{"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 Trap of Words - Delivered August 3, 1986","slug":"the-trap-of-words-delivered-august-3-1986","published_at":"2026-06-27T19:05:38+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talks-by-zen-roshi-lola-mcdowell-lee-6423598/the-trap-of-words-delivered-august-3-1986","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talks-by-zen-roshi-lola-mcdowell-lee-6423598","url":"https://rss.com/podcasts/ing-publishing/2945731","audio_url":"https://content.rss.com/episodes/214545/2945731/ing-publishing/2026_06_26_15_17_37_339737a7-25ef-409a-9121-1c8aa39655b4.mp3","summary":"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 unb…","meta_description":"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 forgott…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2633,"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-trap-of-words-delivered-august-3-1986/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-trap-of-words-delivered-august-3-1986.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}