General & Miscellaneous Religion, Personal Growth, Buddhism

The Dude and the Zen Master

Name: The Dude and the Zen Master
Author: Jeff Bridges
ISBN: 9780399161643

by Jeff Bridges, Bernie Glassman

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Overview

The New York Times bestseller from Academy award-winning actor Jeff Bridges and Zen leader and author of Bearing Witness, Bernie Glassman.
Zen master Bernie Glassman compares Jeff Bridges’s iconic role in The Big Lebowski to a Lamed-Vavnik: one of the men in Jewish mysticism who “are simple and unassuming, and so good that, on account of them, God lets the world go on.” His buddy Jeff puts it another way. The wonderful thing about the Dude, he says, is that he’d always rather hug it out than slug it out.
For more than a decade, Academy Awardwinning actor Jeff Bridges and his buddhist teacher, renowned Roshi Bernie Glassman, have been close friends. Inspiring and often hilarious, The Dude and the Zen Master captures their freewheeling dialogue about life, laughter, and the movies with a charm and bonhomie that never fail to enlighten and entertain. Throughout, their remarkable humanism reminds us of the importance of doing good in a difficult world.

About the Author, Jeff Bridges

Jeff Bridges is an Oscar-winning actor, performer, songwriter, and photographer. He is a cofounder of the End Hunger Network and the national spokesman for Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.

Bernie Glassman founded the Zen Community of New York, which later became Zen Peacemakers, an international order of social activists. A longtime Zen teacher, he also founded the Greyston Mandala, a network of for-profits and not-for-profits creating jobs, housing, and programs to support individuals and their families on the path to self-sufficiency.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

"The dude" of the title is Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges' "the Zen master" is Bernie Glassman, the Buddhist mentor who changed Bridges' life. This inspiriting book consists of their dialogues about the life lessons they share.

The New York Times - Mark Oppenheimer

…this meandering exchange is likable because Mr. Bridges and Mr. Glassman are likable, and smart, and interesting…

Publishers Weekly

Actor Bridges engages in a philosophical dialogue with friend and Zen master Glassman, an aeronautical engineer and mathematician in his early years, for an easy, fun read that poses some serious questions. The presentation is light-hearted and analogies are frequent; in discussing a fear of taking action, Glassman invokes "Joe, the centipede with a hundred legs, trying to figure out which leg to move first." Later, Glassman recommends a musical approach to dealing with change: "Bear witness to the voices and the instruments-whether it's a jazz band or life-and then move with them, flow with them, because in life you're always in a band and you're always swinging." The Zen influence means a lot of nature imagery, with "Leaves turning, flowers popping open, rain falling on a leaf," but it's not cheap spirituality. Both men are involved in programs to promote peace and defeat hunger and they share stories of community artists, Holocaust survivors, and even Bridges's long-time stand-in. Recognizing that frustration results from expectations, they say, "Work with whatever you have and make something beautiful." Lest it all get too lofty, Glassman recalls his judo master's advice: "When you get into trouble, the best judo defense is to run."
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Kirkus Reviews

A rambling conversation on all things Zen between the mystic-minded movie star and his spiritual teacher. As the title suggests, this book targets (and might most please) the ardent cult attracted to The Big Lebowski, the movie that gave Bridges (Pictures, 2006) his iconic role. He explains of the book's genesis, "So…my friend Bernie Glassman says to me one day, ‘Did you know that the Dude in The Big Lebowski is considered by many Buddhists to be a Zen master?' " The two proceed to explore one of the movie's signature lines, "The Dude abides," from every possible perspective, punctuated by anecdotes from Bridges' film career and personal life and spiritual sagacity from Glassman (Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen, 2002, etc.). Perhaps the most revelatory is a close reading of "Row, Row, Row, Your Boat," where even readers who have heard it thousands of times before will understand "gently," "merrily" and "life is but a dream" with fresh ears. Some of the rest belabors the obvious, suffers from cliché and hippie vernacular, and even borders on self-parody. When Bridges talks about fan letters, most of which he doesn't answer and then occasionally feels guilty, Glassman advises, "You need to befriend Jeff. It's got nothing to do with the letters. You've got to befriend the fact that Jeff can only do so much….The Dude does not get angry with himself for all the things he's not doing. He befriends the self." Bridges makes it a point to distinguish himself from that role, though sometimes he wishes he could be more like the Dude. He writes things like, "Dig is beyond understand. I like digging where I am and what I'm doing, I like jamming with myself." May lead readers to plenty of better introductions to Zen. You dig?