Here is one of a series of talks by spiritual
leader Lola McDowell Lee spanning two decades
from the early 70s through the 90s. Lola was
a Zen Roshi whose Rinzai lineage included Dr.
Henry Plutov 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. We have been doing
little things out of the Dhammapada, the path
to the Dharma as it is called. And it is the
instructions. that the Buddha gave for lay people,
as well as for the monks and the nuns. Most of
the instructions that he gave were for the monks,
for the nuns. And this particular one, the path
to the Dharma, he gave for lay people. There's
quite a bit to it. Some of it is rather repetitive.
But here we come to this thing now. As the fletcher
whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the
master directs his straying thoughts. Don't you?
Like a fish out of water, stranded on the shore,
Thoughts thrash and quiver, for how can they
shake off desire? They tremble. They are unsteady.
They wander at their will. It is good to control
them, and to master them brings happiness. But
how subtle they are. How elusive. The task is
to quiet them, and by ruling them, to find happiness.
With single -mindedness, the master quells his
thoughts. He ends their wandering, and seated
in the cave of the heart, he finds freedom. That's
kind of nice. We should have it typed up and
put it on a mirror and so you would see it every
morning and every evening just to remind you
that you are supposed to stop all this wandering
around in the head. You know, that doesn't go
anywhere. You're still in your head. Big place,
isn't it, Maui? And, you know, life... As we
know it and as the Buddha did say, life is a
struggle. We struggle. Why do we struggle? We
have many goals. That is, we have a lot of desires,
lots of wants, and we get the wants and the needs
mixed up. And we forget that the main goal of
life, if it is to have a goal, is freedom. And
this is not an economic freedom. That is, whereby
you have everything that you want, materially,
it doesn't mean that. I mean, look at some of
those teachers in the past who have been quite
poor. Little Hotai, you know. He was like a hobo
running around with his pack on his back. And
if you asked him a question, he would say, Penny,
please. Penny, please. Laugh. And it's not a
political freedom, you know, and it's not social
freedom. It is simply the freedom from this ego
eye. It's freedom from desire. For all the ego
is desire in its way. And the moment that this
ego eye drops, it comes down like a curtain.
The curtain falls from there down to there. Instead
of the curtain going up, this one falls down.
The moment it drops, it just drops away. That
moment we see what Immanuel Kant called the numinal
world, reality. The numinal aspect of this universe.
Usually we're caught up in the phenomenal aspect.
But the phenomenal aspect, you know, drops with
the ego. So we have now the reality. The Greek's
called the nous, the knowing universe. It's a
direct knowing. of the universe rather than coming
to us through our senses. And our sense data,
you know, our egocentricness, you know, is a
barrier between us and the reality. And because
of this barrier, which completely surrounds us,
we live in what we could call a confined dark
cell. Plato's version of men living in a cave
and the light filters in from over here someplace
and it creates all these shadows on the wall.
And man has become identified with these shadows
on the wall. Once in a while, you know, in this
world of shadows and images, you know, somebody
turns around. You need to turn around, huh? And
he sees light over there. And he walks over to
it. And he looks. And he looks. And he looks
from the mouth of this cave, you know. And all
of a sudden, you know, he thinks, my God, what
are we doing? And he steps out of the cave into
this brilliant sunlight. He is free of his chains.
Once in a while, it happens that there will be
one of these men that go or women that will go
back into the cave and try to tell the others.
He tells them, you know, turn around. Turn around.
Turn around. Look in the other direction. Turn
around. And you know what they do? They don't
listen, of course. They think he's crazy. And
very often, they kill him. Do not disturb my
world. I don't care how miserable my world is.
Just don't disturb me in it. Never mind this
turning around. I can see right here what's on
the wall. We have done such crazy things, just
to protect our point of view. Because you know
how we are, we think, every ego thinks it's the
center of the universe. Everything revolves around
me. And of course we're on this planet, you know,
and... So the planet becomes the center of the
universe. All the universe revolves around this
earth. And again the ego has put to death men
who have said, this isn't so. So when Saint Simeon
says, in our incredible, incomprehensible self
-deception, We think ourselves somebody, and
there's somebody important. Yeah? That's the
ego. And the minute you feel that, or you think
that, what about me? What about me? That isn't
you at all. It's the ego. We have desires. And
some of them have been with us almost as long
as we've been around. You know, as soon as the
ego begins to rise, we keep wanting, we start
wanting. And these old desires since the year
one, our year one, we keep projecting into the
future where we're going to be someday rewarded.
And so this present is only a little stepping
stone from a miserable past to a glorious future.
All is happiness and all is abundance. That will
surely be ours. Otherwise, you know, we have
suffered all this for nothing. We've suffered
all this for the simple reason we won't look.
We're so busy protecting our point of view. But
now say that the ego is dropped we try to do
something about it finally and the ego is dropped
and So the memories that we have are dropped
also and the desires are dropped also So now
what are you going to project into the future?
So if there's no ego, where are you? If there's
no ego, who are you? See, in that moment, and
I don't care how a split second it might be,
in that moment of non -ego, there is no identification.
And if there's no identification, you're nobody.
You're not somebody important. You're nobody.
And when you are nobody, then there is this vast,
tremendous silence. And your thought processes
And your identification with them for that moment
is non -existing. And that silence, you know,
it comes again and again. And finally, instead
of being just, you know, and there it's gone
again. We come to know that it has such depth.
And it is... It is such a width, you know, immeasurable.
It is all including. And it is immediate. And
in its immediacy, it is immediate, holy. I mean,
it instills in one what one could call holy awe.
which we usually say, reverence. Now, this whole
world, you know, we look out here and it's a
garden. But, you know, downtown Los Angeles,
it's not very garden -like. But we include that.
whole world, no matter where you go, this whole
of nature is a garden of Eden. And the garden
of Eden, the garden, is of itself content. It
is full of peace. It is beyond imagining this
peace of this garden. And it is they tell us
in the Judeo -Christian tradition that it is
out of this garden that we fell. And it is also
said that when we fell out of this garden state,
you know, we became self -conscious. And this
tradition, this story, this myth, you know...
is told in various forms in all the different
cultures, but all pointing to a non -ego state
prior to. And it points to the state of the ego
now and the succeeding non -ego state later on
upon achieving, you know, getting back into the
garden. Cherubims with a sword and a fire. You
got to do right. That's Genesis. The non -ego
consciousness prior to preceding this consciousness
state now. And the non -ego state prior to is
very different than the non -ego state that finally
comes about. In some ways similar, in some ways
not. In the non -ego state prior to, we were
very ignorant. In the non -ego state that is
to come, here we are aware. There's a difference,
huh? and without an ego, you know, then the garden
is light and it's joy and here is this contentment
and it's unpolluted, it's uncontaminated, you
know, it's innocent. And there is in it a wonder
and a reverence and a majesty and a dignity.
And in the Kabbalistic system it is called splendor.
We're not very splendiferous in our ego states.
We're self -conscious and we keep ourselves as
separate entities. We are islands, all well -defined.
And because of that we're confined. because definitions
confine. This is the prison wall, our definitions.
Now, the Buddha, you know, he had many hundreds
of disciples, monks, 1 ,500 or so, and one of
them was called Malankya, Malankyaputra was a
scholar. He was very intellectual. He could reason.
But this man became so frustrated while he was
in this Buddhist sangha because there were certain
things that had not been explained to him, to
his satisfaction. So he went to see this Buddha
and he wanted to confront him with his problem
So he comes and he bears his shoulder and he
kneels in front of him and he says Blessed one,
you know the Tathagata he's the Tathagata he
is thusly come come From whence cometh thou so
they call it thusly come And he says to him there
are theories which you have left unexplained,"
he says to his teacher. And they have to do with
whether the world is eternal or not, whether
it is finite or not, whether the soul and the
body are one or different, whether a person who
has attained nirvana exists after death or does
not. The fact that the Blessed One has not explained
these matters neither pleases me nor suits me.
If the Blessed One will not explain this to me,
I will give up my spiritual discipline and return
to the life of a layman. The Buddha in his kindness
didn't say, well pack up your gear and go. Instead
he says, malunkia pats putra, when you took to
the spiritual life, did I ever promise you that
I would answer these questions? No, Blessed One,
you never did. Why do you think that is? Well,
Blessed One, I haven't the slightest idea. I
haven't the foggiest notion. Suppose, malunkya
putra, that a man has been wounded by a poison
arrow. His friends and his family are there with
him and they're about to send somebody for the
doctor. Wait, he says, wait a minute, wait a
minute now. I will not let this arrow be removed
until I have learned the cast of the man who
shot me. I have to know how tall he is, what
family he comes from, where they live, what kind
of wood his bow is made of, what fletcher made
his arrows, and when I know these things, you
can't proceed to take the arrow out. And then
you can give me the antidote for the poison.
What would you think of such a man? Hmm? Well,
he would be a fool, replies his disciple. You
know, and his little shame face now, you know.
All of the questions that this man is asking
has nothing to do with getting the arrow out.
He could die before these answers, these questions
were answered. Ah, ah. Similarly, I do not teach
whether the world is eternal or not eternal,
whether it is finite or not, whether the soul
and the body are the same or different, whether
a person who has attained nirvana exists after
death or not, or whether perhaps he both exists
and does not exist, or whether he exists nor
does not. I teach how to remove the arrow. The
arrow is the basis of suffering. It is its origin
and it is its end. So then another disciple,
because there's usually several seated around,
parked around, you know, and another disciple
then pipes up and he says, These are matters,
perhaps, which the Blessed One himself has not
cared to know. And to this the Buddha didn't
respond immediately. But then he smiled and he
grabbed up the tree under which he was sitting.
He grabbed a handful of leaves from one of the
branches. And he says, what do you think? Are
there more leaves in my hand or on the tree?
Well, says this disciple, Blessed One, you know
that your handful is only a small part of what
remains on those branches. Who can count the
leaves of the Shimshapa tree? What I know, this
Buddha said, is like the leaves on the tree.
What I teach is only a small part. but I offer
it with an open hand. What do I teach? How to
remove the arrow. What do I not teach? What is
fascinating to discuss? That which divides people
against each other, but has no bearing on putting
an end to the sorrow. What do I teach? Only that
it is necessary to take you to the other shore.
You know, it comes with this koi parada. Anyone
for the other shore? Koi parada. That's what
I teach, he said. So as an archer, aims his arrow.
The wise aim their restless thoughts. Hard to
aim. Hard to restrain. And so you sit for meditation.
When you sit for meditation, you do have an opportunity
to look, you know, to observe yourself. Are your
thoughts directing you, or are you directing
your thoughts? I think that's a simple answer,
huh? Who bids the mind to think? Do your thoughts
go hither and thither? And then do you become
lost in them? Do they make suggestions to you?
Do they fascinate you? Who is the master? Where
is this master? There is a Tibetan parable. It's
a little story I've told before. But it shows
very well what goes on with us. There was in
Tibet a man who served his master for many, many,
many years. And this service was not pure. The
service was given with a motivation. This attendant
was motivated by something. He wanted something.
He wanted some secret from this master. He had
heard that the master had a secret. And with
this hidden desire, he served. But at the same
time, you know, he is serving a master and so
he's afraid to say anything really about this
thing. You know, he just hopes he's gonna stumble
on it someday. And at the same time, this master
is continuously watching him. He's waiting for
the motivation to make itself known. I mean,
of course, he knows it's there. You know, it's
got to spring up and come to light of its own
accord. So one day, this master finally says
to him though, it is better that you speak your
mind. Because I am always seeing this motive
in your service. You do not serve out of love.
And the service, you know, is not necessarily
for the master, it is for the master within you.
So that you serve with love. and that's why you
serve the Master. So, but in yours I see no love
and I see no humility. Your service is a kind
of a bribery. So would you please just be plain,
just be factual. What do you want? Oh, and like
a fish leaping to a fly out of the water, you
know how they do, this man says, I want the secret
of doing miracles. then why have you wasted my
time for so long? You could have said that the
very first day. You could have saved yourself
a lot of misery. And me too, for that matter.
It's difficult to be around those who have ulterior
motives. It's ugly for them to deal with, and
it's ugly for me to look at. It's just ugly.
So why didn't you say something? The secret is
so simple. Oh, it is so simple, you know. And
this is it. And he took a piece of paper and
he wrote something on it. Three little lines.
I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in
the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha. And
he hands the paper to this servant and says you
take this with you everywhere. But you repeat
it five times. Only five times every day. No
more. No less. But the paper stays with you all
the time. Very simple process. But there's one
condition. Why are you repeating it? You take
a bath and you close the door and you sit silently
and you are repeating it. Please do not think
of monkeys. Nasty teacher, huh? And his servant
says, what nonsense are you talking about? Why
should I remember monkeys? I never think of monkeys.
You know, all my life I've never thought about
monkeys. Well, that's up to you. If you're going
to think about monkeys or not think about monkeys,
it's up to you. I just tell you the conditions.
Don't think about monkeys. You've never remembered
monkeys so far, so good. Now you go home, never
come back. You have the secret, you know the
conditions, fulfill the conditions, and you will
have all these miracles at your fingertips. You
know, all these powers. You can do what you want.
You can fly in the sky, you can read people's
thoughts, you can materialize things, and so
on and so forth. Et cetera. And finally, I got
another one. E -A -C, Susi Belanti. And then
we come again to et cetera, et cetera, and so
on. Right, et cetera. Most languages is et cetera.
Anyway, this man, you know, he's got everything
now on this piece of paper. And he rushes away,
he's going to go home. He didn't even thank the
master. That's how greed functions. It doesn't
know thankfulness. It doesn't know gratitude.
You know, it's completely unaware of gratitude.
It never even stumbles over it. Because greed
is a thief. Thieves don't thank, they take. Anyway,
the man's rushing home and he's already kind
of puzzled. You know, he's only gone two blocks
and already the monkeys are appearing in his
head. All kinds of monkeys. Small ones, large
ones, red mouth ones, black mouth ones. And by
the time he got home, he couldn't think of anything
but monkeys. And they were getting larger. And
they were crowding in there, more and more and
more and more, bigger crowd. And he went in the
bathroom and he took a bath. But the monkeys
wouldn't leave him. And he was beginning to get
a little suspicious that they were not going
to leave him. He hadn't even said the prayer
yet. And here are all these monkeys. He was only
simply preparing. And he closed the door. And
the room was full of monkeys. And he was so crowded
in there with the monkeys, he almost didn't have
any room for himself. So he closed his eyes.
And there were monkeys. He opened his eyes and
there were monkeys. He couldn't believe what
was happening. All these monkeys. And all night
he tried. He got up and he'd take a bath, and
there were too many monkeys. He couldn't repeat
the prayer. He'd go back to bed. And the bed
was full of monkeys. He'd get up and take a bath,
get ready to say the prayer, and it was all full
of monkeys. So the next morning, early, he went
to the master, and he returned the paper, and
he said, keep it. It's driving me crazy. I don't
want to do any miracles. Just help me get rid
of the monkeys! And we laugh, huh? At whom are
you laughing? Try it someday. Go take a bath,
close the door, and then repeat five times after
you've had your bath. I take refuge in the Buddha.
I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in
the Sangha. Yeah. Hopefully no monkeys. Maybe
you'll have squirrels instead. And now a great
deal... of what we think of what we call thinking
is caused by and is based on our emotions. And
if you do not observe, if you do not ever observe
what you think, you will never come to know that
your thinking is based on your emotions. And
if you can't get that far, what in the world
are you going to do with yourself? And of course,
this is always some more than others. I mean,
there is no state we can say that's normal. Now
and again, we may reason to a higher purpose.
And again, some more than others. And we come
to know that there are qualities in man. What
in Sanskrit are called gunas. And we have the
tamasic, and the rajasic, and the sattvic gunas.
And the tamasic are those inert, lazy qualities
in us. And then the sattvic, of course, are these
very fine, high frequency. qualities, gunas.
And again, some more and some less. And with
this sattvic guna, this fine frequency, there
comes a sensitivity and there comes a love of
beauty and there is a sensitivity for texture,
for the taste and the flow of life that is around
us. and for this silence in which we can hear
the crow calling in an empty sky or the screeching
of a squirrel. There are values we give to life.
Life itself doesn't hold values. We give values
to life. And we call them aesthetic. These sattvic
gunas. To look for beauty. The aesthetic beauty
of something. And there is aesthetic color. And
there is music in the heart. There's a certain
harmony within. This is aesthetic. We put it
under this label. We can and we do at times exist
as a noise and you would be surprised if you
were listening to yourself how it rattles around
and means nothing And maybe how you are fooling
yourself, huh? When we exist as a noise So we
can exist as a noise or we can exist as a temple
in which there is this What we could call a sacred
silence. You know, to be a poet of life, to be
an artist of life, it needs an inner approach.
It's not just a matter of listening to some music
because it is called good and it is called good
because it's classical and then to compare this
good music to some modern music which we say
then is bad. That's silly. You know, for instance,
you know, the Beatles songs. They played them
at Carnegie Hall. They changed the tempo a little
bit. And not the notes, but the way they were
played. And it was hailed as genius, good classical
music. And Helen Keller, you know, blind and
deaf and dumb. She would touch water and feel
it. She would feel the flow of it. She would
feel its coldness. She would feel its wetness.
We look at water and oh yeah, it's water. We
don't feel it. She would feel the texture of
a rock, you know, and it would convey to her
something. Someday when you're all alone, You
close your eyes and you just hold a rock and
you feel it, you touch it. And you feel as if
you had, you feel it as if you only had hands.
That was your communication with it, your hands.
You use the hands in place of an eye. After all,
you had the hand long before you had an eye.
We've just buried some of these things. Bring
them out again, you know, too. And we have been
given great gifts. We have been given the great
ideas of philosophers of all the ages. The old
sense of philosophy. which simply means the love
of wisdom. It's missing nowadays, they say. It
has become rather like religion has today, morals
and ethics. There are those like Bloom and Needleman
and our good friend Houston Smith, and men of
that caliber. They speak of our loss. Because
to them, Philosophy presents great ideas that
point to a process in us. The ideas that point
to a potential in us. Now philosophy, the ideas,
do not transform us. It points to, but for the
transforming we need what is called the noesis.
The noetic quality, the noetic quality in us
is a transforming philosophy points to it. Now
Plato, and I talked about him in the beginning
a little bit, but none is going, and speaking
of aesthetics, Plato, he presents his aesthetics
as the role of art and education. Art and education
in the development of man. And his ideas are
very difficult for most modern people to understand.
They don't accept them. For Socrates says, we
must carefully regulate the sort of art that
is allowed in our city. and the hue and the cry
that rises to the very heavens when people hear
that. And he goes on to say, the proper development
of man depends on the influence of art, especially
music and story. So he says then that the state,
the city, the state, can allow only a specific
kind of art. All others must be banned. And you
know, hackles rise. This is censorship. This
is offensive. Right? I know you. Right on, huh?
Plato, this is all comes about in his thing of
the Republic. And now he entitles this thing
the Republic. And it has a secondary title. It
is called the conquest of self. Plato is not
necessarily speaking about government out there.
He is speaking of you. He is speaking of this
state that is ruled by a philosopher king. Have
you ever read Plato with yourself in mind that
this was never projected out on any kind of government
except what was in here? There is a philosopher
king in here, huh? And all the other hierarchy,
he says. Who is your philosopher king? Do you
have one? Are you a state without a leader? See,
and the role of the guardians. These are the
factors which guard this king, and they guard
the people. And these guardians, he says, should
not be allowed so much imitation. And when he
speaks of the strength and the courage of the
warriors, he is speaking of a specific inner
energy that obeys and it struggles to carry out
a vision of truth in us even though we do not
know it. And it is called will. It is known.
to the philosopher Qing, but the ego doesn't
know it. And when he speaks of laborers and artisans
and merchants, he is speaking of our desires
and our appetites. And with the help of the guardians,
you know, our desires can submit to wisdom, and
they can strive for higher perception. Certainly,
nobody really thinks, sincerely, that we are
beyond a censorship of art and music in ourselves.
No. It is, after all, in dealing with ourselves
and trying this conquest of self, it is very
simply what he is saying, discipline yourself.
And who is above discipline? Without discipline,
How in the name of all that's holy are you ever
going to know that which is holy? Discipline
is so necessary. Did you train a child, you know,
that it doesn't, a child learns by imitation,
present to it what is good for it to imitate?
This is what he's saying. He says, look how many
patterns of feelings that we have adopted automatically.
We were young. We imitate our parents, we imitate
our friends, we imitate our teachers, you know,
we had the TV stars and the singers on the TV
and so on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera again.
We imitate. And I think then, you know, of the
movies that I saw when I was very, very young.
You know, like four. Perils of Pauline. Lone
Chaney and the Phantom of the Opera? Yeah. And
then you turn around from that, and I can remember
watching, what was it? Remarks, they did a thing,
Lou Ayers was in it. And they did a movie on,
it was on World War I. I sobbed all the way through
it. I just sobbed all the way through the thing.
This is Remarque. Who? No, you're thinking of
Hemingway. I'm talking about Remarque. Eric Remarque.
Fall Quiet on the Western Front. They've made
a sequel to it, which I didn't see, but that
first one with Lou Ayers. You know, a little
four or five year old kid sitting watching this
and this guy reaches for a butterfly and he's
shot. Boy, I couldn't stand it. Anyway, but I
look at those things and these emotions, these
almost pure emotions that were aroused, the fear
of that Pauline was going to get hurt. And that
the fear that this lone Cheney's swinging through
this opera house, you know. And then you look
at the movies today with all the rape and the
pillage and... You know, it's a big difference
of what was then and what is now. What emotions
do they rise to what we see today in children
three and four? What do they encourage in us?
You know, feelings. They're a tool to be used.
Bob said that last Sunday didn't we yes he did
we can use them to overcome fears You know there's
the old saying esoteric saying you feel your
way you don't think your way you feel your way
Thinking isn't going to accomplish it Because
we block ourselves from ourselves with our emotions,
and we wonder what's wrong. What's wrong with
me? And the art that Plato talks about, of course,
is everywhere. Everywhere. We're surrounded by
it. You don't have to go to a museum and look
at a picture. Music is something we always hear.
We go downtown, go to the mall, it's playing,
there's music. It's in the stores, it's in the
elevators, it's in the offices, you make a phone
call, you put on hold, here comes the music.
You sit on an airplane and here comes the music.
Art. And all the things we handle every day.
Someone designed them all. That's art. All of
this impinges on us all day long. Don't you ever
wonder what thoughts and what desires are truly
your own? They're all caused by all this stuff
around us, you know? Well, of course, we got
sex and we got hunger. And when you're tired,
you sleep. Okay, that's you. The rest of it is
all impinged upon us. Art, says Plato, is an
immense power in our lives. Especially when we
are young. And also especially when something
in us is young and growing. And are you not young
and growing? Art has power. It fixes patterns
of feeling. What sort of emotions are evoked
and supported by the art that surrounds us? In
your house, in your closets, in your cupboards,
in your yards, where you work, where you go to
school. You know, a man gets up and he gets ready
to go to work, he gets dressed, he goes over
and he picks up a tie and he says, I'll wear
this today. Why? Oh, he says, oh, it makes me
feel good. Why? Hmm? What emotion has been aroused?
See, a woman says, oh, this is the blouse I'm
gonna wear today. Why? Hmm? What value? Have
you ever examined this in yourself? You know...
There is, in the traditions of India, you know,
there is a samka yoga upon which most everything,
all the other traditions are based. And samka
yoga goes into this in very great detail. What's
going on here? You know, not just surface. What's
going on here? And of course we know there are
feelings that are less desirable than others.
and we have not much good to say about hatred
or self -pity or sentimentality or fear, no.
But if we really begin to look at the art that
surrounds us and our responses to it, which are
certainly more important than the art itself,
our responses to it, why we respond the way we
do, then we can begin to know that that art deals
precisely with these emotions, fear. Hatred,
self -pity, sentimentality. How many dishes won't
I throw away because I'm sentimental about them?
Stupid. Hmm? Sure. Habits. How are you going
to break them unless you look? And we could experiment
a little bit, too, in all kinds of experiments
today. When you're at the theater, look and see,
during the thing, what kind of... feelings arise.
When you're watching TV, you know, you won't
be able to stick with the story long if you're
watching yourself. Or we could go to a concert
and what does the music do to us? In front of
any form of art, which means no matter where
you turn, huh? I mean, you look at that. You
look at that. Hmm? Something is responding. Some
sort of emotion is coming up. And mostly, we
ignore it. Totally. Totally. You know, if the...
And you look at that, and what you're interested
in, immediately, is yourself. We should be. There's
a movie on TV, and maybe it's about some moral
issue, and you may find that the emotions you
have are anger, or self -righteousness. Oh, I
need to have revenge here now. Vengeance, you
know. From whence cometh this? Many people, excuse
me, are surprised to find out how difficult it
is to know exactly what emotions they experience
in front of art. They don't know. They stand
there, huh? habitually they have covered these
feelings and covered them and covered them until
it's such a habit that they don't know how to
get out of them anymore. Just to experiment with
oneself and discover some emotions about ourselves
is quite enough to bring home Plato's point about
the unrecognized influence in art. You know that
for a long time it has been so Working with a
teacher, very often a teacher will say, you can't
read anymore. You got to get a chance to get
rid of all of this stuff. Or you can read only
such and such and such a book. You can't go to
the movies anymore. You can't watch the television
anymore. You want to get serious about this thing?
Maybe not. Maybe someday we can come to a point
where we begin to think about this sea of emotional
influences. that we swim around in. So you sit
for meditation, so that this philosopher king
can be born, so that it rises. When you sit,
you drop everything that does not pertain to
that precise situation. and you govern yourself
accordingly through the days to that precise
situation the philosopher came. Art, he says,
the formative influence on the development of
any given one. That's you and you and you and
me. The influence. And so, you know, we've lived
a certain number of years and it has all concretized
and solidified and become congealed in us. And
we see that this has happened and we want to
get rid of it in an instant. Lots of luck, folks.
All we can do is just sit and, you know, get
those thoughts, keep those thoughts from straying.
You know, become single -minded. And you sit,
and you sit some more. And when you see this
influence, and this sitting, and when they coincide,
all of a sudden it penetrates through. And suddenly
you meet yourself. To be so trained, and they
call it thusly trained. thusly disciplined from
early on, that the process and its culmination,
which to Buddha would be enlightenment and Christianity
would be becoming the everlasting light, and
in Zen it would be Satori, the culmination, but
the process would be the base, would be the foundation
of education. Wouldn't that be terrific? And
you know what Plato said we should study first,
if this were the case? Mathematics. It's pure.
You see, there's no emotions in it. It's pure.
And then would come geometry, because this is
now pure idea. And then would come gymnastics.
And then would come music, and then would come
story. And the stories then, because it comes
after all of this, would no longer be live. And
of course, by this time we're 35. Yeah. But anyway,
these ideas, and they are great ideas of these
philosophers, of all the ages, they are ours.
But, you know, why are they so misunderstood?
A really great idea is concerned with one thing
and it says, go within. It points to where you
can take it. And because you have this no -edit
quality, you can transform single -mindedly and
you will be free. Hmm? Yeah, that's Plato's conquest
of the self. The republic. Right? Sorry, folks.
I get it. I like these. If you find Lola's talks
valuable, more will be posted in weeks to come.