What It Takes to Believe You’re Good Enough | Lodro Rinzler

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Episode Transcript:

Lodro Rinzler 00:00:00  We are really not comfortable having space in our life anymore. If there is a gap, we reach for that phone and we fill it one way or another. A dating app? A television show. Whatever it is, it’s like it’s all right there. It’s crazy. And we don’t have a preference to put that behind you and say, I can just be here.

Chris Forbes 00:00:26  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:11  Lodro Rinzler carried guilt about a high school breakup for years. He’d ended things badly, he was sure of it. And when he finally tracked her down on Facebook and apologized, she said, I don’t remember it that way at all. It’s a small story, but Lodra uses it to make a point that runs through his whole new book. Most of what we hold against ourselves is either not true or not as big as we’ve made it. The book is called You Are Good Enough. You are Enough. This conversation is about what it actually takes to believe that I’m Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed Lodro. Welcome back.

Lodro Rinzler 00:01:48  Thanks so much for having me back. I was recently reading your book. As I’m sure everyone in the world is currently doing and, I thought it was so sweet that you remembered our early time together on the show. A million years ago, you mentioned it in there. It was very sweet. So thank you for including me.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:06  Yeah, I do not have a good memory, but I remember in those early days, if you had a book, you were like a legend to me, right? You know, in this space. And I remember I emailed you because I’d seen your book. I can’t remember which one it was, but it was one of your early books, I think. And you said. Yes. And I remember telling my friend Chris, we got this guy Load Row Rinzler on this show. I was so I was so excited. So I appreciate.

Lodro Rinzler 00:02:29  Any of you. He said, I have no idea who that is.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:31  Which, of course he did. Of course he did. He still does. And you’ve been on, like four times. No, I don’t know how long you’ve been on. I’m kidding. But, yeah, those early guests were really meaningful to me, and you were one of them, so. Thank you.

Lodro Rinzler 00:02:43  Oh, I was so happy to do it. Yeah. And I am also happy to be here now and to celebrate you and and this incredible run that you’ve had on this show, but also this new book. And as we were talking about before we started recording, it’s just, you know, really cool to see how much is shifted and changed for you and how much you’re helping people.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:01  Well thank you. It has shifted and changed a lot, and I am so grateful for this podcast and all that’s meant in my life and all the people who support it. You and I are going to continue to talk here in a moment about your book, which is called You Are Good. You are enough. Free yourself from the trap of doubt and return to basic goodness. But before we do that, we will start in the way that we always have. And I will read you a parable that you’ve heard before and ask you what you think about it. In the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with her grandchild, and they say, in life there are two worlds inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent. They say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life, and in the work that you do.

Lodro Rinzler 00:04:02  Yeah, I was so tempted to go back and hear what my earlier answer was, and maybe I’ll do it after we spent some time together today, because I think it’s also like an interesting marker for how has my mind in life changed that I would come on. So the answer that’s coming up for me today is, you know, I feel like one of the things I am personally struggling with as a meditation teacher is talking to people about their mind and the fact that we can make choices with our mind that like, no one gets to decide which wolf we feed but us. Because I think a lot of people maybe since the pandemic, I think I’ve seen more of an uptick since then. They really identify with their anxiety or their fear or their anger or whatever it is, and they’re like, that’s just who I am. I am an anxious person. I’m a, you know, angry person.

Lodro Rinzler 00:04:55  I’ve just always been prone to anger. And they they don’t realize that that’s a wolf that they have been feeding. Yeah. As opposed to just who they are. Right. So I think that this is the big uphill battle that I find myself facing when I sit down and I teach people meditation online, in person, wherever I am. That the fact that we can actually choose which wolf to feed, you know. And obviously those are two choices there. But I always think about, like, every time we feed into the anxious story that comes up over the course of the day, we are feeding an anxious wolf, right? Like we are just refining those patterns. And every time we acknowledge, oh, I don’t have to do that, I can just be present in this moment. I don’t have to chase that story. We come back, we are feeding that wolf. And that’s all meditation is, frankly. And it doesn’t have to be anxiety specifically, but it’s everything. Yeah. It’s always it’s just us constantly making choices.

Lodro Rinzler 00:05:45  And meditation helps us learn to drop some of the stories that keep us locked in pain long enough to make the better choice.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:51  Do you think that’s changed? You’ve been teaching meditation a long time now. Do you see people more identified with emotional states as identity than they used to?

Lodro Rinzler 00:06:02  Yeah, I do. I was listening to a recent interview. Pema Chodron sat down at the New York Times and was interviewed by Ezra Klein. I shared it online the other day. And in the world that we live in. Of course, you know, I posted to Facebook. Two comments immediately popped up. One said, I love Pema Chodron. They said, f Ezra Klein. It’s like it’s like just two polar opposite ends of the spectrum. I was like, well, in conversation, maybe there’s some middle ground here. So I was listening to this and I never heard someone say it so bluntly, but he he brought up the fact. He said, do you see people being more distracted than they see? And she said, yes.

Lodro Rinzler 00:06:40  And he says, why? And she says, I just think that there is more detraction. There’s more that we can do. And he gave the example of when we used to be on the subway. If we forgot our magazine, we would just sit on the subway and we would see who’s on the subway. Right? Like we were just present. And that was actually a practice that he was engaging in, that he would just be present on the subway when he was on his way to pick up his kids from school. And now we have everything in the world at our fingertips. We can read, we can listen to things. We can, you know, scroll on social media, we can do any number of of things to distract ourselves. So we are so prone to distraction in a way that we weren’t. I would go so far as to say, 12 years ago, you know, when I first started putting out books 14 years ago, definitely like social media wasn’t even a big thing back then, which is crazy.

Lodro Rinzler 00:07:29  It’s been such a meteoric rise. But alongside is this meteoric rise in distraction that we are really not comfortable having space in our life anymore. If there is a gap, we reach for that phone and we fill it one way or another a dating app, a television show, whatever it is, it’s like it’s all right there. It’s crazy. And we don’t have a preference to put that behind you and say, I can just be here. So yes, I do find that, you know, because we are more willing to be distracted, we are more willing to just let our thoughts take over, and we’re less likely to just be present to what’s currently occurring. So again, as I said earlier, it’s like an uphill battle for me as a meditation teacher. I’d be like, hey, let’s all slow down and just I don’t want to say detox from our technology, but, you know, that could be a practice. But I think a lot of the practice is just learning to be present with whatever we’re doing, you know? And we’re with the dog.

Lodro Rinzler 00:08:20  We’re with the dog. When we are taking a walk, we do put that phone away and we just sort of enjoy whatever is on our walk. When we go grocery shopping. We’re not just mentally lost in what needs to happen after. We’re just looking and seeing and being there in this weird little community called a grocery store. You know, if we transform our view around these things and obviously this is sort of a good lead in that book, you are good. You are enough. Because I have a whole chapter, whole section really on society and like the way that we’re constantly co-creating society and influencing society with our choices of how we show up and whether we show up.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:57  Yeah. One of the things that I have seen happen over the time that I’ve been doing this, which is 12 years, is a big shift in the the mental health debate out there. And I’ve seen it go from being still relatively stigmatized as a thing to very largely de-stigmatized today. And almost in certain circles, I see people identifying with a diagnosis as part as part of who they are almost willingly.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:29  And I think it’s interesting now, I have a parallel in my life. When I first got sober, I was very highly identified as a recovering person, and that was really, really valuable for a period of time until it wasn’t. But I do think the more we identify with a way of being mentally. The more we lock ourselves into being that way, and I think it’s always really tricky. I think a lot about this. Like, well, when is the label or identity valuable and when is it limited? And I think it’s different for every person. I don’t think anybody can make that. But I do think it’s always worth in our own lives, asking like, is there a aspect of myself I’m over identifying with? Or I’m saying that’s just the way I am, when indeed it’s more just a pattern of of conditioning and habits.

Lodro Rinzler 00:10:17  Beautifully put. And I’m I’m with you 100%. And I remember early on in my career I was touring for my first book, The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, which, you know, wildly provocative title. And I sat down with a Buddhist group that had a lot of people in recovery in it. It’s a community that really emphasizes that aspect of bringing the two together, and they were actually incredibly, kind of incredibly open. But there was one person who was just like. I don’t think you understand that. This is just who I am. I’m an addict now. Like, that’s just it. And it’s like, I don’t know if that’s it. That is absolutely something that is happening. And that’s absolutely. If it’s helpful for you to hold that label, then that is good. But at a certain point you may find that if that is the only label you hold and the only identity you hold, it can be very limiting for you. And I would like to think that that person took that to heart because, you know, it’s been similar to what you just said about, you know, 12, 14 years since then. And it’s just one of many versions that I have seen. I just had dinner the other night with a dear friend who, because of the pandemic, isolated and fell into pretty abusive drug patterns and has now gotten sober, is in recovery housing and is doing quite well.

Lodro Rinzler 00:11:35  And we had dinner for the first time like I’d been in touch with him throughout all of this, but I hadn’t been. he was in LA. I’m in New York. So he finally came to New York and we had dinner and he was sharing that exact story, which is that there was a time where it was really helpful for him to identify in a certain way and really hold certain disciplines very close. And at this point, he realized he needed to just not necessarily get rid of that. Right. Like, it’s like he’s throwing the disciplines out the window. But he said I needed more than just that. I love that idea of like, we can expand our identity, we can expand our understanding of who we are. And, you know, obviously, as the Buddhist teacher, I have to point out, like, all of these identities are completely ephemeral and impermanent and always changing, and we don’t have to cling to any of them too tightly. If I never wrote a book again, I wouldn’t go around telling my, you know, new people at a party that I’m an author.

Lodro Rinzler 00:12:28  I would I would just, you know, come up with something else. Like, that’s it’s things are always changing with us, and that’s okay. You know, there was a time that I wasn’t an author. There might be a time that I’m not an author. That’s fine too. But, you know, in the meantime, if it’s helpful for me to identify as that and talk to people about books, and ideally they get benefit from those books, then I’ll go ahead and do it.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:29  Ultimately, I think what happened with me and addiction was that there was a lot of I had a lot of ideas about what it meant to be an addict Under that heading, there were a lot of things, right? And in my case, the number of things under that list has come down to about one, which is I should not use mind altering substances. Sure. Right. Like that doesn’t go well for me. Yes. All the other things are just human things that are transient. They come, they go.  I’m impulsive. No, maybe I’m not. I’m. I’m this way, I’m that way. All of that I’ve seen is a lot more, as you say, transient.

Lodro Rinzler 00:14:07  Yeah. And obviously, you know, I read your book and I know your relationship to another thing that comes up for many people who struggle in these regards is guilt and shame. And though I have not gone through a recovery program, you know, I have guilt and shame about things as well. And I write pretty explicitly in this new book about it, you know, like what the process of making mistakes could be, how we hold guilt and shame against us, how that’s not necessarily helpful once we’ve learned the lessons from our mistakes and how we can move forward. And I think it’s just a really potent time right now where I don’t think it’s like I did something wrong and now I’m horrible. I’m like a non-being, right? Like, we sort of say, okay, I have to learn, and I, I grow as a result of this.

Lodro Rinzler 00:14:47  I always think of this moment serving on the board of a organization that helps unhoused youth. And I was teaching a meditation class there, and there was this kid who came up to me after something must have sparked this quote for him. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember what he said. He said, you know what you said reminded me of an old saying my grandmother always told me, which is 100 of the same mistakes is regressive, 100 different mistakes is progressive. I was like, oh, that’s cool. And obviously it stayed with me for a million years. Now that we just keep doing the same thing over and over again, that’s very regressive. But if we learn and grow as human beings, it’s just who we are. That’s just a human being thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:29  I love that quote. I love that whole section. So I guess we’re going to go into the book and then maybe come back around to the top of the book, because you tell a story in there about guilt and shame that I really love, and it’s about how you were feeling guilt towards a previous partner of yours. Can you tell that story?

Lodro Rinzler 00:15:46  Oh, sure. The one in high school.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:48  The one where you thought you’d wronged her. You carried that guilt for all those years?

Lodro Rinzler 00:15:53  Yeah. So I was in high school, and I dated someone for, you know, it felt like forever, but maybe it was 4 or 5 months. Right. I was it was high school, and I broke it off, and I went on this meditation retreat. It’s my first, like, a very long meditation retreat. I was 17 years old. It was monastic. I shaved my head. I took the robes, the whole nine yards. And I had the meditation, which is like, you don’t like even when you’re doing other things than meditating, you still are basically just left alone with your own mind. There are no distractions. I got in trouble for reading a book for school, like a fiction book, which, you know, was considered a no no.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:33  That’s a no.

Lodro Rinzler 00:16:33  No, no, no.

Lodro Rinzler 00:16:34  So you could see, like there’s not a lot else to do. So somewhere around 2 or 3 weeks into this meditation retreat, I get in my head. I go, I was such a jerk to that poor woman who I broke up with, and I really went in on that, and I just wallowed in the guilt and the shame and the mistake and beat myself up. And honestly, I, I say this in the book as well. There’s no one who can say anything that I have not said worse to myself. Like I can beat myself up if I really want to. And I went to dark places. And finally, about three days into the self-flagellation thing, I said to myself, listen, when you get out of here, you’re going to go back home and you are going to formally apologize, and you’re going to make this right to the best of your ability. And I, with that understanding, started to let it go. I emerged from the meditation retreat, I went home, she had moved.

Lodro Rinzler 00:17:25  Her father had gotten a new job. They moved elsewhere. This is pre, you know, social media and all that. Like this is not I couldn’t find her and that was it. Years later I’m in college and I get a ping on Facebook, which is like early days of Facebook, and it’s her and I immediately accept. And I still carried this like I still care. I never said I’m sorry, so I just held it to some form for a very long time, and we chatted for a little bit on that platform until I finally said, hey, by the way, I need to share that I feel really bad about what happened and I was an absolute jerk. And I’m sorry, and you don’t have to forgive me, but you know, I just wanted to say it. And after at that point, years and years and years of me holding this, she goes, oh, I don’t remember it like that at all. Yeah, it wasn’t a big deal. So, you know, like that’s that’s pretty common.

Lodro Rinzler 00:18:18  I think, you know, we can go to any number of versions of the thing I said last night at that party. Everyone’s talking, they don’t remember. They’re thinking about the thing they said. But like, yeah, there’s always some version that we can hold over our head about ourselves. And as that story illustrates, nine times out of ten. It’s pretty useless. It’s not actually helping us grow as a person.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:37  Yeah, I’m going to stay with guilt and shame a little bit and mistakes in the past, because you tell a story in the book about somebody who, during one you’re not best periods in life you caused some harm to, and that you’ve tried to make it right, and that that person still feels very aggrieved. That person has gone out and told the world that they are aggrieved. I think you and I had a conversation about this. I don’t know when this was five years ago, four years ago, three years ago.

Lodro Rinzler 00:19:05  Eight years ago. But yeah. Who’s counting?

Eric Zimmer 00:19:07  Was it really?

Lodro Rinzler 00:19:08  Yeah.

Lodro Rinzler 00:19:09  Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:09  Anyway, you gotta be kidding. No, no. Anyway. All right. Eight years ago. That’s amazing to me. You talk about your friend and remembering things differently. Yeah, I’m counting down 3 to 6 months ago. You’re like, no, 35 years ago. I’m. Oh, okay. that’s kind of how time feels anymore. I don’t know if it does for you anyway. Share about as much about that as you’re comfortable sharing.

Lodro Rinzler 00:19:30  Yeah, sure. So as you noted, I had this period of time. I sparked this book on heartbreak called Love Hurts Buddhist Advice for the heartbroken. But there’s this period of time where everything was sort of pulled out from under me. My fiancé broke up with me and moved overseas. I suffered a job loss, sort of a big egoic identity, death as well. With that. And then my best friend passed away. And then shortly thereafter, my father passed away. And this was sort of bip bam boom just left me in a devastated spot, and I was drinking more than I should.

Lodro Rinzler 00:20:03  Period. You know, I had a lot of suicidal ideation. I was at the lowest in this lifetime so far, and I don’t think that there’s anyone who should have come down from on high and saved me. But I do wish that someone had said, hey, maybe don’t like, keep touring and traveling for your book like that came out during this. Like it’s just I should have just like laid low and taken care of myself, but I did. Yeah. And as you said, I inadvertently caused harm. And I carry that shame and guilt to some extent today, right? I still hold, as I said earlier, like anything that anyone says against me. You know, I can do ten times worse. So I, you know, and I work with that. I work with that as a practice. And I went through a whole process where it’s sort of like when you make a mistake, what do you do? For me, I immediately said, hey, I am 100% sorry.

Lodro Rinzler 00:20:53  And I spent a day with this person sort of unpacking it. There’s just a lot of trauma from this person who I didn’t know that up front, and I sort of inadvertently stepped on some big issues that I had not been aware of. So, you know, I apologize. I spent a lot of time trying to unpack this with this person, sought mediation with this person, did whatever I could within the confines of working with this person to try and heal. And then it becomes, you know, at a certain point you have to say, like, then I have to heal on my own to if this person doesn’t want to talk to me or be with me, like, you have to sort of do your own healing work around it through therapy, working with mentors, meditation, all of these things, and then you sort of turn over every rock. You can learn every lesson you can. And you say, well, I’m not that person. I’m not in that devastated, traumatized state.

Lodro Rinzler 00:21:38  I am. You know, I have learned a lot from it. And then you sort of come out the other end and you don’t have to say like, that’s a neat, happy ending, right? As you said, there can still be people in your past. You say like, oh, that was that was a shitty time for you. And like, you were not the best person. And you can acknowledge that. I acknowledge that and be like, that’s also not who I am. So it’s that sense of like identity that we’re talking about earlier. Like that’s we continue to grow, you know, I think like, you know, there might be a cartoon villain version of a Lodro in at least one person’s mind. you know, like the worst exaggerated features in deeds, but that’s actually not who I am. And it took me a while to realize, like, that’s a caricature. That’s not who I am. Yeah. You know, it’s I, I, I had an interview, not so long ago where I literally came to tears because I was like, at the end of the day, it’s like I’m the one of the identities I hold is someone who’s just really trying to help people, and I do make mistakes along the way.

Lodro Rinzler 00:22:31  And I’m very open about being a very human human, a very messy human. And I also believe that we are all inherently basically good. And that’s obviously the topic of this new book. Like, we are all inherently, fundamentally, innately good, whole, complete as is now. Can we hold both of those things in mind? Can we say Eric is basically good and he went through his struggles and made mistakes? Lodro was basically good. He, you know, went through struggles, made mistakes that they’ve learned and that they can also be embodied with that basic goodness. Today, that’s a big question. And I think that’s something that we don’t often give people a lot of grace and ability to do is sort of like, oh, I hear something bad about a person, and that’s just who they are. And I cling to that as their identity as opposed to that is one small piece of who they are.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:19  Yeah. It is so tricky. You know, as our society has begun to have more conversations About harm and things that traditionally have been hidden away.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:29  Come out into the open. And I think there’s a more nuanced version of every public conversation that we have. I don’t think there’s a single one that we couldn’t use a more nuanced version of. I think about this with, you know, with prison and I mean, any sort of thing like that, when, you know, at what point are you not, like you said, not that person or even that one thing being a very small aspect of the whole person. And I just don’t think we’re very good at holding those things. We like good, bad. Yes. Like that. We just like it’s just simpler, right? And that’s what a lot of us want, particularly when we’re thinking about it. Just people in sort of passing, you know, are they good or are they bad? Make it easy for me. And totally I think if you pay any more attention than that, you have to conclude at least I do like. Both. right?

Lodro Rinzler 00:24:24  I talk about this in the book a little bit because my wife had a great question. She just turned to me when she said, at what point do we allow people to change? And it was not about this. It was just a great question. Yeah. And it just stayed with me. At what point do we allow people to change? Like, I’m not the same version of a Lodro that existed a dozen years ago, or, you know, back when all of this happened that was, you know, 2013. So 13 years ago or whatever is I’m not the same person I was 24 years ago. I’m not going to be the same person I am, you know, five years from now. So we just do what we can to make up for any negative actions. None of them means that we’re not basically good. We can be basically good. We could be grieving and having a hard time and acting out of confusion. And can we hold both truths in our mind? That’s the question. And I think that’s, you know, there’s chapters in here just about how we villains people, because it’s not like we’re making it very personal, you and me.

Lodro Rinzler 00:25:13  More often we look at other people and we say that person’s bad because of something, and we start to build a case around it. And yeah, again, my wife is incredibly wise. she is she is she brought up this point that she had I think she didn’t come up with. I think she heard it somewhere, but she shared it with me that there’s sort of two lenses through which we engage with the world. One could be as a lawyer or one as a scientist. A lawyer says, I see something, and I now make a case for why that person is, for example, bad and why they’re always going to be bad. And anything that comes in contradiction with it, they’re giving all their time to charity or whatever it is. We say that’s that’s because they want people to think nicely of them. They’re actually bad and we disregard it. Right. And then a scientist says, I’m going to look at all of the points of data here, and I’m going to make an informed decision. I think that’s such a better way for us to live, because if we just keep making cases against everyone in our mind, good, bad or ugly, we’re going to end up in a pretty divided world. And we already are, which is sort of how we got here, actually.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:42  I talk a lot about the fundamental attribution error, which is this idea that when you do something, it’s a character flaw. But when I do it, or my favorite politician does it, or someone close to me, it’s there’s there were mitigating circumstances, you know, they did it because X, Y and Z. But for you it’s a character issue. And that that that attribution error is a really big problem. yeah. So okay, let’s come back now all the way around because you kind of let us there to the idea of the book that everyone is born with basic goodness. So there are three versions of this story that I think are out there, and there’s probably permutations on them, but version one is a more Christian version, which is that you are fundamentally flawed and born into sin.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:35  You are. You’re bad to start with. You need redeemed. There’s the Buddhist version, which is you are fundamentally good, right? You’re born good. And everything that happens is sort of covering over that beautiful diamond. And then there’s the view that I think I land on, probably, but I don’t know for sure, which is we have the seeds of all of it inside of us. So talk to me about your belief in the second of those that we are fundamentally good.

Lodro Rinzler 00:28:07  Oh, I’m happy to talk about all three. So I, I’m looking over our fence here. My neighbor is a Christian pastor. Sometimes he’ll come over for dinner and we’ll break bread and he’ll look at me and say, so, you Buddhists, you really believe that everyone’s born basically good? That they have the potential for for awakening, for enlightenment. All these things I see. Yeah. Those are usually just teachers have it so easy because, you know, it’s like a different come from than what? Where he starts.

Lodro Rinzler 00:28:36  Totally. Yeah. You know, like. Yeah. So there’s Original sin and we’ve got a tone and all of that. And I understand that a large swath of this nation gets behind that idea and grapples with it is just fundamentally different from how I was raised. It’s so interesting because I was raised Buddhist. You know, it’s not something I just sort of stumbled upon. I had a household where my parents taught me this concept very early, this experience that underneath the stories and things, we are basically good. And I started meditating when I was young, and I don’t know if I necessarily am changed. I’m sure the meditation, it’s just like I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t know how it’s changed me. It’s sort of like, what’s that versus growing up and being an adult. But I do know that this view of basic goodness changed me, that when I was a kid and something went wrong. And it does. I have a three year old daughter now, you know, and I caught myself.

Lodro Rinzler 00:29:27  She was screaming, my poor mother, you know, 85, severe dementia. We took her out for her birthday. My wife was on a meditation retreat. I brought my three year old. I was like, this will be fine. And it was not fine. I know you’re laughing. What an idiot. So, you know, take her out for her birthday dinner. And the kids screaming, oh, it’s the perfect storm is not to throw my again very wise wife under the bus. But she called while we were over on the way there. And so my daughter got like a hint of mom and like was missing mom. And then like, we’d go into the dinner and she’s like, I don’t want grandma, I want mom. And I’m like, we can’t say I don’t want grandma. And I’m just I’m in this point where I’m like, I’m not going to burst into tears, but I’m, I’m I’m so like at wit’s end. And I am like, I’m going to take my daughter outside.

Lodro Rinzler 00:30:13  I’m going to take her for a walk. And I noticed that there’s this tendency, and I’ve seen so many people, friends who are like, you’re being bad. And I was like, nope. It almost came out of my mouth. And I was like, hey, you’re not being very nice to grandma. Yeah. It’s such a slight reframe, but it’s not. You’re bad and wrong. It’s you’re basically good and you’re not being nice to the person. We’re having dinner. Like, it’s such a slight distinction, but it’s. It’s what was imparted to me as a kid. You’re basically good. You’re good. And this isn’t how we behave, right? Like we don’t Skype with grandma and say, I don’t want you, right? Like it’s just. Anyway, this was fundamental to my being. The third thing that you offered, I think, is, is very much in line with Buddhism, though. It’s not. Okay. You’re basically good now. Everything’s fine. It’s we need to continue to develop a relationship to that thing that we have lost along the way, through stories of shame and guilt, through stories of why we’re not enough and we’re not good enough, and all the things we get in society.

Lodro Rinzler 00:31:08  I don’t think I put this one in the book, but there’s these subway ads and they’re often very tasteless. I look at them like, oh, whatever. I forget sometimes how easily influenced we are as children. My wife was riding the subway with and there’s this kiddo, probably six years old woman, a girl, and she was with her dad. And there was this, breast augmentation ad where there was one woman looking sad holding lemons in that area. Same woman smiling, looking happy, holding cantaloupes. Not necessarily subtle, but, you know, and subtle enough for that six year old, says daddy. Why is she sad there and why is she happy there? And this poor dad thrown under the bus just goes, pivoting goes. I don’t know, maybe she just really likes cantaloupe. What sort of fruit do you like? Let’s talk about fruit. Right? Like, just clearly, I hope to be that good. And that’s so.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:58  Smooth.

Lodro Rinzler 00:31:58  Yes. Yeah. But it’s like, oh, yeah, we are taught look like this, act like this, etc. from such a young age that when we don’t meet whatever societal standards are being sold to us, we think the floor is us.

Lodro Rinzler 00:32:12  We think we’re wrong or bad, and we internalize those stories of I don’t have enough. I am, you know, my family’s poor and I’ll never have enough, whatever it is, all the way into adulthood. And we don’t deal with that. We just hold those stories as if we talked about before. Like those identities are true. So, so much of what we’re talking about and you are good, you are enough is letting go of the stories that aren’t serving us so that we can return to that relationship of goodness that we were born with. I think that’s just a really important thing that, frankly, not enough of us are willing to do right now. We’re not willing to let go of the stories that are holding us in pain.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:48  Check in for a moment. Is your jaw tight, breath shallow? Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen. Every Wednesday I send weekly bites of wisdom, a short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show things like mental health, anxiety, relationships, purpose into bite size practices you can use the same day it’s free. It takes about a minute to read and thousands already swear by it if you’d like extra fuel for the weekend. You also get a weekend podcast playlist. Join us at one UFI newsletter. That’s one you get a newsletter and start receiving your next bite of wisdom. All right, back to the show. 

I certainly think it is a more useful perspective to start from. We are good. And then that gets occluded by the travails of life, then concluding the opposite. When I think about usefulness, because that’s so much of what I’m interested, I mean, certainly truth is important, but truth is a that’s a slippery creature, right? And ultimate truth is you don’t know. So I’m very much into like, well, which of these ways of viewing this is most useful in me being the person that I want to be, you know, to myself, to the people around me, all of that. And I certainly think starting from a place of goodness is a is a much more useful starting frame of reference, I think.

Lodro Rinzler 00:34:27  I don’t know if I’m understanding the third perspective that you offered, that you feel like you connect with more, though.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:32  It’s that we’re neither good nor bad. We have the seeds of both within us.

Lodro Rinzler 00:34:36  We have the seeds of both with us. Yeah, I would say the Buddhist view is just. Yeah, we just that we, we have basic goodness in that. Yeah. We as I mentioned before, we all get confused. We all get confused at times. We all make mistakes from that, acting out of that sense of confusion. But it’s because we’re confused about our goodness, not because we’re bad. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:55  So you have a chapter in the book called The Entire Buddhist Path in two pages. Can you be that succinct in a podcast interview?

Lodro Rinzler 00:35:05  Yeah, that’s a great question. I like that you’re like, by the way. I’ve done this a few times with you right now. Succinct is not in your vocabulary. Let’s see what you can do.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:13  I’m teasing.

Lodro Rinzler 00:35:14  Yes.

Lodro Rinzler 00:35:15  It’s really three steps. Step one is that we make that discovery of basic goodness. And I want to be clear that basic goodness isn’t a concept that we grapple with from a philosophical point of view, it is experience. We meditate, for example, as one way to access it. And we notice there’s this moment, oh, I’m okay as I am sitting here on this cushion. That could be a revelation. Oh, I am basically good in this moment. I am basically good. Once we get a glimpse of basic goodness, we start to see it can be this real source of peace and stability. And that’s where things get juicy. We go to step two, where we deepen that relationship with basic goodness. There’s so many different tools, books, retreats, teachings, things like that, but they’re meant to keep you connected, reconnecting to your innate nature more fully, more frequently. And there are different skillful means that help us train our heart and mind to recognize that goodness within us so that that relationship gets strengthened in the same way that if we made a friend at a barbecue, right, we would just continue to strengthen that relationship over time.

Lodro Rinzler 00:36:15  There’s times where it feels awkward, times where it feels fun. But like over time, we’re just getting to know this person better. Same thing we’re returning, getting to familiar with our basic goodness more and more so that step three we live our life through the lens of basic goodness. So as that relationship grows, it transforms how we approach life. We start to notice our interactions, our decisions, even some of that, like the self-talk that we were just talking about, it starts to shift that we trust in our goodness so much that we start seeking validation from the outside world, and we bring more compassion, kindness to our own relationship with ourselves, with people at work and our family, with friends. We start to see everyone, really everyone as fundamentally good as well. It’s not just I’m basically good. You’re basically just like all beings are basically good, and that’s where it gets really interesting. And then I basically just take that into the three sections of the book. The first section of the book is just discovering your own basic goodness.

Lodro Rinzler 00:37:07  The second one is. Can I start to see it in that person? I don’t like the person I’m villain izing. Whatever it is, the person I do like, the person I love, my child, the people I don’t know that I see all the time. The grocery store example I gave earlier. And then we come to that third section, which is, well, what society, if not the people I like, the people I don’t like, the people I don’t know. And me, that’s everyone. Yeah. Could we realize the basic goodness of society? Not in a Pollyanna way, but in the way that, like, we’re all humans and we can all sort of come at each other from that perspective of there’s basic goodness. And as we talked about, there’s confusion. Sure is. But that’s not fundamentally who we are.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:43  Yeah. And I want to get to each of those. I want to start though, because I love the way you illuminate this through a couple of core Buddhist teachings.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:56  The first is around that all of us, when we encounter any experience, any stimulus. You can say this better than I do. We have either a positive reaction towards we have a negative reaction towards, or we just simply really have a neutral reaction to and that those three things then tie to what are called poisons, which are I’m not sure exactly the words you use in the book, but I would call them greed, aversion and ignorance. And I love the way you then sort of tie that to the way we really relate to others, right? In that some people we relate to, we like, some people we really don’t like and, and most of them we have no opinion about or the background furniture that sometimes gets in the way.

Lodro Rinzler 00:38:45  Yeah, you’re right.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:46  And I say that all fairly well.

Lodro Rinzler 00:38:48  Did you spot on? And it is I it’s funny because I’m actually teaching a course on this exact thing right now, which is that sense of wherever we are, like, right now, I’m here with you and I’m enjoying being with you.

Lodro Rinzler 00:38:59  But then a car went by and I was actively ignoring that car. right? Like it is. I’m just doing it all the time. But I knew it was a car. I didn’t look, I just heard the sound. I know I’m on the road. There’s some sense of always projecting out and trying to fill in these gaps because we can’t deal with uncertainty. So I said, okay, that’s a car, and it’s going by, and I hope it’s not so loud that it shows up in the record like it’s just. And then I don’t like that. I don’t like that there’s this car now that I’m turning my attention to it, because I don’t want that noise to be on the recording. And, you know, there’s always something. My dog, June, is being very sweet and just sort of laying out on the floor with me. she’s gotten in the habit of coming to work with me, and, you know, like that I see her. I like that, right.

Lodro Rinzler 00:39:37  So there’s I’m. But I’m vacillating wildly between wherever my eyes are. Her ears are all of my sense perceptions are making contact with the phenomenal world around me. I’m constantly saying I like, I dislike, I ignore, and then the question is, how far do I go with that? Do I just let that be? Car comes and goes and that’s it because it’s over? Or do I get really mad? I just I can’t work here. I need to get a formal office, and I need to do that. And I need it to be somewhere where there’s never any cars. And, you know, every time a car goes by it, just realize how horrible the situation is, right? Like, it could just be that I could make this my day if I wanted it to. And people do. We do. We get so hooked by something that we just spiral and let that be the day. And that’s the choice thing that we’re talking about with the tools at the top of our time together.

Lodro Rinzler 00:40:23  Do I want to make that choice and continue to feed in that case, the angry, frustrated version. You know, you said, what? Greed, hatred and delusion? Is that what you used?

Eric Zimmer 00:40:34  I think I said greed, aversion and ignorance, but greed, hatred and delusion.

Lodro Rinzler 00:40:38  Yeah. These are good, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:39  Wanting, not wanting. And, yeah.

Lodro Rinzler 00:40:43  These are all good words for it. So but we’re constantly vacillating. And again, meditation is us saying, okay, I’m going to have reactions if a car goes by I’m fine. But it’s up to me whether I acknowledge it and come back to this present moment or whether I just continue to go and go and go. So how far does that rubber band go before it snaps back? That’s up to us. And the more we train the mind, the more we’re able to let rise and fall. We’d say, oh, you know, for example. Oh, I hope I didn’t say something stupid on that podcast, right.

Lodro Rinzler 00:41:12  Like, I could dwell on that for the rest. After this, I’m going to go take my kid to her music class. I could be totally checked out. Not with my kid trying to do this little teacher that she says she’s going to know it, too. She’s gonna immediately call me out like she will see it in a second if I’m not fully there. Or I can be like, yeah, you know, if I did, it’s okay. And if I hopefully I didn’t and that’s that’s it. And like, I just let it arise, dissolve. And then I’m playing with these silly shakers and pretending to be on a choo choo train, like it’s just that’s that’s fine. Right? Like, now I’m here for that. So I think it just allows us to enjoy our life more. It seems simplistic, but going back to the Ezra Klein Pema Chodron thing, he was like, what’s the grand thing that you’ve actually achieved out of any of this? And she said, contentment. And I was like, oh, blessed, because that’s what I always say, too. It’s just the sense of just that we can be present to what’s currently occurring and find a sense of joy. Happiness. Contentment within that. That’s actually a great way to live a life. In my experience.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:08  It’s the whole thing that drew me to the Buddhist and spiritual path and still does. Is that ability to be okay in the midst of whatever’s occurring. And I find those two teachings that you sort of use and then tie into how we relate to others so valuable that that no matter what I do, there’s an immediate I like it, I don’t like it, it doesn’t mean anything to me, like it just arises. I’ve never been able to circumvent that process. It is so instant in me. The process I can circumvent is what’s next, which is the I want more of that. I want less of that. You know, that that pushing and pulling or that leaning really strongly in the direction of those things. But I think those those two teachings are very central to the way I often think about the world, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:56  What am I wanting? What am I not wanting? And to what degree of ignorance am I in about how that shapes the the contents of my life?

Lodro Rinzler 00:43:06  Yeah. It’s beautiful. And you know, sometimes the term ignorance is even translated as prejudice because there’s almost like a really like I don’t want to look at it. I like, I’m actively. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:18  Delusion.

Lodro Rinzler 00:43:19  Yeah. Yeah. which, you know, I think we all almost have our own proclivities for these things, right? You know, and these things can get their hooks in us. There’s this Tibetan term cliché where we basically just get yanked around once. It’s like a fish on a line, you know, it’s just once anger has its hooks in your aggression or hatred or how you want to translate like it once it’s there, once we’re hooked, we can get pulled around going back a gazillion books. You know, I use the example of The Incredible Hulk in The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, because that’s such a like when mild mannered Bruce Banner gets hooked by anger.

Lodro Rinzler 00:43:55  He transforms physically into this giant monster that causes destruction wherever he goes. I was like, that’s anger right there. What a beautiful metaphor, actually. It’s like, if he can acknowledge and come back, he would be fine, but he can’t. He has to keep going. And then it’s just the more he angry he gets, the more destructive he is.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:11  And I think what you just said, there’s a very subtle and important point though, which is we are not saying that having an experience of anger is a problem or having an experience of wanting or not wanting or aversion or greed. That’s not the problem. The problem is what occurs after.

Lodro Rinzler 00:44:30  Yeah. That’s it. It’s that rubber band thing. It’s like, how quickly do we acknowledge it come back? Or how far does that band go before it snaps and we’re going to have reactions? I’m going to go with the previous example. The ice cream truck came by as if it knew we were talking just now. The noises coming on the recordings.

Lodro Rinzler 00:44:47  Yeah, just a moment ago, you know, doing the jingle. And he always goes by it 50 miles an hour down this road. You know, like, you know, he does it twice. He’ll be back in probably five more minutes. He does a loop. And, it’s every day. And I could really, you know, continue to spiral if I wanted to, but it’s like, no, there’s no point in that because it’s not helping me. The Buddha once said that holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal. It’s only burning ourselves. We’re only causing our self harm. And the same can be said with a lot of the other things when we get so fixated. I remember, you know, a million years ago when I was actively dating that, you know, I would be like, why isn’t this person texting me back? And I was just like, oh my God, what’s going on? What’s going on? And like, you know, do they reach out to me? Do they want to be with me? Do they? And then they’d be like, oh, sorry, I was at a movie or something.

Lodro Rinzler 00:45:35  Right. Like and it would be, it would pop. But I was like, man, that was a lot of wasted energy of wanting, right? And so we do this to ourselves all the time. We’re just constantly doing it. And in terms of these choices, it’s the old thing of like when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you invite the meditation teacher on, he’s just going to talk about meditation, that this is the thing. Meditation literally rewires the brains that we notice. Oh, I’m sitting here. I’m with the body breathing. A story comes up of why haven’t they texted me back? Or why is this ice cream truck doing this loop and never stop? I acknowledge it, I come back to the breath. Same thought can come up again. Again, as you said, it’s not that we’re not having reactions or that these thoughts aren’t coming. I acknowledge it though, and I come back to what’s happening right now. The breath. The more I do that in meditation, the stronger I get at being able to do that in my post Meditation Life.

Lodro Rinzler 00:46:26  So sometimes people say I can’t meditate because I have so many thoughts. Honestly, I started to reframe this for meditation students I work with, which is when we drift off and we come back a hundred times in a ten minute meditation. That’s like lifting a hundred reps of a weight, you know, it’s like it’s that’s giving us the workout. If we only went to the gym and lifted that dumbbell once, that’s not much of a workout. We don’t grow from that. Our muscles stay the same. But if we did it 100 times. My God, yeah. You’re gonna. It might feel uncomfortable to do that. It definitely would. Whatever you’re lifting. But that’s when the muscle tears grows back stronger. That’s how we get stronger. So same thing. We are literally rewiring the brain every time we say, I’m acknowledging the thought, I’m coming back. You do that a hundred times in a meditation. You’re really rewiring the brain in a positive way for the rest of your life.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:17  Yeah, I was having a conversation with somebody today about my book, and we were talking about meditation, and I was saying there were a couple of big switches for me that allowed meditation to become sort of a thing I did regularly.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:30  And and one of them was that exactly that I just flipped it from like, oh, it’s a problem that my mind keeps wandering to, oh, it’s great news that I keep finding it and treating that it as a, as a victory. And I’ve often said, I think what, what meditation gives me more than anything else is what Viktor Frankl talked about, that space between stimulus and response. I feel like meditation increases that space for me. It just gives me more room in there for me to then do what the best version of me thinks is worth doing.

Lodro Rinzler 00:48:06  Yeah. Beautifully put. You should write a book.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:08  Maybe so. Yeah. Maybe so.

Lodro Rinzler 00:48:11  I loved your book. I’m sorry. I’m gonna take us off topic. I really did. I think you have such a knack for synthesizing so many different things from different traditions, different modalities. You brought it all under one roof, and you could be like, hey, here’s, like ten different ways of looking at something like shame and guilt, right? Like, you know, it’s just I thought it was very cool.

Lodro Rinzler 00:48:29  I was impressed by your ability to do that. So yes, I love that Viktor Frankl quote. I love the idea that you’re talking about because that’s that’s the thing we can expand upon. And it is a life changing thing to not to have that gap before we send that aggressive text message or whatever we do as a reaction, right? Like, I don’t have to do it. I was funny because I actually caught myself similar. I was going back to the story of this perfect storm I built for myself, of taking my mother out to dinner with the toddler who had just seen, you know, FaceTime with my wife for two minutes. And I had this tendency to be I wanted to, like, be like Adriana. Like you threw me under the bus by calling right then. Like I wish you would. Just stayed, like, called us after, like we had agreed to. And I just I saw myself texting. I just was like, she misses you, that’s all. That’s actually what’s being communicated right now.

Lodro Rinzler 00:49:18  She misses you. Don’t feel any guilt about that. But, like, you know, I just want you to know it was one of those. But it was it was like, oh, watch me, watch me in this, like moment that I’m at, like my breaking point of like this screaming. Everyone’s looking at us in the restaurant. She wants to run outside. She’s banging on the door. She’s never done this, by the way. She’s not that like not nothing against anyone who’s going to do this regularly. But like, I was shocked, I was unprepared and and Yeah, I just was at that breaking point and I noticed. Look at me wanting to say you’re bad. Look at me. Wanting to blame someone to text them something. And I was like, man, if I hadn’t, if I didn’t have a practice, I’d probably give in to both of those tendencies. And I’m so glad I did that. I could just say, actually, it’s more about like, being nice to grandma.

Lodro Rinzler 00:50:03  Actually, it’s more about, you know, your daughter misses you and, you know, she’s having a bit of a hard time. But don’t feel bad. She’s going to be fine, you know, like that sort of thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:11  Yeah. I love that example for, a whole bunch of reasons. A it sounds like a setup to a joke. I’m half tempted to go try and craft the punchline. yeah, exactly. But what I love about it, and I’ve always admired about you as a teacher, is you don’t pretend that that doesn’t rattle you or that that isn’t hard. What you do, and I think, you know, listeners hear me say this often is that I think so much of the practice is not making things worse. What you didn’t do is you did not make it worse. You could have made it worse by shaming your daughter. You could have made it worse by guilting your wife. You could have taken what was a difficult situation and made it worse. But you didn’t.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:52  You just had the situation, which didn’t make it fun or easy. Right? But that’s a big deal because I am always amazed by our infinite capacity to make things worse. Yes. You know, not that we don’t have basic goodness. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that. No, I.

Lodro Rinzler 00:51:14  Know exactly what you’re saying, that we just. We are all so good at that. Yeah. Of pushing that button when we know it’s not going to feel good for us or the other person. We for saying that thing that cuts someone down at work, whatever. Like we’re just why did we get so good at that? Yeah. And we know outside of whatever temporary satisfaction like I told them. Like, it just makes us feel shitty long term. And it absolutely hurt the other person. Like, why? Why do we do that? I think that if there’s something that I’ve learned over my years of practice, it is to cause less harm.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:48  Yeah.

Lodro Rinzler 00:51:49  And yes, that’s that’s really it. Like it’s, you know, as I said earlier, ultimately the goal is, oh, I want to help people. And I think the skillful means is through doing as little harm as possible. When I lead meditation teacher trainings and I always tell them, like, listen, you’re going to say the wrong thing. Like, everyone wants to be the perfect meditation teacher coming out of the gate. And I’m like, I get that. And I was there. I remember at one point just, you know, giving a talk and making reference, like making a joke about SoulCycle, you know. And then I looked down and the person in the front row had these massive SoulCycle socks on, and I was like, well, I just offended that person. You know, like, it’s just that you’re always going to say or do something. It’s going to be a thing. You just can’t know, , we can’t know, we’re human beings. We’re like the Korean Zen master. Seung San equated community to dumping a bunch of potatoes into a barrel of water and banging them against each other until the dirt fell off.

Lodro Rinzler 00:52:45  And I was like, that’s it. That’s what we do as humans. You know, the idea is that we just, you know, try to be as skillful and as a hopeful and ideally caused the least harm as possible. But you’re right. It’s like we’re not. I think the idea at some point we transcend and become someone else, or that we transcend and we no longer have difficulties is a fallacy. It’s more about how do we work with our modern world, with all of its myriad distractions, all of its ways of causing us heartbreak and seeing, you know, we’re so exposed to the suffering of the world around us that it’s so heartbreaking right now, and we’re expected to go around and operate like do nine to fives and and get groceries and like, live like normal people in the midst of this crazy time. It’s rough. It is rough. We have to acknowledge that it’s rough. And that doesn’t mean that we aren’t basically good, and it doesn’t mean that we can’t strive to be as helpful and to cause as much as least harm as we can.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:38  Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly Bites of Wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices, reflection and links to former guests who can guide you even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose and habit change. Feed  your good wolf at oneyoufeed.net/newsletter.  Again oneyoufeed.net/newsletter. 

I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Thank you so much. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation, and I want to talk about the role children play in our lives. Similar to the potato banging thing that you just gave. So listeners, if you’d like access to post-show conversations, ad free episodes, and supporting this show, you can go to one you feed net loader. Thank you so much. It’s been, as always, a pleasure.

Lodro Rinzler 00:54:38  Thank you for having me, I will continue. This was the eighth book. You are good.

Lodro Rinzler 00:54:43  You are enough. And I. Every time I have a book, I will say, hey, let’s get together. Because it’s just a fun thing to do. When I, when I was asked, I said, hey, you should go promote this book. I said, I’m happy to do it. I just want to sit down with the people I really admire and really enjoy their company. And you were top of that list as I wrote you. So I’m so glad that we can continue to do this. And thanks for having me.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:02  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity. But we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the One You Feed community.