About this episode

Lola McDowell Lee explores the interplay between ego, consciousness, and the spiritual path through the lens of Taoist, Buddhist, and Christian traditions.

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee explores the interplay between ego, consciousness, and the spiritual path, drawing on Taoist, Buddhist, and Christian traditions. She explores the Taoist message of flowing with existence, free from effort or resistance. By aligning oneself with the totality of life, one can move beyond fear and obstruction. Lola recounts the biblical narrative of Adam and Eve and the loss of innocence and the rise of the ego. If the Garden of Eden is a state of unconditioned innocence, then the Fall represents the emergence of self-consciousness, discrimination, and dualistic thinking. Naming things acts as a barrier between humans and direct experience. By labeling the world, we create an illusion of knowledge, often losing sight of the underlying reality that exists beyond these labels. One needs to move past this reliance on names and differentiation, which keeps us trapped in our egos. She explains how the practice of the Zen koan is not to find rational answers but to exhaust the thinking mind. Through persistent meditation, the practitioner eventually reaches a point of mental fatigue, where language and dualistic logic dissolve, allowing for a non-linguistic…

People in this episode

Host: Lola McDowell Lee

Topics covered

• spirituality
• ego
• consciousness
• Taoism
• Christianity
• Zen
• meditation

Keywords

• ego
• consciousness
• spiritual path
• Taoism
• Christianity
• Zen
• meditation
• Garden of Eden
• self-consciousness
• duality

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Taoism, Christianity, Zen, Buddhism

Books & works: Garden of Eden

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