Talks by Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee

This is a series of newly digitized talks by spiritual teacher, Lola McDowell Lee, spanning two decades—from the early Seventies through the Nineties. Lola was a Zen Roshi whose Rinzai lineage included Doctor Henry Platov and renowned Zen master, Shigetsu Sasaki. Lola was a religious scholar as well as an ordained Christian minister. While the talks are focused mainly on Zen and Buddhism, Lola drew on many spiritual traditions—including those of Jesus, Plato, Lao-Tzu, the Hindu Vedas, Meister Eckhart and Gurdjieff. If you find Lola’s talks valuable, more will be posted in days to come. RSSVERIFY

Talks by Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee is a education podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 143 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Talks by Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, a education show with 143 episodes published.

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  Episode #141

  The Silent Night, the Holy Night Within. Delivered December, 1986

  Aug 14, 202647 minS4

  Zen Roshi and Christian minister, Lola McDowell Lee, illustrates the many harmonies between Eastern spiritual practices and Western mystical traditions. Lola looks at the traditional nativity story and Christian parables and urges us to look beyond literal interpretations to uncover deeply transformative inner meanings within scripture. She introduces the concept of the "subsistence of existence," the invisible ground or foundation of all being. While humans live outwardly, navigating the world through the cortex of the brain and accumulated societal roles, there remains a deeper, unspoken root consciousness. Maturing spiritually requires shifting our point of view, evolving beyond the literal, childlike understanding of parables to form an internal realization of the divine power that operates through us. We are like a seed that must break open and undergo a death in order to truly grow into what it is destined to be. She draws on the teachings of Meister Eckhart and St. Paul. To be "born of the Father," one must cultivate a spiritual hunger, embarking on a difficult journey of letting go of past conditioning, attachments, and sensory distractions. Lola explores the notion of Bethlehem as not just an historical town but as a symbol of the boundless kingdom of God within each of us. In this metaphor, the manger is the resting place of our animal instincts. It is within this internal, sacred space that a divine procreative force gives birth to the newborn king within us. She likens the three wise men bringing gifts to the unfolding of wisdom, understanding, and bliss that accompanies this internal spiritual awakening. Lola suggests a practice of meditation and via negativa —the negative way or neti neti . Because human consciousness is habitually fragmented across the five senses, we need to purposefully silence the memory, and arrive at a state of pure unknowing, making room for the divine light. St. Augustine warned against the tragic irony of searching endlessly in the external world for a truth that only exists within. Lola distinguishes between seeing, which is an outward action, and true listening, which draws us inward into profound stillness. Like the carol "Silent Night," true spiritual birth happens only in this reverent inner silence, where the unencumbered soul can finally hear the secret, transformative word of the divine. Delivered December 1986

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  Talks by Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee

  The Tao of Ordinary Being. Delivered August 24, 1986

  Aug 6, 202647 min

  The Taoist approach to existence is much different from our usual rigid, goal-oriented conditioning. Lin-Li, a man nearly a hundred years old, lives in profound simplicity. To many, his life seems marked by poverty, loneliness, and the absence of family, a life of failure. Yet to others’ surprise, Lin-Li maintains an inexplicable happiness. He sings while laboring for meager grains in the fields. Lin-Li highlights a critical divide between the Confucian quest for status, behavioral perfection, and learning, and the Taoist path, which champions unlearning. Human misery is largely rooted in our desperate, ego-driven attempt to make sense of the world through our intellects rather than direct experience. We believe that life is a series of problems to be solved or a set of goals to be attained, but in doing so, we bypass the very essence of being. We have a tendency to picture the unknown and then mistake these mental constructs for reality. These inferences are barriers of our own making. By clinging to these concepts, we deceive ourselves into believing we possess knowledge that we do not actually have. Lola emphasizes the necessity of radical honesty in our self-inquiry. The most liberating step one can take is to sincerely admit, "I don't know." When we stop trying to maintain a facade of understanding, we move closer to the immeasurable reality of existence. Only then can we begin to see what is already present, what was there before our birth, and what will remain after our departure. Lola makes a distinction between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness is framed as a symptom of a mind that is constantly reaching outward to fill a perceived void with external validation, circumstances, or relationships. In contrast, aloneness is a beautiful, luminous state of solitude where one is entirely self-contained. The metaphor of an individual’s internal wedding: the individual (the bride) waiting for the true self (the bridegroom). This is not an external event to be awaited, but a profound internal transformation. By setting aside the ego and embracing the pathless path, one moves into harmony with existence itself. We must step out of the, "as if we know" mentality and into a more direct, unconditioned, and deeply peaceful experience of living. Delivered August 24, 1986

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  Episode #139

  Freedom from preferences.  Delivered Aug 31, 1986

  Jul 25, 202653 minS4

  Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores our tendency to confuse changes in external conditions with genuine inner liberation. Lola recounts the classic Taoist parable by Chuang Tzu, "Three in the Morning," about a monkey trainer whose monkeys revolted. The wise individual perceives both sides of dualism without partiality, viewing all phenomena in the unifying light of the Tao. Why are we so easily tricked by these superficial arrangements? Lola examines the "monkeyish" mind. For most of us, the mind leaps wildly from thought to thought. She compares this to a person holding a cracker in a river: thoughts flow through us continuously, and when one is partial to a specific thought, associated ideas and memories rush in like hungry fish, attaching themselves to it until the mental energy dissipates. This mechanical cycle, repeated countless times daily, makes up our subjective worldview—a reality rooted entirely in discrimination (like vs. dislike, pleasure vs. pain). Lola explains that as self-consciousness emerges from the unconscious in early development, a sharp divide is created between the observer and the observed. This separation conceals a third factor—a foundational, unexamined state of ignorance. Far from meaning stupidity, this spiritual ignorance refers to acting without direct knowledge, or noesis . Trapped within this subject-object dichotomy, human beings mistake relative dualities for absolutes. Spiritual understanding recognizes that all dualities are relative and grounded in a singular, non-dual source—whether designated as God in Christian theology, the Tao in Chinese philosophy, or Emptiness in Zen. Lola clarifies the concept of karma. Drawing from its Sanskrit root kri (meaning "to act"), she equates karma with samskara —the condition of living under the domination of bodily sensations and psychological conditioning. Most human beings live under the delusion that they are independent, free-willed agents. In reality, however, they are managed by their sensory reactions and emotional reflexes, swept about like leaves in the wind. When people attempt to "purify their karma"—they remain caught in the same monkeyish trap of manipulating details, neglecting the root cause of their suffering. Lola illustrates the futility of theoretical fixes the story of an abstract-minded doctor who observed a pneumonia-stricken tailor recover after eating 32 potato pancakes. When the doctor prescribed the exact same regimen to a dying shoemaker, the shoemaker died, prompting the doctor to foolishly note that potato pancakes cure tailors but kill shoemakers. This rigid approach to life ignores the nature of things. True transformation requires addressing the interior ground of consciousness. The resolution to this human dilemma lies in the practice of Zazen, silent meditation and cultivation of non-dual awareness. By sitting in total stillness, the gushing fountain of reactive thoughts and feelings settles, giving rise to subjective perception—seeing with the eye of the mind. In this state of quietude, the illusion of dualism vanishes. Transcendence is not an escape. It’s the full integration of the absolute and the relative. When a person acts out of this realization, daily activities like walking or eating lose their ego-centered division (foot vs. floor, subject vs. object) and become total, seamless expressions of life. The Perfect Way requires freedom from preferences. When the mind moves serenely alongside the 10,000 things without taking sides, it abides in an undisturbed peace that transcends joy and sorrow. Delivered Aug 31, 1986

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  Episode #136

  The Trap of Words - Delivered August 3, 1986

  Jun 27, 202644 minS4

  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

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  Episode #135

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

  Jun 12, 202650 minS4

  (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

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