Jeff Bridges - The Dude and the Zen Master

ALSO BY JEFF BRIDGES

Pictures by Jeff Bridges

ALSO BY BERNIE GLASSMAN

Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen by Bernie Glassman

Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Masters Lessons in Living a Life That Matters by Bernie Glassman and Rick Fields

Bearing Witness: A Zen Masters Lessons in Making Peace by Bernie Glassman

On Zen Practice: Body, Breath, and Mind by Bernie Glassman and Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi

Hazy Moon of Enlightenment: On Zen Practice III (Zen Writings Series) by Bernie Glassman and Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi

On Zen Practice (Zen Writings Series) by Bernie Glassman and Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins St., Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright 2013 by Zen Peacemakers Inc. and Jeff Bridges

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bridges, Jeff, date.

The Dude and the Zen master / Jeff Bridges and Bernie Glassman.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-60075-7

1. Big Lebowski (Motion picture). 2. Philosophy in motion pictures. 3. Zen BuddhismDoctrines. 4. Conduct of life. I. Glassman, Bernard (Bernard Tetsugen). II. Title.

PN1997.B444B75 2012 2012037782

791.43'72dc23

Photographs by Alan Kozlowski

Photograph by Jeff Bridges

To all the hungry spirits

CONTENTS

JEFFS INTRODUCTION

So... my buddy 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?

I said, What the fuck are you talkin bout, man?

He said, Oh yeah.

I said, You gotta be kidding. We never talked about Zen or Buddhism while we were making Lebowski. The brothers never said anything about that.

Yeah, laughed Bernie, just look at their namethe Koan brothers.

Koans are Zen stories that only make sense if you can see that life and reality are different from your opinions about them. Most of the famous ones were written in China a long time ago.

Bernie went on: The Big Lebowski is filled with koans, only theyre in the parlance of our time, to quote the Dude.

What are you talkin about, man? What do you mean? I asked him.

Its filled with em, like: The Dude abidesvery Zen, man; or The Dude is not inclassic Zen; or Donny, youre out of your element, or That rug really tied the room together. Its loaded with em.

Really? I said.

Now, my buddy Bernie is a Zen master himself. In the early sixties he left his job as an aeronautical engineer at McDonnell Douglas to study at the Zen Center of Los Angeles with his teacher, Maezumi Roshi, a great Japanese master who helped bring Zen to this country. Bernie became one of the first American teachers. He not only started the Zen Peacemakers, he also built homes for homeless families, child-care centers, housing and medical treatment for folks with AIDS, and companiesincluding a big bakeryto hire people who didnt have jobs. That bakery won an award one year for best New York cheesecake and now makes brownie products for Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream. Hes considered a major player in socially engaged Buddhism around the world.

I met Bernie at a dinner thrown by a neighbor of mine for him and Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now and many other wonderful books. I sat between these two guys and had a great time. Bernie and I really hit it off; we both cared about a lot of the same stuff.

This is where Lebowski comes in. Bernie has been interested for some time now in making Zen more accessible to our times and culture, relevant and down-to-earth, and he felt that Lebowski did that big-time. So he asked me if I wanted to write a book about that.

I said, Okay.

So heres what we did. We went up to my ranch in Montana with our fellow jamster, Alan Kozlowski, and jammed for five days. Alan was the photographer/recorder cat; he recorded our dialogue, took pictures, gave his opinions, etc. After that we went home. Bernies wife, Eve, started working with the transcripts. We met some more, hung out on the phone and on Skype, tweaked some things, and... here it is.

To me, this book is sort of like a snakeskin. A snakeskin is something you might find on the side of the road and make something out ofa belt, say, or a hatband. The snake itself heads off doing more snake stuffgetting it on with lady snakes, eating rats, making more snakeskins, et cetera.

I look at movies the same way. The final movie is the snakeskin, which can be pretty interesting and valuable. The snake is what happens while were making the moviethe relationships, the experience. I try to open wide and get really connected with the people Im working withthe director, the cast, the production crewall of us cooking in a safe and generous space, trying to get the job done. And we have to get that fire going as soon as we can, because our time together is finite, two or three months, maybe six. Thats all the time weve got to come up with what we intend. Or, every once in a wonderful while, with something that transcends all our desires and intentions. I love it when that happens, and it does quite often because of all the unknowns involved. I think thats why Im still making movies.

The actual snake of this book was the hang, the jam, with Bernie, Eve, Alan, and everyone else who helped. It was the chance to dance, create, be intimate, and be free.

So, here it is. Hope you dig it.

Hopes interesting, isnt it? I cant turn hope off, its hopeless.

Jeff Bridges, Santa Barbara, California

BERNIES INTRODUCTION

All my life Ive been interested in expressing my truth in ways that almost anyone can understand. A famous Japanese Zen master, Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, said that unless you can explain Zen in words that a fisherman will comprehend, you dont know what youre talking about. Some fifty years ago a UCLA professor told me the same thing about applied mathematics. We like to hide from the truth behind foreign-sounding words or mathematical lingo. Theres a saying: