Hello Mind Bod Squad!
This week we’re hanging with Lodro Rinzler, Buddhist meditation teacher, award-winning author of eight books (including the bestseller The Buddha Walks into a Bar…), and the dude behind the Basic Goodness Collective. His brand-new book, You Are Good, You Are Enough, rests on one deceptively simple idea: underneath all the self-doubt and noise, you’re already basically (you guessed it) GOOD!
Lodro’s the first to admit this can sound a little Pollyanna. But he’s not talking about “good” in a sinner-vs-saint way. More like “okay as is”: complete, fine exactly as you are right now. It’s something you probably feel fleetingly, quite often. It’s that quiet “oh, I’m fine” when the hot water hits your back in the shower, or that unremarkable beat at the end of the day when you set your bag down and, just for a second, nothing needs doing.
The work, Lodro says, is learning to notice those ordinary moments and string them together until you can start living from that ground instead of just visiting it.
We talk about:
What “basic goodness” actually means (and what it doesn’t)
Basic goodness as something you experience, not a doctrine you adopt (as our beloved Tenzin Bob Thurman liked to say, “Buddhism is realism”)
Noticing your goodness in ordinary moments
Finding the goodness in difficult people, without excusing harm
What to do when the whole idea makes you want to scream
The Adventure:
Lodro leads us in a meditation that brings us into the simple immediacy of the body and breath. And there we start to notice, we’re already okay! Creaky knees, rumbly bellies, flighty mind and all. And near the end, an invitation to lift the gaze and notice the openness that’s already here. Whatever happens, we can always come back to… this.
Know someone who needs to hear they’re not a total hopeless mess? (TBH, who doesn’t need to hear that from time to time? 😅) Pass this episode along:
K, That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in.
Love always,
