Mindful Chat with Lodro Rinzler - Buddhist Meditation Specialist & 7 Time New York Best Seller Author

Subscriber-only episode

Named one of 50 Innovators Shaping the Future of Wellness by SONIMA, Rinzler's work has been featured in The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Good Morning America, CBS, and NBC. 

He is the author of seven meditation books including The Buddha Walks into a Bar and the brand-new Take Back Your Mind: Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times and the co-founder of MNDFL meditation studios in New York City. 

His books Walk Like a Buddha and The Buddha Walks into the Office have both received Independent Publisher Book Awards. 

Lodro has taught meditation for 20 years in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and travels frequently for his books, having spoken across the world at conferences, universities, and businesses as diverse as Google, Harvard University and the White House. 

Lodro is based in the Hudson Valley of NY where he lives with his wife and their four-legged family of animals. 

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Transcript

Damaris Grossmann: 0:54

Hi, how are you? This is the mindfully integrative shell. This is Dr. Damaris G. And today, we have an amazing guest that I cannot wait for you guys to see and listen to on this podcast. His name is lodro rinzler. He is a Buddhist teacher, a seven, I think maybe eight books he's are in, and mindfulness meditation, many courses, and he can teach each one of you a mindful way. I say mindful way in some aspects, but I think he's really one of those true teachers. So I really appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. Of course, I I was so impressed by your all the things that you've done in your life and how I you know, talk to people about how they've used traditional health and, you know, transitioning into integrative, but I feel like you've been working on this since you were young. I initially start the show kind of saying, Hey, what's a little fun fact that people don't know about you?

Lodro Rinzler: 2:01

Sure. You know, one Fun fact is that I actually I've been practicing Buddhism all my life, I was raised in a Buddhist household, my parents started practicing meditation when they were pretty young. And then by the time I came around, it was just in the household. So I was always, you know, talking to him the other day, though. Well, do you ever feel like you're lucky that you got access told us so early? I think I am he sort of, he said, Are you glad that I you were raised this when it's like I don't really compare it to but I do. Looking back, I realized that it's sort of a blessing to have been exposed to meditation perhaps.

Damaris Grossmann: 2:36

That's, that's really beautiful. I mean, are you an only child, you have other other siblings? I have a half brother and a sister. Yeah, that's really great. Like I find, I'm, I have a new little boy. Now. He's almost one silver winner. And I've been trying to my husband, and I've been trying to bring in more meditation and mindfulness in our life. Because we, and we've always kind of been like that, I would say, you know, grown to learn it. And not necessarily Buddhism, but we felt that we would love to bring that up with our son. So I think it's what can you talk a little bit more on that? I know you, we have a lot to discuss. But can you talk a little bit more about that as a child? How was that? Was it different?

Lodro Rinzler: 3:17

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, because it's the sort of thing where I started meditating when I was about six years old. And I feel very lucky, it was just sort of in the environment. So it was something that I was able to just sort of sink into and try out without there being a lot of pressure, like, this is what you have to do you like that. But the sort of bigger thing, quite honestly, is the philosophy, you know, so my parents were practicing Buddhists, they are practicing Buddhists. And they are one of the views here is sort of, I don't even want to call it view and experience maybe would be a better term, within the Buddhist tradition is that when we meditate, and we actually are able to let go of some of the stories that keep us locked in pain, we acknowledge them, we come into the present moment, what do we discover in the present moment? we find out that inherently, we're already peaceful. There's already calm and wakefulness that exist in the hearing now. And that view that we are fundamentally peaceful, fundamentally wakeful, that we are not fundamentally messed up is actually the most profound part of that whole growing up experience. Because I think so many of us, I know, some people were raised with the idea of original sin, for example, that sort of downplay this. But so many of us have this notion that, like, we're sort of basically messed up. And when something doesn't go our way or something, we make a mistake, that just reinforces the idea that we're bad. And with the view of you know, what some traditions here would call basic goodness, we are inherently fundamentally good whole complete that is that says, okay, sometimes we might act out of some of those confused thoughts. Sometimes we might lose our way and make a mistake. But that's not who we are. That's our fundamental nature being obscured in that moment. We're actually whole complete good. And then sometimes we get confused about that. So I think it's just a completely different view. And you know, you have a child and I know many people who listen your children, I think it's such an interesting experiment, we could say, What if we took the view with our children or, you know, with our nieces or nephews or whoever we have in our life, and treated them as fundamentally good, and whole, and already wakeful? And, you know, when things go awry, that's just something that happened. It's not about who they are. It's such a weird, fine line that I'm drawing in the sand here. But it really does make a fundamental difference in terms of children's self esteem, confidence in themselves. And so

Damaris Grossmann: 6:01

you definitely were raised a good mindful human, you know, from the beginning? And how did that kind of direct you kind of in your life and transition you obviously into the way that you teach as a Buddhist teachings, but also in your books? Like, what, what, how did this all kind of come out when you said I wanted to start writing about what I'm learning what I've learned?

Lodro Rinzler: 6:29

Yeah, I mean, it's a giant leap from there. So I started meditating more regularly, my teens. And then in my early, I guess, late teens, 18 or so I was asked to start teaching meditation by some of my mentors and attended a meditation teacher training, then subsequently attended more, by the time I was when the five I mean, so now we're, you know, I've been teaching a little bit here and there for seven years. At that point. I was looking for something I was looking for a different type of conversation way grown up with, let's put it that way. You know, I think there's so many wonderful Buddhist authors. And at the time, I was perusing a book that had already come out many years before from a teacher knows Pema children was an excellent for people were like, where do I start with meditation, and Buddhism thinks that she's always a good reference resource there. But I was looking through it and the opening stories around her divorce. And I, you know, could relate to some degree because I was going through a big heartbreak at that point, my first sort of like, big relationship falling apart. And I was like, the details here are just different. It's not my midlife crisis is not my divorce. It's my quarter life crisis. What am I going to do with myself at the age of 25? My first big breakup, that's like, who's having those sorts of conversations, and I just couldn't find it out there. So that sparked me to start the conversation. And that led to me writing more online. And then that led to the first book, which was the Buddha walks into a bar Guide to Life for a new generation. And I was writing that 10 years ago at this point, you know, that was a long time ago. So actually held them. And so yeah, I only got those the inspiration, it took me another three years before actually put pen to paper and was under contract to write this book. So I wrote it in my late 20s. And then, yeah, so that was that, yes. But the motivation is that sort of thing that like, I wasn't typing the type of conversations I want to have around Buddhism, specifically how it relates to our day to day life. I think Buddhist philosophy find interested in love. But it's that intersection of how does this affect how I show up for the rest of my life? That's where it gets really interesting for me.

Damaris Grossmann: 8:44

Yeah. Has it been challenging through the years to kind of worried about being all the changes that have happened? I know, you said you have a new recent book, obviously, with a pandemic, and anxiety with that, each time that you've written a new book, have you found new situational things that have come up to guide you into the right like to teach a certain you know, topics?

Lodro Rinzler: 9:14

Yeah, I mean, there is an old, sort of like this threefold way of looking at how we get into some of the teachings.

Unknown: 9:25

And

Lodro Rinzler: 9:27

it's hearing meditating and contemplating so we, some people, they can hear something about these teachings and they just absorb it and they just get it some people meditate and they said, the understanding of it arises in them after hearing it, they can meditate on it, there it is. And then some people contemplate that is 100 sexually measured my life I always joke that in order for me to actually process any of these things, I have to actually see either teach it were more subsequently write a whole book on so actually has your questions. Yes, like I ended up having to go through you know, lots of different things in my life that actually inspired me So like I mentioned the quarter life crisis of what am I going to do with my life and me navigating that then into learning from that actually led to the second book, which was the Buddha walks into the office like actually, not necessarily just mindfulness at work, although that's part of it, but really how do we find and live in our work from a place of intention? And then other books came out of the same sort of thing and including stuff around book I co wrote with a friend Megan Watterson how to love yourself and sometimes other people and then my book right before the most recent one was around heartbreak is Love Hurts Bruce advice for the heartbroken and right before we got on line, you know, actually was on the phone with someone who had read that book and was just like I they emailed me and this is actually a chapter in the book If you feel this way, you can email me and I will write to you, or I will call you depending on where you live. And, you know, we had a lovely conversation because this person is going through a really tough phase around actually feeling like they're going to access love again. And just to have even a stranger and this gets to Yes, you will, was already a big thing. So sorry, I'm jumping around here. But no, no, I think for me, do not be sorry. The the idea of like, now having written a book on heartbreak and trying to be there for people who are going through heartbreak, it came out of my own like deep period of heartbreak and like falling apart. And you know, within a short period of time, broken divorce and losing my job and my best friend dying and the my father dying, it's just like, all the things happen at once. And coming out the other end. Is that element of what did I learn, I was actually talking with my wife about this last night that you know, there's this old saying around being the, like speaking from the scar, not the wound. And the idea here being that it's not like if I was currently going through that period of deep hardship, it would not be appropriate for me to sit down and write a book about it, right? Like, it's, I would basically just be venting, like, here's what I'm going through. But to come out the other end, when at some point that some healing has taken place, and that open wound has closed up. And maybe there's still scars, like it's gone away. But there is still it's like, we can speak from that it's like here is now that I've healed I actually know how to navigate this sort of thing. That's where it actually gets really interesting. What did we learn from these things?

Damaris Grossmann: 12:34

I love that. I mean, I can definitely resonate and understand where you're coming from, because I'm thinking about my own stuff and going Oh, wow. And you think you've come to the other end of it? Or how do I teach others? Or how do I just teach myself? I feel like I'm sometimes in that mindful moments, but then I'm also contemplating and then I'm go back, and, you know, it's probably a steadiness. Are there anything that you'd like to discuss in story wise, I mean, that you've held in one of your books, or that you'd like to share with us today? Yeah. Which book would you like to go? Because I mean, as we talked about, the most recent one is the recent one is, obviously what is that do with the pandemic?

Lodro Rinzler: 13:23

Yeah, so the most recent book is called take back your mind, which is Buddha's advice for anxious times. And that was written it started it shortly before the pandemic, and then I sort of accelerated the writing process during the pandemic, because it just felt like that was something that we needed right now. I, you know, at this point, I run a met online meditation community, where there are people from all over the world that practice with me and study these teachings, and over and over again.

Damaris Grossmann: 13:56

Meditation I love it, I'm gonna I but I, I can't wait to check you out more. So.

Lodro Rinzler: 14:02

Yeah, so the thing that I was seeing over and over again, particularly, what is it march of 2020? You know, meet with meditation students, and they would say, like, So when do you think this is going to be? And it was this sense of not like, I would somehow know, like, somehow, my years of meditation teacher training experience has been translated into like being, you know, scientist or something like that. But it was just like, looking for reassurance. And I think a lot of the things that we ended up discovering during that time is that no one really knew what was going to happen. And it was just uncertain. And as meditation practitioners, we have this chance then to work with uncertainty. Like, could we start to become comfortable with that uncertainty, because there will always be uncertainty in our life. This is not the we've had anyone who's gone on a first date and wondered if they were going to text you back. That's uncertainty. Anyone who, you know, is trying to get approved for a mortgage or anyone who is looking to transition careers and get a new job, any of these sorts of things. It's like, we have moments of deep uncertainty. So how do we navigate? How do we learn to be comfortable with the not knowing, and that's such a hard thing, and yet, it's going to be a part of our life. So, I mean, when we have a book on anxiety, I think that's been part of it. But sort of not knowing quality, what's gonna happen next, one more things we opened, when can I hug my loved one? Any of us it's definitely a challenge. But then what happens when we, for example, get a news report that says that there's a variant that's coming out and things like That, we end up telling ourselves lots of stories. So there's this sort of just briefly talk about the distinction between stress and anxiety, the key be like there's stressful things that happened. This is part of life. That's just the nature of the beast, we will have moments where we wonder, you know, what's going to happen? Our boss emails us and says, Hey, I need to talk to you. You say, Oh, my God, something's wrong and all of that, right? That's just the nature of the beast. What do we do from that moment, we get that stressful email, we have a fight or flight response mode, we have been evolutionarily charged to react. The brain, by the way, cannot tell the difference between a saber toothed Tiger which used to pop out we said, Oh my god, I gotta fight it, or run from it or whatever. And this angry email, the brain hasn't figured out the difference. It's like, it's once it's triggered, is triggered and goes into that, Oh, my God, you know, it's like, that's just natural. It's not wonderful. But it happens to the best of us. Where do we go from there, this is where anxiety close, because we might say, Oh, my gosh, he wants to talk to me. And then we let it go. And we go back into our work. We set the meeting, and we're done. Or we spend every waking moment between now and when we sit down with him saying maybe it's this, maybe it's that maybe it's this thing that I don't even know, he knew, but it just goes on and on. And it's the difference between things happening in our life that causes stress, and us holding ourselves in a state of pain as a result of that. So this is when I talked about take back your mind, or working with this uncertainty. The idea here is that sense of like we can actually choose, like no one is hold the past into, hey, I need to talk to you in between now. And then please hold yourself in a state of pain about what we're going to talk about wondering what's gonna happen. Like that's not in the email. But who then informed us that we should do that we did. We made the choice over and over again, to continue to play out those stories. What if this happens, what if. So, taking back your mind work of meditation, the work of navigating uncertainty is all based in acknowledging some of the stories that emergency, I don't have to chase after that, I don't have to go down that rabbit hole, I could instead do something different. And I could, the different thing is I can come back to the present moment, I could actually really just try something new, and just feel what I'm currently feeling. I could be with the body breathing, I could do any number of things other than tell myself these stories, I can come into a gratitude practice. So the last thing I'll say about this book, is that the idea here is that we are constantly making choices, and that we can train the mind through meditation, and through on the spot techniques, things that we could just do as part of our day to day life. To make better choices to make choices actually feel more meaningful to us.

Damaris Grossmann: 18:57

I I could not agree more with trying to like, have a meaningful moment. As I you know, I say lightly, but you know, it's a lot deeper than when I say mindful way. It I say it lightly, but it's obviously more than that. Would you like to touch a little bit more on another of all your books? and teachings? Was there a time that was the most? Maybe the heart? No, not necessarily the hardest or the most necessary book to write? Yeah, it's a good question. I know, it's not part of everything I was. But I you know, just wondering,

Lodro Rinzler: 19:41

no, no, this is a great question. I mean, I, the two that just feel most relevant at this time would be the last two. So, you know, I think the anxiety book was just because I will admit, and I actually say this in the book itself, that I struggled with anxiety throughout my life, it makes it tough. I mean, you said, How lucky that you've been mindful in your life. I had tools at my disposal to work with my mind whether I always applied them in my day to day life is mixed bag. Sometimes I did sometimes I didn't. So I was someone who has struggled with anxiety throughout my life. But as I mentioned earlier, it's like you didn't just sit down be like, let me list all the tools that have helped me actually ultimately made me apply them more and more and I feeling much relationship than I ever had before. So I do think that was helpful. But then the heartbreak went because the heartbreak was like, I mean, I really just put myself on the table there that, you know, there was this period of time where I very much you know, as I said, everything really fell apart. And it was that gaping wound. It was that sense of like, I was not myself for two years, because of all the things that happened to you. I think was just So if I was a shadow of my former self, I'll say, and then it would took me that time to sort of heal from the various things that happened and the various ways I felt heartbreak. And then I was able to actually share about it, but it was a real process for me to get there.

Damaris Grossmann: 21:07

Right, I'm really sad, I feel like you're talking in a way of like, the love hurts, but now you've come into this place of like, self love and, and you know, this other side. It's hard to always look and have the self like bringing back that self like love to yourself after you've had all that heartbreak or, and such, um, do you have more that you'd like to share with our audience that's coming up with them? You know, I know that you've written so much. And you have a lot of courses and such, is there things that are coming up in your in the next month or two or or just anytime that anyone can reach you? I'll have them in the show notes, too. But sure, yeah, no, I'm just another story.

Lodro Rinzler: 21:54

Yeah, I mean, it's funny, you know, I was worried for a second that you're gonna be like, when's the next book? Because obviously, I have, I have another one in me right now. But I think

Damaris Grossmann: 22:05

I'm just trying to write my own. I'm trying to write one, maybe two, like a collaborative one. And one myself and I, I can only imagine how much it takes because I'm having a struggle myself. So I want to read your book just to get myself some mindfulness. So

Lodro Rinzler: 22:20

yeah, thank you, for those of you and I appreciate it. Yes, but I right now, I'm focusing on a lot of things. In fact, I'm actually going to be offering a course based on the book calling called discovering goodness in our world, that's a free course that actually anyone can sign up for on my website. And it starts in October. And the idea

Damaris Grossmann: 22:39

here is, in the notes, I'm putting everything in the notes, so everyone can reach you at any time. And then when is that one starting?

Lodro Rinzler: 22:48

Yeah, so that starts in October. And again, it's totally free. If people want to follow along in the book, they can purchase the book. And it's based in the idea that you and I talked about earlier that even from my childhood, you know, that sense of? Do we realize, could we actually apply meditation to the extent that we discover a sense of goodness within ourselves? And could we make more of a relationship with that? And then can we begin to view the world through the lens of that goodness, there's so much to know, aggression, there's so much fear mongering, there's so much just divisiveness happening in our world right now. Setting aside I mean, you know, right now, as you and I are recording, you know, there's the word that this sadness, it doesn't necessarily capture the visceral quality of what's happening in Afghanistan, in New Orleans and Haiti. I mean, there's really, so much suffering going on in the world, it's hard to be the world through the lens of business, as opposed to through the lens of fear, poverty mentality, all of these sorts of things. So I think we'll be we'll be experimented with, I think it'd be a really lovely course for us to sort of play with how we view the world and how we can show up from not a place of like, anxiety, but from a place of wholeness, to give the most benefit to the world around us. So that's a better description, I should probably, you know, written that down, as I said it on the website, because, you know,

Damaris Grossmann: 24:17

I'll have the transcript notes, don't worry, diagnosis, EDA, any extra notes on that, so don't worry on the screws, and I'll have, I'll have the shownotes to so a great way to reach you. Do you have Yeah, for that we go, I know that you have many teachings, but one, as I say, mindful way that you can send off to that audience and those watching just a little Dharma from you a little small. Yeah, I mean, I feel like the whole team, a little Sure.

Lodro Rinzler: 24:48

The the main practice that's in the books total, any of the books really is no shamet are calm, abiding meditation, but it's commonly referred to here in the West as mindfulness practice. So we're just becoming mindful for breath. And that is something anyone can do to take an upright and relaxed posture to connect with the body breathing and its natural state, no need to change. And then we notice these thoughts come up anxiety, thoughts, the thoughts around what if we acknowledge them and we come back to the breath. It is a very straightforward practice. I think it's helpful to do courses and things like that connect with teachers live, to get going with the practice, because sometimes it's hard and we need extra support. But it's very simple practice when we get into it. And even when we find flaws in really strong, what if sports things. It could be helpful just to take three deep breaths, through the nose, out through the mouth, nervous system to break from that story. Time that helps us enter the present crash Well, thank you so much for your time today. My pleasure, really, thank you so much for having me on.

Damaris Grossmann: 26:00

And I look forward to speaking to you again and having you on the show again or maybe in our conference and maybe we'll do a collaborative something. So I really looking forward to having on the mindfully integrative show, and thanks again for your time. My pleasure. Thanks so much. All right. Bye.