Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explores the concept of freedom through the conquest of self.

Per the Dhammapada, we should direct straying thoughts. The path to happiness is through quieting these elusive thoughts with single-mindedness, which brings freedom.

We struggle from confusing wants and needs and forgetting the primary goal: freedom.

This freedom is not worldly (economic, political, or social). It’s freedom from the ego. When the ego drops, it’s like a curtain falling, revealing the reality. This is the noumenal world described by philosopher Immanuel Kant.

We are caught up primarily in the phenomenal aspect of life, seeing the world through the lens of egocentricity, which acts as a barrier to our understanding reality itself.

Lola shares Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which characters a ...