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 What if that voice telling you you’re broken or fundamentally flawed is wrong? That’s the radical message of today’s guest, Buddhist teacher and best-selling author Lodro Rinzler.

His new book is called Your Good, You Are Enough. Lodro teaches a powerful idea from Tibetan Buddhism called basic goodness, that beneath all our self-doubt, anger, and anxiety, there’s something awake and whole already present in us. It sounds like a self-help slogan, but in fact, it’s something we can directly experience ourselves in meditation and in everyday life.

In our conversation, Lodro and I talk about how to trust your own goodness without using this powerful idea as an excuse to avoid growth. And how to see goodness in difficult people without excusing harm.

Scott Snibbe: Lodro Rinzler, it’s a pleasure to have you on How to Train the Happy Mind to talk about your new book, You Are Good, You Are Enough.

Lodro: Thanks so much for having me. I’m very excited to be here.

Where did the term “basic goodness” come from?

Scott Snibbe: This book is based on teachings that had a big impact on you by Chögyam Trungpa, who’s really one of the few innovators who tried to adapt the extraordinary canon of Tibetan Buddhism creatively to Western students. And you’re continuing that lineage.

Lodro: Yeah, it’s an interesting one because Chögyam Trungpa really said, Okay, there’s this whole thing about how we are inherently awake and whole and good. He used this term in Tibetan, drönpa sangwa, which you won’t find in classic Tibetan Buddhist texts. He sort of strung it together and said, Well, that means ‘basic goodness.’

And at this point, it’s become ubiquitous here in the West. You’ll hear insight teachers like Sharon Salzberg or Tara Brach using it. Zen teachers are using it. This idea—really, this experience—that we are whole, complete, awake as is, that we possess the same nature as the Buddha himself, that same wakefulness.

I think it’s a nice, almost quaint way of putting it in today’s world: “Oh, you’re basically good. Oh, that’s nice.” But there’s real profundity, real lineage to it.

Original sin vs basic goodness

Scott Snibbe: And in some aspects of Christian culture, we have the idea of original sin, which is at odds. The morality of most religions is all the same, but what they say about reality and our nature is a little bit different. So it comes as a surprise to many people.

Lodro: You’re a hundred percent right. And I think a lot of us have been raised with either that point of view or even a capitalistic point of view. I was just looking over the fence at my neighbor, who’s a Christian pastor, and he and I get together semi-regularly.

He says, “Yeah, so you guys start from the place of you’re basically good, and when things happen, they’re like mistakes, but it doesn’t mean that you’re bad.” And I go, “Yeah.” He says, “Man, that’s good.” There’s almost envy at that point—like, “That’s your starting point? Because my starting point is a very different one, and it’s a hard sell.”

And that’s everywhere: the sense that we’re basically a mess. I don’t want to just blame Christianity. As I mentioned a moment ago, capitalism, patriarchy—a lot of these things have gotten us into this state where we believe that we’re not good enough as we are. Oh, you don’t look a certain way? We’ve got a whole industry called makeup that will help you. Or you feel a little round? Okay, we’ve got a fitness industry that’s a bazillion-dollar industry that will make you feel better.

And there’s always going to be another product, another thing you can do—and then you get to be happy. That’s capitalism. That’s how they keep us going. For us to say, “What if that’s not the source of my happiness?” is very revolutionary.

And I know you’ve talked about this in previous episodes, but the very roots of the Buddhist tradition come from going against the stream of what we normally see in society. The idea that contentment, happiness, and joy are things we can develop a relationship with ourselves is pretty revolutionary for most people.

The idea that contentment, happiness, and joy are things we can develop a relationship with ourselves is pretty revolutionary for most people.

Our fundamental nature is good

Scott Snibbe: My teacher, Venerable Rene, said something beautiful recently. I’ve always kind of struggled with this concept—why is our fundamental nature good? Why is that deeper? And he said, “Well, the delusions aren’t aligned with reality, and your goodness is.”

Delusions aren’t aligned with reality, and your goodness is.

Lodro: Yes. My daughter is turning three, and we’re at this really interesting moment where she has, up to this point, really just exhibited what I would call basic goodness. There’s this innate confidence in wakefulness, presence, even compassion that flows from that.

When I say we’re at an interesting moment, it’s because there is a little bit of what, in some Buddhist circles, we would call the “trap of doubt.” This sort of second-guessing of the goodness of our awake nature is starting to come in, where she’s starting to say, “Well, what if they don’t want to play with me?”

We were talking the other day. I was dragging her on a wagon, and we had friends coming over, a little bit of an older friend, six to her three. I said, “You know, Ila’s coming. Do you want to play dollies with her?” And she goes, “Maybe she say no.” And I just saw her being like, what if I put myself out there to play with this kid, for this thing I love, and this kid just says, “I don’t want to do that. That’s dumb.”

I got down on her level, and I said, “Okay, what if she says yes?” She goes, “Oh, that’d be good.” I said, “Yeah. So it’s really brave for us to ask these things, but she could say yes, and that would be really fun. And even if she says no, that’s okay. But it’s not about you. She may just not want to play with the dolls.”

Just to notice this little thing starting to creep in already—because it is everywhere, and it is so insidious, this little voice. But what I’m talking about (what keeps us away from the state), the main thing I want to emphasize, and I’m sure you’ve seen this in your daughter as well, is that we’re born with this wakeful energy.

If she wasn’t some wonderful Buddhist teacher in a past life, then she’s really starting off strong in this one, because she’ll sometimes just hold my face and go, “Focus, daddy, focus.” Be here. She demands that of me.

I find that this experience, which we’re calling basic goodness, feels very much like any other time of wakefulness. When I’m on the cushion, or when she’s holding my face and saying, “focus.” I am 100% there. There is a natural expansiveness that I would equate to Buddha nature. I don’t think it’s a different thing.

I find that this experience, which we’re calling basic goodness, feels very much like any other time of wakefulness.

When I’m hugging her at the end of the day, it’s just 100% being there for the hug. I always think about the old saying from Seung Sahn: “When you eat, just eat. When you drive, just drive.” It has that quality. That’s what enlightenment is. We are just 100% with the thing as it is: without judgment, without story, without distance from the experience.

I think that is what basic goodness is.

When did you cross the line to feeling basically good?

Scott Snibbe: And you say this in your book: the goal isn’t to intellectualize basic goodness, but to experience it. So what helped you cross that line? Because it’s not always instantaneous for people, and some people have not experienced it yet—maybe many people are listening to this.

When and how did that happen for you, that you crossed the line to really feeling you’re fundamentally good, basically good?

Lodro: I cheated a little bit in that I’m a second-generation Western Buddhist. By the time I came around, my parents had already been practicing in that tradition for a number of years. I don’t think it was a conscious decision on their part, but they really infused basic goodness into the household.

When I, as a kid, made a mistake (and I would, because I was a kid), it didn’t mean I was bad or wrong. Or that there was something wrong with me. It’s like, you’re basically good, and something happened. There was a mistake that was made, and we can talk about the mistake. This is different from “stop being a bad kid.” I was very lucky that it was infused into me early.

But honestly, in the last six years, particularly in my work with my teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche, we’ve been doing a lot of work around Dzogchen and various Vajrayana practices. The connections all started to sync up in my brain.

I always feel like the best teachers are the ones who are borderline frustrated, wanting to grab us by the shoulders and shake us and say, “You are already enlightened. Can you just realize that already?” It was really getting that energy in his cycle of teachings to all of us. And I thought, Yeah, this is it. This is the important thing.

Are we all already enlightened?

Scott Snibbe: What does it mean to you when you say we’re already enlightened?

Lodro: When I was a kid, I asked my mother—like we were saying before, there are these Christian origin stories I had heard—and I was like, What’s our version as Buddhists? And she said, “Well, there was wakefulness. And then it second-guessed itself, and then there was doubt and dualism.”

There was wakefulness. And then it second-guessed itself, and then there was doubt and dualism.

I was way too young to understand that, but I remember it clear as day. It’s so funny because now I understand what she was referring to. That sense of there is wakefulness—that’s who we are—but we start to doubt it. We start to second-guess ourselves. We get in our heads and start to say, “Actually, there might be something wrong with me.” That’s really painful for many of us.

I share in the book about how the word “blue” isn’t actually in any of the ancient texts. If you go back 4,500 years, you’re not going to find the word “blue” in Hebrew, Chinese texts, Greek texts—it actually came into being more recently. There was this study where a professor, Jules Davidoff, went to Namibia and spent time with the Himba tribe and found that they hadn’t experienced blue in the way that we often refer to it.

He did an experiment where he lined up 12 identical squares of paint, 11 of which were green and one was blue, and he said, “Which one is different?” And they said, “I don’t know what you’re referring to.” He realized that the only reason they weren’t seeing the distinction—whereas you and I might see it immediately—is that they hadn’t been introduced to it.

And that’s the whole point of this book. It’s not some sort of self-helpy—if you write a book called You’re Good, You’re Enough, you have to defend against that. It’s not. It’s about this fundamental aspect of who we are. It’s just me pointing at it so that we start to see blue everywhere, only in this case, blue is our own basic goodness.

We start to see basic goodness in ourselves, and we start to see it in the people we like, the people we don’t know, even the people we have a hard time with.

Daily practices for basic goodness

Scott Snibbe: In the book, you share a lot of practices, and not all of them are for being on the cushion—some were in daily life. Can you talk about the ones that have seemed the most effective for people as you’ve shared them?

Lodro: The one that immediately comes to mind is one of my favorites. It’s called the loving kindness photo. One of the areas where we have a really hard time is discovering the basic goodness within people we have a hard time with or dislike. For me, the most profound version of it was this woman who married someone who had a kid from a previous marriage.

The ex-wife was really not kind to her, so she had a very hard time—and there was no avoiding this person. They would regularly see each other in family situations, soccer practice, et cetera. Every time she saw this person, she found herself ramping up to anger.

And as we know from the early teachings—even within the Eightfold Path, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness—the antidote to anger is love and kindness. The practice goes: you take a little photo of that person, and you put it somewhere out in the open, or in your wallet.

Whenever you see it—flip open your wallet, go by your bookshelf—you pause for a moment, look at them, and make an aspiration that feels authentic to your experience: “May you feel happy. May you feel safe.” Even if “safe” is like, may you feel safe so you don’t keep bashing me—but we don’t go that far. We just say, “May you feel safe,” whatever feels right to you.

And the story, as I relayed in the book, is that after a couple of weeks of doing this practice, she ran into this woman at soccer practice, and she said the first instinct wasn’t anger: it was real kindness, real openness. It was disarming for the ex-wife. She was totally disarmed by the fact that this person showed up completely different, actually willing to engage, curious about her as a person. And the relationship shifted as a result.

There are lots of things like that that are somewhat practical. And I realize not everyone wants to do loving-kindness for a difficult person. There are other ways too. There’s another one in here—loving kindness for a friend—which I credit to a book. I’ve read a thousand books this year, most of them for people two and under. This one was Mindful Tots: Loving Kindness.

You basically bring to mind the image of a friend. You close your eyes, say their name silently, rest your mind, relax, and let yourself hold the image. If you want to make an aspiration for their well-being, you can. But it’s really just connecting to this being that we love.

Scott Snibbe: I thought these exercises were excellent. The one with the person you have trouble with is really radical, because we’re encouraged to do that, but no one’s ever said, put a picture of them and look at it every day. That’s even more difficult.

But it’s definitely one of the things that most radically affects people when I’m sharing some of this wisdom, which is that love, from a Buddhist perspective, doesn’t mean thinking someone’s awesome. It’s just wanting them to be happy. And then you realize, if they were happy, they’d probably stop annoying you—and everybody else.

Lodro: We’re not being Pollyanna in this book, there’s something practical here. That is the most practical thing we can do, because this person whose photo we have, or who we dislike, we may never see them again. We may not run into them at soccer practice.

But if we’re walking around with hate or anger in our heart, it’s hurting no one but ourselves. It’s like this little icebox around our heart. Even just for our own benefit, to begin to work through some of the intense emotions around them would be helpful.

If we’re walking around with hate or anger in our heart, it’s hurting no one but ourselves.

How do you recognize basic goodness while also growing as a person?

Scott Snibbe: How do you balance recognizing basic goodness with also wanting to become a better person and expand your generosity, patience, compassion, joy, and love? What’s the balance between total acceptance and growth—having a directionality for how you want your personality, your spiritual development to proceed?

Lodro: The thing that comes up for me is that a lot of those qualities we’re talking about stem from basic goodness, or arise from basic goodness. If I’m actually rooted in a sense of enoughness—just to be talking in more common terms—I feel enough as I am, confident in my own basic goodness. Then I’m naturally generous.

If we look at this from the perspective of “I am enough,” then all of those things we want to give birth to—our kindness, our love, our inspiration, our creativity, our generosity—they naturally arise out of basic goodness, spontaneously, as the situation calls for it.

But if we don’t have any connection to it, we’re always looking outside of ourselves, always looking for more. That’s the perspective I’ve been pushing against—it’s a kind of capitalistic mindset of “I don’t have enough, I need more, and I’m going to keep striving until I get enough.”

If we don’t have any connection to our basic goodness, we’ll always looking outside of ourselves, always look for more.

Scott Snibbe: You’ve mentioned capitalism a few times. Who’s your least favorite capitalist?

Lodro: I feel like we’re living in a moment where there are some clear and easy people to villainize—wealthy billionaires who, if they even spread around a percentage of their wealth, would solve homelessness in a day. We would solve our food crisis in a day. There are so many things we could address with a little redistribution and generosity from them.

I do find that very frustrating—that there are these billionaires who are all friendly with one another and not encouraging each other to do anything other than hoard wealth. It feels pretty horrible right now. I’d also throw our president into that mix. I’m alluding to people without trying to trigger anyone.

Is Hitler basically good?

Scott Snibbe: It’s fine. So let’s think about those billionaires we might not feel good about, or the president, if that’s someone you’re not feeling good about. The reason I ask that is: what does it mean to trust someone’s basic goodness when they’re actively hurting you, when you really don’t like them, and what they’re doing?

What are the limits to that view? It sounds like you’ve got a couple triggers yourself, so what do we do?

Lodro: I vacillate between heartbreak and frustration, somewhere in that range. Let’s go to the extreme difficult people. This is one of those behind-closed-doors things I’ll share. We went all the way through the book, and I had a chapter with a pretty provocative title. It went through the editor and copy editor, and then one last editor or proofreader said, “You cannot have this chapter heading. This can’t be the title of your chapter.”

The title was, “What about Hitler?” I know you have Jewish heritage, I have Jewish heritage as well. To be sensitive to people, we changed it to “What about that world-threatening politician?” which softens it. But “What about Hitler?” was the question I got all the time, and still get sometimes.

When you talk about basic goodness—I’ve been teaching meditation for 25 years, with a focus on basic goodness for the last 12 or 14—you get this question a lot. And I would always have to say, the short answer is yes, even Hitler. But I’m not saying he’s a good person or someone worth admiring. I’m saying the opposite.

He was someone so distanced from his basic goodness that he was able to convince himself to do horrible things and that they were right, when clearly they were not. These are people who are trying to make themselves happy and doing incredibly harmful things. They’re incredibly confused about their basic state, distanced from that sense of basic goodness—and the consequences are catastrophic.

How do I work with that? I think looking at them long enough to seek to understand them—not to forgive, but to understand their humanity—is helpful for us and for everyone around us. The idea that everyone possesses basic goodness, it’s really hard to get there with people like that. But when we label someone a villain and start to build a case against them, it doesn’t serve anyone. It just hurts us.

When I was traveling for my second book, Walk Like a Buddha, I was in North Carolina. I gave a talk, and this question came up: “What about Hitler?” I apologized to anyone who might be triggered, but that was the question. I gave a version of this response.

Afterward, I was talking with someone, and she shared a story. She had married a man who had kids from a previous marriage, and she had kids from a previous marriage, a blended family. One of her stepsons fell in with a bad crowd, was doing a lot of drugs, and did something frankly unforgivable, he murdered someone. I won’t get into the details—it was really gruesome and horrible—and he went to jail.

She said, “I was all in on basic goodness until this happened. Then I said, That’s not possible. That’s not within this person.” He was very rough and standoffish with her, but she kept showing up from a loving perspective, as a parent can. At one point, he asked about the family dog, and she noticed a change. They talked about the dog. A month later, he asked for art supplies because he wanted to go back to doing art.

She noticed that when he was not on drugs, when he was not with those people, he started to return to the person she knew. She came back to an understanding of basic goodness, that even this person who had done such a horrible thing was basically good and could be redeemed.

She came back to an understanding of basic goodness, that even this person who had done such a horrible thing was basically good and could be redeemed.

I often think of that story, because it really blew my mind—hearing that from a parent who had gone so far as to say, “This isn’t real,” and then came back from that perspective. That gives me hope for all of us.

Scott Snibbe: Earlier, you said the opposite of anger is love, but Tara Brach said the opposite of anger is curiosity.

Lodro: I love that.

Chögyam Trungpa

Scott Snibbe: Because often we’re like, “Why me? Why did this happen?” And then you see, oh, actually, there is a reason.

I have a question for you. I hope this isn’t too challenging. You write very beautifully about how basic goodness means that even when people act from confusion or cause harm, that doesn’t negate their underlying goodness.

I want to ask you: what about Chögyam Trungpa, your teacher? Because his life included situations where he had heavy alcohol use and sexual relationships with his students. How do you apply your understanding of basic goodness to Chögyam Trungpa himself, and balance the clear power of his teachings and the good he had in the world with some harm that he’s done as well?

Lodro: I have lots of things to say about that. I’ll start with a bit of clarification—not to distance myself in any way. I was born and raised in that tradition, Vajradhatu, which became Shambhala. Then I split off around 2017 or 2018, when I started studying with Tsoknyi Rinpoche and also began studying with the lineage of Thích Nhất Hạnh to some degree. I started looking beyond what I was raised in and really fell in love with a lot of different teachings.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was an incredibly complicated person. When people ask me about him, I often say, talk to someone who was there, because I wasn’t. I don’t have personal stories of experiencing him directly. What I do have is an experience of the power of the teachings he left behind. The written work in particular is really powerful, and I’m inspired by a lot of the good he did in the world.

The way I think about it is like this: when I’m teaching, I’m only a little bit up the mountain. I can look back and say to people at the base, “I’ve been doing this for a while. I can get you up to where I am, let me show you how to navigate this part.” That’s all I can do. Then I study with people who are further up the mountain than me, and they study with people further up than them. We’re all helping each other up the mountain to the best of our ability.

I don’t know where Chögyam Trungpa was on that mountain. I know he was high up enough that I could learn a lot from him, and that his legacy is powerful. I also know there are people who feel harmed. There are outlandish stories, and sometimes those stories get swept under the rug as “crazy wisdom.” Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. I don’t know. But when people say they were harmed, we have to listen and acknowledge that.

I think this is true in all our relationships with teachers—we can acknowledge that they’re human. I’m the first to admit I’m not 100% awake. I’m very human. I’m only this far up the mountain. When we study with people, maybe we don’t put them on an incredible pedestal and say they’re our savior. Instead, we can say, this is someone I can learn from because they’re further along than I am.

That’s my relationship to it. It’s not to excuse or negate harm, but to hold both: there can be incredible power, and there can also be mistakes. The question is whether people learn from them. I can’t speak to his experience—I can only speak to mine. When I’ve felt distance from my basic goodness, I’ve lost myself.

There was a period from 2012 to 2013 where it felt like wave upon wave of samsara came crashing down on me. I lost my job. My fiancée woke up one day and said, “I’m not doing this. I’m moving to Europe.” My best friend passed away. Then a few months later, my father passed away.

I was wracked with grief. I was borderline suicidal. I wasn’t really practicing, or if I was, it was scattered and unfocused. I wasn’t in therapy. I didn’t have much support. I was in my late twenties, and I spiraled. I drank too much. I caused self-harm. I’m sure there are people who feel harmed by me during that time.

What happens then? For me, I had good friends who pulled me out of it—literally. I was in Washington Square Park at night as the rats were coming out, and they yanked me up, took me to a restaurant, and said, “We’re getting you a therapist.” They got me back on the cushion within two weeks.

That helped me start processing things in a healthier way. I drank less. I began to return to who I was. What do we do with all of this? We acknowledge: I’ve made mistakes. Can I learn from them? Can I grow from them?

I’m a big advocate that on the spiritual path, either we hear the dharma perfectly the first time and we’re done—which is rare—or we hear it, act at odds with it, recognize “I messed up,” and then choose not to do that again.

All of these teachers are human. I’m more willing, when I look at the ways I’ve been distanced from my own basic goodness and how I acted, to give them some benefit of the doubt. But the real question is: do we learn?

All of these teachers are human. I’m more willing, when I look at the ways I’ve been distanced from my own basic goodness and how I acted, to give them some benefit of the doubt. But the real question is: do we learn?

Do we try to heal? Do we work with others to heal? If that’s happening, I can look quite fondly on these teachers, while still acknowledging their humanity. I don’t expect them to be completely enlightened or to act perfectly all the time.

What practices helped you get out of your darkest moments?

Scott Snibbe: Did the concept of basic goodness help you at that time, when you were in the gutter—literally in the gutter?

Lodro: Yes and no. I could simultaneously say, “I’m basically good.” It almost felt like—okay, I had already written The Buddha Walks into a Bar. It was out, it was doing well, it was my first book. And I said, Okay, maybe that’s the legacy—I just end it here. Maybe I’ve done the good thing. I’m basically good, I’ve done something that felt helpful, and now I call it.

So yes and no. At that time, I think I was not very in tune with basic goodness. I could acknowledge it here and there, but it felt more theoretical than experiential.

Scott Snibbe: What was it that helped you then? It didn’t sound like basic goodness was working—what worked to bring you back? It sounds like your friends were a big part of it, your relationships.

Lodro: I think that’s another part of it: community. Community is really powerful right now, and a lot of it has been shaken since the pandemic. We got really used to isolating, and even several years later, we’re still finding our way back to each other’s company.

Being in community, being in therapy—it was having enough stable support and encouragement that I felt like I could get back to the cushion in a real way. And for me, that means hours of sitting, as opposed to 10 minutes here and there—not to denigrate anyone’s 10-minute practice, but I needed deep practice to come back. There’s no substituting theory for practice, when it comes to basic goodness.

There’s no substituting theory for practice, when it comes to basic goodness.

Scott Snibbe: How were you meditating at that time? What were the most effective techniques?

Lodro: That’s a good question. I was doing a lot of sadhana practice, but to even do that, I was really doubling and tripling down on basic shamatha—mindfulness of the breath.

For me, basic mindfulness of the breath is a basic goodness practice. It’s like when we recognize something—when we point out the color blue, then we can see blue. If we do that in shamatha practice, we can really see basic goodness for what it is. Even just getting back to basics—yes, I was doing some Vajrayana practices, but a lot of it was really just counting the breath in shamatha.

Scott Snibbe: You mentioned sadhana practice—most people won’t recognize that word. Those are Vajrayana or tantric Buddhist practices where you imagine your best self: what would I be doing if I were enlightened right now? That’s a fundamental basic goodness practice. What if I were my best self right now—how would I feel, how would I act?

Were those practices effective for you at the time? And do you feel that connection between the concept of basic goodness you write about and those imaginative practices?

Lodro: I think sadhana practice is very helpful in that regard. First thing in the morning these days, before I open my eyes, I just flash a Longchenpa guru yoga practice. For people at home, that means visualizing the historic figure Longchenpa, who was a great enlightened being, and remembering the presence of the lineage he embodies: the wakeful beings who have come before.

That’s a moment of—not even inspiration, but recognition—like my nature is not different from his, not different from my teacher’s, not different from the Buddha himself. It’s all one thing. And to start my day from that perspective is actually powerful.

What is “drala”?

Scott Snibbe: You used a term in your book that I wasn’t familiar with, drala, which is a very beautiful idea. I wonder if you could share a little bit about what that is, how we can feel it, how we can be in tune with it, and how it relates to basic goodness.

Lodro: Yeah, this is a Tibetan Buddhist term. Drala is often translated as “energy above aggression.” It’s an energy that exists in our environment and becomes available when we’re really attuned—to the environment and to ourselves. The idea of “above aggression” means that in order to connect with this awake energy, we have to let go of whatever stories we’re telling ourselves—our irritation, resentment, or negativity.

The idea of “above aggression” means that in order to connect with this awake energy, we have to let go of whatever stories we’re telling ourselves—our irritation, resentment, or negativity.

I share this story in the book about a painter, John Morrow. I was at an event in his studio, and he had this beautiful coastal landscape of Mallorca. I asked him, “What made you paint that one?” And he said, “Funny you picked that—that was one of the happiest days of my life.”

He told me that he had been driving around with a friend, another artist, trying to find a place to paint. Every time he suggested a spot, the friend would say, “No, I hate this. I want something else.” They kept driving for hours, and he got more and more annoyed. Eventually, they arrived at this cove—the one in the painting. And he said, “At that point, I had a choice. I could stay with my anger, or I could let it go and appreciate the moment around me.”

He chose to let it go. He spent the day painting, enjoying time with friends. Others joined them, they ate good food, swam, relaxed. He said it became one of the happiest days of his life because he released the aggression and allowed himself to connect to the energy of that moment. That’s drala.

It’s easy to hear that story and think, okay, drala is just nature—you go somewhere beautiful and feel something. And it might be easier to connect with it in nature. For example, when I go into my backyard, there’s a little hill, then it opens into a clearing with a stream, and it just stops the mind. There’s something electric in that moment: that’s drala.

But it’s not just about natural settings. When I walk into the Metropolitan Museum of Art and enter that large atrium, my mind goes quiet in response to the sheer presence of it. That, too, is drala.

Scott Snibbe: You might get it just putting on your favorite song.

Lodro: Absolutely.

The parrot and the forest fire tale

Scott Snibbe: Life is so beautiful. So many of my teachers are constantly saying, “Look, look—everything.” It’s the meal on your plate—it’s extraordinary how that got there and that you get to enjoy it.

I want to talk about something you bring up that relates to modern struggles, like those of activists. You share this famous Buddhist story about the parrot and the forest fire. I wonder if you could tell that story the way you do in the book, and how it relates to the struggles of modern activists.

Lodro: It’s an old Jataka tale, which means it’s a story of a life of the Buddha before he was the Buddha.

The story goes that in this forest lived a parrot, and the forest caught fire and started to spread rapidly. The parrot, having wings, thought, “I’m going to get out of here.” But then she heard the cries of all the other animals in the forest, and, overcome by compassion, she said, “I need to do something.”

So she swoops into a nearby river, soaks her feathers in water, flies back, and shakes droplets over the flames—back and forth, back and forth—trying to extinguish the fire with just drops at a time, even getting burned herself. She’s struggling to save everyone.

In Buddhism, there are different realms, including what’s called a god realm. You can think of divine beings watching this parrot, and they’re saying, “What is this bird doing?” Then Indra, the king of these gods, says, “I want to check this out.” He transforms into a mighty eagle and flies down to meet her. He says, “What are you doing? You’re not making much of a difference. You’re about to get burned alive—get out of here.”

The parrot, completely undeterred, says, “You’re a much bigger bird than I am. I don’t need your advice. I need your help.” Indra is so moved by her courage and conviction that he begins to cry. His divine tears fall onto the forest and extinguish the fire.

I don’t need your advice. I need your help.

Some of the tears fall on the parrot herself, healing her burns and making her feathers grow back in bright colors—which is why parrots are so vibrant. The idea is that the parrot’s courage and compassion didn’t just help save the forest—she became more beautiful as a result.

When I first heard this, I was really moved. When we look at the news, we can feel paralyzed by all the suffering. I certainly feel that way. Then we think, “What small actions am I doing? Is this really making a difference?”

In our house, we compost—does that really help climate change? Maybe not on its own. But it’s one of many small actions that add up. I may not be able to single-handedly stop a war or fix systemic injustice, but I can ask: how can I make a dent from my small corner of the world?

Instead of shutting down or feeling overwhelmed, the parrot overcomes hesitation and does something—even if it risks harm. And she’s not just saving her friends—she’s trying to save all the animals, including those she doesn’t know or even like. The compassion is vast.

There’s also the lesson that the parrot didn’t do it alone. Her small actions inspired something bigger. It’s like posting something meaningful that gets amplified—suddenly it reaches a wider audience.

We live in a world full of opinions, advice, and hot takes. But when things are going wrong, we don’t need more commentary—we need people to roll up their sleeves and help.

We live in a world full of opinions, advice, and hot takes. But when things are going wrong, we don’t need more commentary—we need people to roll up their sleeves and help.

The parrot says, “I don’t need your advice. I need your help.” And if we act from that place, even in small ways, it can inspire others to do the same. It’s like dropping a stone in water. You don’t always know where the ripples will go.

Scott Snibbe: That’s very wise. A lot of things come up for me. One of my favorite quotes is, “The person who says it is impossible should not interrupt the person doing it.”

The person who says it is impossible should not interrupt the person doing it.

Lodro: That’s lovely, yeah.

Why is it important to talk about the good you do?

Scott Snibbe: It’s very wise. I like this connection to activism. I also think of that line—“Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” It’s like, do something. Or at least don’t impede the people doing it.

You also give more specific advice. I had a quote from you—I’ll paraphrase—that shining a light on your contributions is really important, and that sometimes people are shy to talk about the good things they do. People aren’t that shy about criticizing themselves and others.

Can you talk a little bit about that encouragement in your book, and how people can bask in the good that they do, however small? Why is it important to talk about the good we do in the world?

Lodro: I don’t think it’s just, “Oh, when I compost, I’m saving the world.” It’s also how I hold my mind and how I talk to others. They’re all connected. When I’m out here trying to do things I think are helpful, and I meet up with people, and they ask, “What have you been up to?” I might talk about those things instead of everything going wrong in the news. It’s a choice.

However, we hold the mind affects our speech, our body, our actions, everything. It’s important to talk about the good we’re trying to create and to encourage one another. And it comes more naturally the more we lean into it—both in how we hold the mind and in the activities we engage in.

Scott Snibbe: It’s really about understanding the mind, right? That’s the essence of Buddhism—that everything you think, say, or do has an impact, often a very big impact.

If we’re going to be thinking something all day—and often it’s, “I’m annoyed,” or “I don’t like this”—what happens if instead we’re thinking, “I’m fundamentally good”? What effect does that have on your mind, your body, your actions? That’s what your whole book is about. I encourage people to read it, and I really appreciate you coming here to talk about it.

In the next episode, you’re going to lead a meditation. Could you talk a bit about what you’ll be guiding?

Lodro: Based on our conversation, we’ll focus on a basic goodness meditation. It’s not some otherworldly, transcendental experience—it’s about noticing what’s already here, what’s already happening right under our nose.

I’m actually going to innovate a little from what I originally planned. We’ll start with some mindfulness meditation, and then move into an emotions practice that I find very helpful. It’s a kind of “yes, and” practice—like in improv—where we acknowledge emotional content like frustration, heartbreak, or anger, and then widen the scope to also notice the goodness that’s present.

We’ll do both in one short session.

Scott Snibbe: Wonderful. Thank you, Lodro. Thanks for writing this book—and the seven others—and for all the good you’re doing in the world, and for being basically good.

Lodro: Thanks so much for having me on the show. I’m really appreciative of the work that you do.

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