The Dude and the Zen Master
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- ¥1,800
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- ¥1,800
Publisher Description
The perfect gift for fans of The Big Lebowski, Jeff Bridges's "The Dude", and anyone who could use more Zen in their lives.
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.” Jeff puts it another way. “The wonderful thing about the Dude is that he’d always rather hug it out than slug it out.”
For more than a decade, Academy Award-winning 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 and remarkable humanism in a book that reminds us of the importance of doing good in a difficult world.
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."
