agni (the fire god). Surya is knowledge. Agni is action. The combination leads to the truth, to the Supreme Vision and Divine Bliss.

We all have the same name: “I.”

May 10, 1987

(Note: original recording audio is not ideal, but Lola's message is great)

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, gives an ind-depth explanation of the practice of sitting, as this talk is during a sesshin at the temple.

Who is the Buddha? What is birth and death?

Zazen is learning about life by dying to one’s self. Be quietly alert, dropping the ego and identifications.

Our mistake is taking the phenomenal to be the noumenal. But they are really two aspects of the same thing.

Emotions confuse us and cause us pain. Learning how to sit with pain. Everyone has pain. Complaining about pain is your ego at work. One transcends pain by focusing and going beyond the phenomenal.

What do you want from your sitting practice? Instruction in meditation. Breath through the Hara to find the calm. Radiate your peace.

The evolution of Zen from India and Hinduism to Taoism and China to America, where we are now (in 1987) the new caretakers of the tradition.

The ringing of the bell as part of the transmission process. One must learn how to ring it properly.

Then Lola leads a Rinzai chant before the students enter Sesshin.

Nov 29, 1987

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, discusses the meaning of the Zen saying, “Joy in the morning. Sleep at night. What else?”

When we “do not know,” then we don’t concern ourselves with obsessions about outcomes. That is the meaning of “no mind.”

Start by discovering what “no mind” is not.

Is there a gradual acquisition of “no mind?”

Is there an enduring entity called self? Is there a self to improve? Do not accept of reject an answer without learning for yourself directly.

Is the thinker different than his thoughts?

Just like we have frames of images in our vision, which are just a series of flashes which we might think are continuous… so do we have a series of thoughts, a thinking mind, that we might think are continuous… but they are not.

How do we use the mind to study the mind? A knife cannot cut itself. How can you, living in time, know what time is?

The “I” that develops as one grows in childhood grasps at immediate wants. Then, eventually, it also wants to be socially accepted. Those two wishes cause conflict in us.

Your knowledge and memories are held in your subconscious. Your instincts, heart beats, etc, are held in your unconscious.

It is this unconscious that is the gateway to reality.

There is a method to examine your self moment by moment—called Prajahara.

July 18, 1981

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, discusses Chapter 10 from the Tao Te Ching (Paul Carus translation)

"What can be done?

"Who by unending discipline of the senses embraces unity cannot be disintegrated. By concentrating his vitality and inducing tenderness he can become like a little child. By purifying, by cleansing and profound intuition he can be free from faults.

"Who loves the people when administering the country will practice nonassertion.

"Opening and closing the gates of heaven, he will be like a mother-bird; bright, and white, and penetrating the four quarters, he will be unsophisticated. He quickens them and feeds them. He quickens but owns not. He acts but claims not. He excels but rules not. This is called profound virtue."

We often ask, “What is the purpose of life?” Is it to make money? Have sex? Raise a family? Power? These are goals, but they are not the meaning of life.

He who lives with a purpose loses his life. What? Live with no purpose?

Learn to cope with yourself.

When your teacher asks, What is your original face? You do not want to tell him all your reasoning. You must show him.

If you learn there is no answer, then you’re free.

In logic there is the question: If the many return to the one, then to what does the one return?

The three questions the Emperor asked of Bodhidharma.

Yes, of course you will have goals. But remember to be present, in the Now, for Now is the day of the Lord. Don’t let your thoughts about the future or the past allow you to miss living today.

The question isn’t "What is the purpose of life?" The question is: How do we live this life… this gift of life we’ve received. That’s what matters.

Lola explores the notions of the masculine mind and the feminine mind in all of us. Aggressive versus Receptive.

The story of Socrates and the Sophist.

June 28, 1981

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores the notion of patience in practice. And time.

For nearly twenty years, Hon, a layman, studied under Master Egon. Several of the students went out to the edge of the district and Hon looked up at the falling snow and said, “Snowflakes as nice as these do not fall elsewhere.”

We are all in such a hurry. But time is a state of mind—full of anxiety about the future and the past. If you are patient enough, you will not miss yourself. The Buddha sat and sat and sat… in no time.

Lola recounts the tale of the old man and the young man, traveling together to a gated village that closes when the sun goes down. They asked their boatsman if they could make it in time. He replied, “You can reach it if you don’t hurry.”

The young man hurried, and the old man just plodded along. When in his haste the young man fell into a ditch, the old man was too feeble to help him. So the old man continued on… and arrived at the village in just the nick of time.

If you wish to be spontaneous, you cannot pose. If you have posed your whole life. It won’t be easy to stop the habit.

Be silent and watchful—and aware—and you’ll be able to see your habits.

The story of the old man who was dying and asked his son to go find a teacher and learn to meditate. So the son goes to a teacher and says, “My father would like to see my meditative face before he dies. How long will it take?” “Three years answered the teacher. So the son asked, “What if I work really hard at it?” Then 30 years.

The five senses and the biblical reference to the single eye.

Those who know use words differently than those who do not know. The sense is not in the word—but in the user.

July 5, 1981

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, further explores the Mystica Theoligica.

NOTE: LOLA HAS A BAD COLD TODAY AND A PERSISTENT COUGH. If that bothers you, please skip. But the content of the talk is worth the discomfort, in my opinion.

Religious life is like a sculpture… best to take away from life that which is not Him rather than ascribe characteristics to Him.

Most of our thoughts and emotions are unconscious. And people think: Oh, how life without emotions and desire would be so colorless. But is that true?

Heraclitus preferred what he called “the dry soul.”

Gurdjieff once told Ouspensky that, for the most part, no one self-remembers. If you can do that, he said, you’re most of the way toward Being.

The ordinary want to be extraordinary. But the truly extraordinary appreciate the ordinary. Looking at a bird. A plant. Ordinary life.

If you feel pain during sitting, keep watching your body. You’ll learn things.

Instead of trying to be a better man, try to be a new man.

You have a stance in this world. What is it you are standing on? How many of your concepts and emotions are you clinging to? How much are you understanding correctly?

If you pay only lip service to the practice, it will not suffice. If you pay “hard sitting,” the True Self will know what you’re doing.

Dec 11, 1988

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores the meaning of the opening of the Mystica Theoligica.

“Thou Trinity beyond Being, direct us to the heights of mystical revelation, sublime beyond all thought and light, wherein the simple, absolute and immutable mysteries of Divine Truth are hidden in the translucent darkness of that silence which revealeth in secret. For this darkness, though of deepest obscurity, is yet radiantly clear, and though beyond touch and sight, it overfills our unseeing mind with splendors of transcendent beauty. This is my prayer….”

Lola does a deep dive into the meaning of the reference to the translucent darkness, and what it means in terms of our Zen practice.

We start believing in the world of twos, of duality, soon after birth. The dichotomy of virtue and sin. Where there is one, there is the other.

If you want to find God, you need to train your mind to observe, to look.

A discussion of Christian Zen in Japan and elsewhere. And what the term means.

Jacob Needleman’s book, Lost Christianity, about how Christianity took the path less mystical than Buddhism did.

A mystical event is an undisturbible insight. It presents itself gutlessly, innocent, in ignorance.

She notes that there are no proofs for Truth. We need to verify Truth for ourselves, through our own experience. We live in a mystery of mysteries, a mystery that can be experienced—but not through words. All the world has been created without a word.

Lola discusses the meanings of atheism, theism, and agnosticism. How the athiest speaks as if he knows. As does the theist. But usually neither really knows. The agnostic, while he may be a seeker, admits that he, as yet, does not know. And when he does, he doesn’t speak of it. We should keep that ignorance while seeking.

This meaning is not unlike that of Ikyu, about how one cannot explain it, or speak of it. It is the state of not-knowing that opens the door.

Lola talks about how we learn things at age 5 that we still believe to be true but that may not be so. She recounts a time when she was five walking in the snow from Church with her grandfather.

While therapy can get help clear up some childhood issues, it will not clear them all. Nor does it need to. Meditation will solve the small ones eventually.

What is real Prayer? Lola tells of a time, at 18, when she was in a bit of a pickle. How she tried praying, but her prayers were demands and not sincere.

Instead of making prayer a demand, we need to learn to just let go, and know that you, yourself, can do nothing. Admit hat you don’t know. Because the thinking mind will not find the answers.

Dec 4, 1988

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, recounts the tale of the Persian teacher who asked a disciple to place a bag of gold in the middle of a bridge. He is to find a poor man to cross the bridge. The man successfully crossed the bridge where there is a bag of gold which he desperately needs. But he missed the gold. He had been too afraid to open his eyes and never saw it.

Our problem is we think know our faults. But we close our eyes to them.

You seekers who want freedom… freedom from what?

Do you ever watch how you make your choices? Otherwise, how will you ever change?

In the Upanishads it says we are like some spiders who spin a web, which comes from inside us. And then when they are finished with the web, the swallow the web and put it back inside us.

A father put his five sons to a test. He asked them: “What is the most important thing about man? If you don’t answer correctly, you’ll fall dead.” Four of the five all studied the ones before them, but still fell dead. The fifth said the most important to realize is that we don’t learn. He lived.

You meditate for a while. You feel good about yourself so you take a break. Then you start to feel bad about yourself again, and start over. It is hard to change. We don’t learn easily.

Lola recounts the tale in the Mahabharata of the Pandava Brothers.

As Gurdjieff says, we are trapped in our habit patterns. The key is to realize you are repeating automatically. In order to stop, just watch yourself. Don’t think about it. Just watch. And look to change.

Notice how you are when you are alone. Then when you realize someone is watching, see how quickly you change. Why?

We need to move into the Unconditioned. From the. Known, the Conditioned, to the Unknown, the Unconditioned.

That’s why we use a Koan. It’s like a pebble dropped in us to exhaust our thinking, to move out of the Known into the Unknown. The Koan stays in us and continues to work on our psyches.

There are three movements: the first, the Known to the Known, is thinking.Second is the Known to the Unknown, which represents a moment of consciousness. And the third is the Unknown to the Unknown, which is supra-consciousness.

The other seed in us is Prajna, or wisdom. It is through Prajna that we move to the Unconditioned. Prajna is disrupted. Moving from the grasping to the no-grasping, and Emptiness, Non-Discrimination.

A koan from Pang: How does the ocean, which has no muscles or bones, hold up a 10,000 pound ship? Nov 6, 1988