That rug really tied the room together.
January 15, 2013 12:39 PM Subscribe
The Dude and the Zen Master is a new book by actor
Jeff Bridges and Zen teacher and activist
Bernie Glassman, in which the two men spend several days on a Montana ranch discussing the connections between the Dude in "
The Big Lebowski" and common Buddhist teachings.
Bridges and Glassman recently sat down for a brief interview to promote the book on "
The Today Show," and Bridges made Jon Stewart a Zen master on "
The Daily Show" by giving him a red clown nose. While a guest on NPR's "
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!," Bridges described his reaction to Glassman's claim that in many Buddhist circles, the Dude is considered a Zen master ("What are you talking about, man?"). In the same interview, he admits that the "rug" line is one of his favorite
koans from the film. Additional coverage in the
L.A. Times; reviews of the book from the
New York Times, the
A.V. Club, and
Kirkus.
In the book's introduction, Bridges equates it with a snakeskin:
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 of – a belt, say, or a hatband. The snake itself heads off doing more snake stuff – getting it on with lady snakes, eating rats, making more snakeskins, et cetera… The actual ‘snake’ of this book was the hang, the jam, with Bernie 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.
Here's the publisher's description (via Amazon):
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 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 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.
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posted by bwerdmuller at 12:41 PM on January 15