by Jeff Bridges
No is beautiful. It clears the way for a yes. If you feel no and you don’t express it, it just festers inside and gets expressed unskillfully. The freedom to say no, on the other hand, helps you experiment, open up a little more.
BERNIE: You’re dealing with the hunger in you. You’re feeding and taking care of it, so you feel better, which also makes the world around you feel better.
JEFF: [singing] We are the world . . .
BERNIE: That world is no other than us. When you made Lebowski, did you think that there would be so many people learning from the Dude? The worlds we create are way beyond anything we imagine, and the same goes for the effects we have on life. Every time we take care of some piece that we have a little resistance to—it’s going to take too much of my time, it scares me—we become more whole, more alive. We’ve dealt with stuff that’s been bugging us consciously or unconsciously, and it’s not bugging us anymore. As we do that, we help the whole interconnected life be less bugged. Something else will come up soon, and that’s okay because that’s how we keep growing. We’re taking care of everything, whether we’re aware of it or not; it’s what we call cosmic resonance. When we take care of something we think is just in us, we’re affecting the whole world. With every little step we take, we’re affecting everything and everyone.
Now, you talked about all the love you’re getting, so let me ask you: What do you do with the hate?
JEFF: My experience is that most of the hate that comes at me comes from myself. I judge myself, You should be, you could be, you know.
BERNIE: I think you’ve got to honor that piece, too, and the best way of doing that is acknowledging: That’s your opinion, man. You don’t judge it as something bad, you don’t have to call it hate or love; it’s just another opinion. That’s how you honor it.
15.
SAY, FRIEND, YA GOT ANY MORE OF THAT GOOD SARSAPARILLA?
JEFF: When I turned sixty, I read the Buddhist Five Remembrances. Let’s see if I can remember them:
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.*
These Remembrances had a lot of resonance for me. When you’re young, you feel like you’re going to live forever, so you don’t think about those things. Now you do. You don’t let them stop you or give you the blues; they can even inspire you, if you know what I mean.
BERNIE: You’re reciting some of the things that happened to Shakyamuni Buddha when he left the palace grounds for the first time.* He saw somebody who was sick, someone who was old, and finally somebody who’d died, a little like what these Remembrances are trying to remind you. But those meetings instilled some deep questions in him: What’s at the bottom of all of this? What’s this life about? I don’t know if that’s what happened to you. Realizing you’re going to die can give you the freedom to be born again.
JEFF: There’s a little guy inside saying, You’re going to kick outta here pretty soon. You wanna do some stuff, and what you do will have consequences. Consequences are a kind of immortality. All the things that you love are going to change; you’re going to lose them one way or another.
BERNIE: It makes them all of a sudden very dear.
JEFF: Not only the things you love, but also the things you don’t love, because you know they’re going to go, too. I’m of the nature that I’ll get sick. I can feel my health going in a gentle kind of way, but it doesn’t bum me out so much. If I was younger, I think I would have reacted differently.
BERNIE: I’m of the nature that I will die. Imagine really grokking that when you’re younger. Imagine if we could live our whole life that way: Hey, I’m going to die, so let’s live! The things I’m surrounded by are going to change and disappear, so let me enjoy their beauty as they are right now.
JEFF: Remembering that the stuff that we do has ramifications and that everything is connected.
BERNIE: The word karma has entered our Western vocabulary. It means that everything has consequences. That implies that everything is interconnected. Touch a little thing and it ripples throughout the universe, it affects everything.
JEFF: I’m older and I’m open to scaling down, selling the house we live in now and getting something smaller. There’s something great about that, but it also means that the game is kind of over. I sense these two impulses. One says, Do, do, do, achieve, achieve, achieve. The other says, Ssssshhhh, please relax. Do you want to spend the rest of your life doing some sort of never-ending homework assignment? Ssssshhhh . . .
There’s a tale I relate to that goes back to Greek mythology, about the nymph Daphne, whom the god Apollo falls in love with. She doesn’t want him and runs away, but Apollo keeps coming: You don’t understand who I am, baby. I am the guy who’s the king of all art, medicine, poetry, and all that stuff; you don’t know what you’re missing. But she doesn’t want all that, it’s too intense for her, so she goes to her father and says, Dad, here’s the deal. This god wants me. He’s coming after me, talking about all this stuff and all this drama, but I just don’t want it, you know, it’s too much, I want simplicity. Look at that beautiful tree, it doesn’t have to worry about any of this. There’s nothing extra, no separation anywhere, it’s just a tree. And her father, a demigod himself, says, “Fine,” and turns her into a laurel tree.
Working on my movies, getting married, having kids, doing my music—that’s the stuff Apollo talks about. At some point you start cutting down to live simpler. You’ve done your thing, it’s getting time to die. Every time you take a large step, like marriage, it takes you closer to that last step. And I notice that I’m feeling this sense of Come on, realize all the things you want to realize, because pretty soon you won’t be here, so do it now.
I’m in the process of writing a song. I do it like I do the little heads, I don’t think too much about the words, they just come out and then I wonder what they mean. I remember meeting the artist Mayumi Oda at your Symposium for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism. I looked at her gorgeous prints and asked her, “How do you do this?” And her answer was, “It’s like I’m already dead.”
I relate to that in a big way. It’s not like I know I’m gonna die, which is the hopeless, rote way of looking at it, like Nobody gets out of here alive. I think what she meant was that it gives her a place to act from, a carefreeness that maybe she didn’t have before. You’re going to go anyway, so you no longer have to be afraid of failing or what people think about you, or any of that. I noticed that with my mom and other people who got old. You’re getting there yourself, how old are you now?
BERNIE: I’m young, I’m seventy-three.
JEFF: You’re a baby, man. But older folks like my mom didn’t give a shit. There was no time for mincing any words, just: This is it. And there’s something beautiful and kind of relaxing about that.
Here’s the song I’m working on:
I’m living like I’m already dead.
Like I’ve said what I’ve said.
Like I am what I am.
Like Popeye and my mom,
Like my dad and this song.
I’m gone, and here I come again.
I’m living like I’m already dead.
Juggling diamonds and lead.
Jumping over the sky.
And I don’t care if I can sift through all this sand.
Cuz I’m gone, and here I come again.
I’m living like I’m already dead.
Turning black and white to red.
My kids know that I love ’em.
And I’ve done what I do.
Magically, I found you.
I
’m gone, and here I come again.
I don’t know where I’m going with it. It conjures up a feeling of being here and not being here, so you might as well do what you need to do.
Gone, gone, gone. How does that go?
BERNIE: Gaté, Gaté, Paragaté, Parasamgaté. It’s a mantra at the end of the Heart Sutra. Gone, gone, completely gone, gone beyond.
JEFF: What is that about?
BERNIE: It means gone to the other shore. But again, the other shore is right under our feet, so it’s back to: Row, row, row your boat.
JEFF: Live your life, only this time live it as if you’re gone or not there, as if you’re already dead.
BERNIE: In Zen, when we push people to realize the state of not knowing, completely letting go, we’ll use phrases like You’ve got to kill yourself, or You’ve got to die on the cushion. What we really mean is that you have to get into the state of The Dude is not in. It’s a little like you say, live as if you’re gone, live without attachment to who or what Jeff is. But at the very instant that you die you must get reborn in order to do things. That could be what you were alluding to when you talked about your mother, who had no patience for nonsense anymore. You do things as if you’re already dead, which means that you can do a lot. In some way, that can really empower you to be whatever you want to be.
You could have also done that much earlier in your life, say at the age of five: Man, I’ve lived a whole five years. I’ve lived my life, and now I can do whatever I want. You could do that at the age of twenty: I’ve lived a whole twenty years; I’ve lived my life and now I can do what I want. You can live your life like that whenever you wish; you don’t have to wait till you get old.
JEFF: What is living your life? Is it doing what you want?
BERNIE: For me, it’s doing what comes up, like the jazz band. It’s not just you or me, and it’s not just everybody else, it’s the vibe of the whole scene. But you’re your main instrument and you’re doing your thing completely. You’re not thinking twice, you’re not saying, Hey, I shouldn’t play this riff or I gotta think about it. You’re jamming. Things happen, life happens, and you’re jamming.
JEFF: You get in the zone and you’re gone, but something’s coming through you somehow.
But all this is just our opinion, man.
BERNIE: Exactly, it’s just our opinion.
JEFF: This is fun, Bern. Enjoyed the hang.
BERNIE: So, Jeff, do you think we’ve been rowing our boat merrily down the stream?
JEFF: Can’t help but, Bernsky.
BERNIE: We haven’t gotten into any fistfights.
JEFF: No, no.
BERNIE: Or stuff like that. It’s been great jamming with you.
JEFF: I’ll say. [singing] Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.
BERNIE: [singing with Jeff] Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream.
JEFF: Now let’s do it as a round. You start.
BERNIE: Row, row, row your boat. [in a round]
JEFF: Row, row, row your boat. [laughter] I fucked up! [laughter] Life is but a dream! [laughter]
BERNIE: That was great. Let’s do it again sometime.
JEFF: Yeah.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BERNIE: It was fun hanging, but it seems like there were a lot of other folks also hanging around to make this happen.
JEFF: Yeah, I’m feeling a bunch of gratitude bubbling up. First, to the Brothers. They created the whole thing. Before we started this project, I gave Joel Coen a call and asked him if it would be okay with him and Ethan for us to do this. I wanted to make sure that we weren’t pissing on their turf and that they knew what we were up to, and he said go for it. He gave us their blessing. Without that I wouldn’t have done this.
And what about our lady friends?
BERNIE: Yeah man, our partners.
JEFF: Your lady friend, Eve, really pulled all our words together to make a book out of them. You know, in music, all the musicians get together to make their music, but they need a producer to make sense out of it all, and that’s what Evie did for us.
BERNIE: And where would you be without Sue, man? She’s prominent not only in this book but in your whole life. She gives you the space to be where you want to be and do what you want to do.
JEFF: Yeah, keeping to the whole “rowing your boat” metaphor, without her I’d be up the creek without a paddle.
And speaking of family, I got to thank my brother Beau, sister Cindy, daughters Isabelle, Jessie, and Hayley, my parents, everyone in my family—living and dead—who’re still holding me.
BERNIE: I want to really say thank you to Alan Kozlowski for being such an important part of the hang in Montana. He wired us for sound and took some amazing photos. And don’t forget the wonderful team you got working with you.
JEFF: How can I forget? David Schiff, Bob Wallerstien, Jean Sievers, Becky Pedretti, and my daughter Jessie, who’s been my assistant on the last three movies. And what about your team, Bern?
BERNIE: Ike Eichenlub, the great Dudist fact-checker, made sure we got that brilliant dialogue straight. And Peter Cunningham, who’s photographed me on my journeys for over thirty years, did the same for this book journey. And we were lucky to work with David Rosenthal and Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press!
JEFF: They had the faith, stupidity, and patience to work with us.
BERNIE: I deeply appreciate my teachers, not just in Zen but also in the world of math, who encouraged me to take all this esoteric stuff and put it into street language. Nobody better than the Dude for that. And I especially have to thank Yogi Berra, Groucho Marx, and Lenny Bruce for their help with my koan practice.
JEFF: And to Billy Shore and Jerry Michaud, who continue holding the torch to end hunger in our country, and—you know, Bern, we got to thank the whole world!
BERNIE: Yeah, we got to attach the Encyclopaedia Britannica to this page.
JEFF: Not just everyone who’s ever lived but also all the people who haven’t been born yet, because they’re kind of pulling us along, you know?
BERNIE: And also to those who will never be born.
Hey Jeff, let’s go bowling.
JEFF: Nah, let’s go smoke a cigar.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jeff Bridges is an Oscar-winning actor, performer, songwriter, and photographer. He is a co-founder 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 their path to self-sufficiency.
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 Master’s Lessons in Living a Life That Matters by Bernie Glassman and Rick Fields
Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s 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
* Ethan and Joel Coen wrote and directed The Big Lebowski, released in 1998.
* Matthew 25:45.
* In Zen Buddhism, a person who, motivated by compassion, vows to work for the complete enlightenment of all beings.
* Exodus 3:14.
* Linji Yixuan said, “Behold the puppets prancing on the stage, and see the man behind who pulls the strings.”
* Bernie Glassman was an aeronautical engineer who worked in the 1960s and 1970s on designing manned missions to Mars.
* Cinematograp
her Alan Kozlowski, songwriter John Goodwin, and acoustical designer and musician Chris Pelonis.
* Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, doing deep prajna paramita, perceived the emptiness of all five conditions and was freed of pain.
* Jon Kabat-Zinn is a professor of medicine who, through his work on mindfulness-based stress reduction, has brought mindfulness into the medical mainstream as a way to help people cope with illness, pain, stress, and anxiety.
* Both the Dude and Bernie Glassman like to smoke cigars.
* Among the Buddha’s foremost teachings, saying in essence:
a. life is suffering;
b. suffering arises from attachment or desire;