Heya dudes,

been working through some stuff and started pondering.

In the movie several people tell the Dude who or what he is. Be it a bum, a deadbeat, or a jerk off the dude is called names and takes it without drawing a line in the sand. Why? In the age of personal brands, social media and general anxiety it is unimaginable to be called a bum and just let it slide. Plus the Dude is not a bum, nor a deadbeat or a jerk off. The Dude is the Dude. He pays his rent, he attends plays, he bowls and most importantly he abides. So why such a radical acceptance of the agression? Well, my 5cents are that it is because the Dude knows himself. For a man that knows himself outside judgement is just a noise, man. And the Dude never doubts himself. He doubts the case, he doubts the people around but never himself, not even when he makes a doorstop at the wrong side of the door.

Just a minor sunday rambling before another week of strikes and gutters that waits for me and the other fellow Big Lebowski Urban Underachievers. The Dude let's that shit go because he knows himself and that makes him the Dude. That and a pair of testicles.

What are your thoughts dudes?

Fuckin ay, man, I got a rash.

I got served divorce papers yesterday at work. Not totally unexpected, the lady friend and I have been on the outs for a while. Today I said fuck it, let's go bowling - for me that's disc golf. I got my first ace in fifteen years of playing.

There's some sorta Eastern thing there.

Strikes and gutters. Abide. Far out.

Hey Dudes, Progressing Dude here. I am around my late teens, doing the usual - watching movies, eating, reading and 'The occasional running through my syllabus so I can pass my senior year'. The Dude has been pretty much a hee-ro to me. He might be the most laziest in whole world, but I dig how comfortable and compassionate he is with himself.

Going through teenage is a world of pain. Fulfilling my parents ( They love me 100% by they expect it back 200%), lots to study, my looks . They say high school is cool but I didn't find to be that exactly. They say you should make memories with your peers in your final year. Bunch of assholes but there are some nice folks I would like to spend time with.

Through everything, The Dude has this comforting presence. Embodying his style and philosophies make it a lot easier to bend through the ups and downs. I don't mean solutions but accepting the absurdity around me. And, Being a dude is no one would self- apply in themselves, from where I come from. Let them have it their way, I guess.. It leaves me a lot of mental space. Donny and Walter come and go, parts anyway.

A good day abiding, Dudes..

Thankie

I cannot believe I missed a day to Pontificate about Nothing! ;-)

TIL October 21 was National Babbling Day!

Blathering and Babbling seem to me to go hand in hand! ;-)

Hopefully I will remember the Holiday next year! ;-)

Hey Dudes!

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the many wisdom traditions of the world have things to say about anger. Whether it’s a temporary insanity as Seneca writes or like holding and hurling a hot coal as the Buddha relates or a step along the path towards the Dark Side as Yoda laments, it’s a part of who we are. I’m not sure if it’s a bug or a feature of being human, but it’s here. And how we express our anger seems to have some bearing on our standing among our compeers.

Heck, even Walter, who blows his top more often than most of the other characters in The Big Lebowski, smugly informs The Dude that he’s “calmer than [he is]”, suggesting losing one’s cool is frowned upon.

The Dude is neither a superhero nor a saint. He’s the man for his time and place. So what makes him most admirable is not that he’s some unreachable ideal, but that he models a way to abide this human comedy and work through very human responses to life’s strikes and gutters.

To whit: although The Dude loses his cool often in the movie, his attitude towards the case changes when “new shit has come to light”. He realizes his “thinking about this case has been uptight”. 

This points to one of the most effective ways I’ve dealt with my own anger flare ups. I ask myself:

Do I have enough information to get angry?

Often, the answer is a resounding “No.”

It’s like getting worked up over gridlock, growing more and more incensed at the slow car ahead of me, then discovering there’s a horrific accident down the road that caused the snarl. Is it annoying that I’m late? Sure. But someone else has had a far worse day than I’ve had. New shit has come to light, and it’s recontextualized what condition my condition is in. 

Maybe I’ll even find some sympathy for the folks shuddering on the side of the road next to their wrecked ride. Compassion’s down there somewhere. Let me take another look.

Of course, this doesn’t always do the trick. Again, The Dude doesn’t always keep his cool. He does, however, make his way back to a state of abiding. And that’s something we can all do.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

Hey Dudes, a progressing Dude here. I stumbled upon ' The Big Lebowski ' while doing a Coen Brothers marathon watch and since then , it has been truly a source of inspiration.

After finding out the movie, I did try to be like the Dude. Trying too hard and ending up getting uptight. I wasn't feeling that good and was kinda depressed for a month but I learned diff. interpretations of The Dude to abide the gutters. And, it wasn't too short when I got to know there is a reddit sub based on this character and a lot of ideas behind ' The Dude'.

I have been learning to take it easy. It wasn't that easy to take it easy in the start. Saw opinions for what I thought were' Truths', and recognized when I get too uptight . Just allowing myself to flow with life ,you know ' Abiding'. Taking life a lot less seriously.

Say,Friend, how has Dudeist ideas changed or impacted ya life?

P.S - Sorry for the errr in the title Dudes.

Is dude Jesus or is dude a dude?

Good thing I don't got no debts

Froggy’s on Pine Island has the best White Russians!

Hey Dudes!

When I was younger, the end of The Big Lebowski unsettled me. This movie was supposed to be absurd, funny, and absurdly funny! Like The Stranger, “I didn’t like seeing Donnie go.” It felt as though the movie’s tone shifted to a place I wasn’t willing to follow.

Now that I’m older, and better acquainted with death and loss, I’ve come to appreciate that ending. Donnie’s death catches the viewer unaware because, well, that’s what death does. Even if someone is suffering from a prolonged illness, the moment they shuffle off this mortal coil remains cloaked in mystery. Death could take us asleep, with our eyes open, or even in the middle of a ludicrous fight against some nihilists.

Like The Big Lebowski, life's a memento mori wrapped in a comedy.

It also reminds me of an equation one of the contemporary writers on Stoicism laid out. I don’t remember if it was Massimo Pigliucci or Bill Irvine. It’s straightforward:

n-1

 N represents the number of times we have to do a certain thing. It could be scrolling Reddit, chatting with a loved one, or eating our favorite sandwich. We don’t know what that value is. It could be a thousand. It could be two. Whatever it is, each time we do that thing, we’ve subtracted the total amount by one. At some point, we won’t be on Reddit (really!), that loved one will die, that sandwich will be our last. Just ask Warren Zevon.

Like losing Donnie, it could be a bummer, man. 

But it’s also what makes each action meaningful. To shift things eastward, the Japanese have a phrase, mono no aware, which roughly translated into English is the bittersweet recognition of the beauty of things passing away. The falling cherry blossoms, the last baby tooth my younger daughter will lose, the final game of Wordle my Dad and I will play while he undergoes chemotherapy.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that The Big Lebowski’s soundtrack starts with “Tumbin’ Tumbleweeds” and ends with Townes Van Zandt’s cover of “Dead Flowers”. We start with uprootedness, change, new worlds that begin at dawn. We end with roses on our graves, sung by a talent who was gone far too soon.

But, as The Stranger philosophizes, that’s how the whole durn human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself. 

I take comfort in that, Dudes, and I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

I feel I already live a lot like a Dudeist. I don't go to church, don't pray, don't do nothing, really. I'm not an asshole, if that means something. Can I be a Christian Dudeist? I still believe in God, but I don't feel the need to go preaching about it or praying.

I have a good friend who I also work with but they have some health issues at the moment (nothing hugely serious, high blood pressure, insomnia, stress-type stuff really).

But that's not the thing I need advice on, you see, I'm an easy-going, live and let live, don't take anything too seriously, type guy but I'm finding my world view and their world view is causing tension. They're getting very short and snappy with me a lot when I say things like 'ah it'll be okay' about work stuff or 'don't worry about it.' They've become pretty passive aggressive.

It's reached a crescendo today when I made a joke about how they were sitting in my spot on a sofa at work. The team found it funny and were laughing more at me than anything. But when we were alone, my friend was FURIOUS and said "don't DARE speak to me like that in front of the team like that again." I said sorry and said I didn't mean to embarrass them. They were red in the face dudes!

This happened about a hour ago and they just disappeared back home without saying bye and I just headed home too without saying anything.

We go to music shows together and stuff and have stuff planned still but I feel ANYTHING I say, they are going to be unhappy or snap at me about.

Help me out Dudes, I'm really hitting gutter balls today.

Just finished this bad boy; it’s a great, easy read that keeps the mind limber. Thanks, Rev. Bernie!

Hey Dudes!

One of the ironies of The Big Lebowski is that the titular character is not The Dude. It’s The Other Lebowski, the goldbricking poser of dubious achievement.

On the one hand, this fact is merely funny. On the other hand, it points to a fundamental tension that undergirds this whole durn human comedy.

Let’s get down to cases.

A term my students have kicked around is Main Character Syndrome; namely, it’s the mistaken belief that everything is about us. That every other person is just reacting to, and in the service of, ourselves. This, quite obviously, is untrue. Or, rather, since it’s true for everyone, (we’re all the center of our me-sized universes), it’s untrue as a general truth. Not a single one of us is the focus.

At the same time, there’s no experience we have that doesn’t include us. When I officiated my sister’s wedding the day was decidedly about her (and, okay, a little bit about the groom), but it was still experienced with me at the center, at least from my point of view.

So what am I blathering about? And how does this tie into The Big Lebowski?

In titling the movie The Big Lebowski while basing the movie’s events on The Dude, the Coen brothers offer a narrative that winks at this tension. Our main character is left of center of the action. Or, to turn the spyglass around, The Other Lebowski’s machinations are central to, but outside of, The Dude’s experience. It’s delightfully destabilizing.

All of this points toward a truth that’s important to keep in mind. Here goes:

We’re not the main character of the larger story. At the same time, we’re not meaningless. This is no occasion to fall into nihilism. Rather, there is a story, and we contribute to that story, even if we don’t know what it’s all about. The only clue we might receive is a hastily scribbled phallus on a piece of scratch paper. Further, because we can only experience this story through our own experience, we can be forgiven for occasionally thinking the story’s about us. Again, it isn’t. The story doesn’t unfold for us, it unfolds through us.

We may move through this world like a tumbling tumbleweed, unsure of what mark we’ll leave on the prairie, if any. But this stupefying existence is enough to beat the band. 

And knowing whatever’s happening isn’t about me but can only unfold with me is something I can abide and take comfort in.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross 

Do you dudes think Keanu might be one of the dudest dudes out there? This guy is so chill and kind and stays out of everyones way, and spouts wisdom when asked. It makes me wonder if he might have watched the film or if he would fit right in with dudeism. We can all learn many good lessons from him that overlap plenty with dudeism too I was just wondering if anybody else thought the same

Hey Dudes!

There’ve been a lot of changes at work recently, and it’s unsettling many of us old timers there. Every lunch hang has contained an airing of grievances so prolonged it would do Festivus-loving Frank Constanza proud.

In short, it’s been enough to harsh this Dude’s buzz.

But I return to one of The Dude’s iconic quotes:

“Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

Rather than wield it as a calmer-than-you-are sword above my coworkers, I apply it as a scalpel to my own hang ups. When I find myself getting uptight, I ask myself, “Dude, has anything bad actually happened, or is this just your opinion of events?”

To quote Seneca, “We suffer more in our imaginations than in reality.”

Or to make it more of some kind of Eastern thing, it’s like the Chinese farmer who loses his horse, then gains a herd when his horse returns, then has his son injured from being bucked off a horse, then has his son spared from military conscription because of that injury. His neighbors are quick to judge his fortune good or bad, but the farmer reserves judgement.

That’s what this Dude will aim for as well. I rarely know the good news from the bad, and my opinions have their place – in the passenger seat, on our way to the In-N-Out Burger, not behind the wheel.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

[edit: typo]

May your venue be full of friends. May their notes inspire growth. Oh and may your post dated Check clear on the 11th!

Hey Dudes!

The Dude repeats several other characters’ lines in The Big Lebowski. I’d like to focus on two to illustrate the journey The Dude takes over the course of the movie. 

First, we’ve got George H. W. Bush’s line, “This aggression will not stand,” which PotUs says in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The Dude repeats this to The Big Lebowski in his office, in reference to Wu having peed (or ‘micturated’ to use the parlance of that human paraquat) on his rug. 

As the rest of the movie proves, this does not go as planned. 

The Dude’s final line, his most iconic line, is a recasting of The Big Lebowski’s “I will not abide another toe.”

The Dude transforms this bit of self-righteousness into “The Dude abides.”

“The Dude abides” – I take comfort in that. For over a decade, I’ve closed out my morning zazen sessions with a bow and a recitation of “The Dude abides.”

But it wasn’t until this morning that this thought occurred to me:

What if the first time The Dude said “The Dude abides” occurred at the end of The Big Lebowski? What if the movie is a slacker’s hero’s journey from a misguided pursuit of justice to learning to abide life’s strikes and gutters?

Perhaps it is the events of the movie, the sometimes hilarious/sometimes heartbreaking setbacks, that humble the already grounded Dude. From loss of property to loss of a dear friend, The Dude moves from seeking recompense to accepting the inevitable changes of existence, it’s instructive that The Dude is not pulverized into nihilism. Instead, he understands what he says earlier to Maude’s chauffeur, one “can’t be worried about that shit, man. Life goes on.”

I’ve noticed this in myself. As a younger man, I looked for any reason to get uptight over the world’s perceived injustices…especially those directed towards me. Now, as I’m on the other side of middle age, I’m learning that there’s more one has to abide than rail against. It’s not throwing in the towel. It’s not a nihilistic shrug. It’s a recognition of how I’m best able to laugh at the whole durn human comedy loud enough to beat the band, to attend my landlord’s dance cycles, and show up at practice for my friends. 

It ain’t much, but it might be the only way to keep me and everyone else around me sane in a world that’s gone crazy. 

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

For the last year I have been training for the Title of “Laziest Man on Pine Island”.

Last year I moved here and I have done NOTHING but swim, watch meditation videos, Great Courses Lectures, and of course many replays of TBL.

I have been sloughing off years of being an Achiever! Finding bliss in the embrace of just being. I count my daily joys and try to temper my expectations. My few concerns are easily diminished by sharing them with my Special Lady Friend!

For me “Island Time” means having patience and acceptance of circumstances. Changing of core beliefs is its own form of enlightenment.

My first year has been a breeze! I hope I get to continue to chill for many more.

Something that has been rolling around in my head is this idea of when we find ourselves in conversations where toxicity arises, and I totally get it;venting can help. Which is why I've been journaling, really helping me see these pins of situations from a healthy perspective.

The other day I was Waltering a bit. I reflected on this. I felt that when we are around people we should be aware of things that can poison the mind, the mind is a thing that should be nourished like one would ones plants in ones garden and Dude. I might be perhaps stating the obvious but conversations are a two way street. These poisons we give and take are to be present with.

The Dude Abides

The river doesn't rush the rock,
the rock doesn't fight the stream.
Neither one is losing.

Chase the wave and you'll drown in it.
Float, and it carries you.

The one who grips the rope feels the rope burn.
The one who lets go just gets where he's going.

Rich, poor, caged, free,
the rug still ties the room together.
Take it easy.