Episode notes
Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores the possible meanings of several Buddhist and Christian concepts:
• Pranyaparamita, or “the perfection of transcendental wisdom.”
• Sunyata, or the emptiness that emptiness constitutes ultimate reality. Not adding, but taking away.
• Avataṃsaka Sūtra, which comprehensively describes the powers of meditation and emptiness.
• Anapanasati - awareness of that before you, of your breath.
• Or when Jesus says to Nicodemus: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Your ego must be reduced to ashes. And emptiness remains.
• Thomas à Kempis, a German-Dutch Augustinian monk, wrote in the Imitation of Christ a strange teaching to “Truly to know and despise self.” But that is not to hate oneself, but one’s obsession ...