{"podcast":{"title":"Talks by Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee","slug":"talks-by-zen-roshi-lola-mcdowell-lee-6423598","podcast_index_feed_id":6423598,"rss_url":"https://media.rss.com/ing-publishing/feed.xml","website_url":"https://rss.com/podcasts/ing-publishing","image_url":"https://media.rss.com/ing-publishing/20230817_120814_85fafd61824aa95fd155cb2b0c194620.jpg","author":"I & A Publishing","episode_count":141,"summary":"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","last_synced_at":"2026-07-26T18:18:31.447349+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talks-by-zen-roshi-lola-mcdowell-lee-6423598"},"episode":{"title":"The Middle Way—between the world of appearance and the inner world of consciousness. Aug 29, 1987","slug":"the-middle-way-between-the-world-of-appearance-and-the-inner-world-of-consciousness-aug-29-1987","published_at":"2025-12-08T20:34:32+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talks-by-zen-roshi-lola-mcdowell-lee-6423598/the-middle-way-between-the-world-of-appearance-and-the-inner-world-of-consciousness-aug-29-1987","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talks-by-zen-roshi-lola-mcdowell-lee-6423598","url":"https://rss.com/podcasts/ing-publishing/2369056","audio_url":"https://content.rss.com/episodes/214545/2369056/ing-publishing/2025_12_04_17_48_46_5d6da394-2cdd-4883-8aa8-79b7f5e54968.mp3","summary":"Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee draws on the Dhammapada to emphasize a core principle of spiritual success: vigilance, or watching. The fool is careless and enslaved by desire. The master has firm resolve. Man is the only creature on Earth with the ability to choose. Unlike animals and plants, whose lives are determined by nature, humans possess a mind that allows for conscious choice. Man is not born a true being but a becoming. He is a state of perpetual movement between opposing attitudes and emotional states. This becoming is marked by a continual search, an inner groping. Lola calls it “faith without an object.” This search for something greater raises the perennial philosophical question: Who are you? Lola discusses philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who calls man a “project\"—one who creates himself by his own effort. Man is born an opportunity, a possibility, who must become actual. The crucial action is making an aware choice , choosing one’s life with full consciousness, rather than simply letting decisions happen passively, out of convenience, desire, or external pressure. Also, not choosing is a choice. Lola discusses two schools of thought: the Essence-Central School, which holds that man is born with a ready-made essence that merely needs to unfold (like an acorn becoming an oak), and Existentialism, which maintains that man is born as pure existence , and his essence must be actively created . Lola recaps the core principles of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths: The First Truth is the fact of suffering ( dukkha ), which arises because life is constant change, and change can never satisfy the human desire for permanent pleasure. The Second Truth identifies the cause of suffering as selfish desire—a constant \"thirst\" or fire that only burns brighter the more it is fed.…","meta_description":"Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee draws on the Dhammapada to emphasize a core principle of spiritual success: vigilance, or watching. The fool is careless and…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3685,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/talks-by-zen-roshi-lola-mcdowell-lee-6423598/episodes/the-middle-way-between-the-world-of-appearance-and-the-inner-world-of-consciousness-aug-29-1987/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talks-by-zen-roshi-lola-mcdowell-lee-6423598/the-middle-way-between-the-world-of-appearance-and-the-inner-world-of-consciousness-aug-29-1987.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}