u/Taoman108

Hey Dudes!

This Sunday, I turned forty. A good friend of mine a little farther down the path shared that forty is “the Y2K of birthdays. There’s a lot of noise and worry, but nothing happens!”

I had to chuckle at that, but I’m not so sure. 

I feel like I’ve begun my gentle descent down the mountain, and I like it. The strenuous climb upwards has been replaced by an appreciation of the view and a new way of walking. A bit more sure-footed, yet also surrendering to gravity and giving the terrain its due. No longer a path to be conquered but a companion to be enjoyed.

My special lady friend and I were talking about this. In trying to understand why I feel so accepting of this next stage, I landed on something that draws me to The Dude and gives me comfort.

In a world in which many people focus on what they are, The Dude spends time understanding who he is. 

Think of the first question many folks ask in the US when meeting someone new: What do you do? It’s so achievement-oriented, so focused on productivity and contribution. It’s not wrong-headed, just limited.

The Dude is outright dismissive about what he’s done. "Employed?" He’s more interested in who he is. And that self-understanding leads to self-acceptance, which leads to a fourth decade that’s decidedly chill for him. 

That question of who I am has always meant more than what I am and what I do. I’m hoping that this decade gives me more time to focus on that. 

For in learning to abide myself, I can better abide the world around me.

Regardless, I’m grateful for all of you who’ve been compeers on this journey. Here’s to seeing you on the road ahead.

Hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

[edit: style]

Hey Dudes!

Much has been said about Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Bob in One Battle After Another and how, in outfits and mannerisms, he resembles The Dude. 

But I’d like to linger a bit on another character who I think has Dudely lessons to share. I’m talking about Benicio Del Toro’s character, Sensei Sergio St. Carlos…hereafter referred to as Sensei. 

I think Sensei shows us Dudeists how to abide while also staying engaged while the whole world’s gone crazy. Here are some observations, with some light spoilers for One Battle After Another:

• Stay connected to your community, but don’t make a big show of it. Sensei seems to know everyone in his community and everyone seems to know him. But he doesn’t strut around. Additionally, when he needs folks to help him out and help Bob, they step up, which suggests he’s put in the work and garnered goodwill. 
• Don’t be surprised when the plane crashes into the mountain. Whereas Bob spends the film in a perpetual state of panic, Sensei is the embodiment of “Nothing is fucked, here.” When the reactionaries come for him and his community, he sets his plan in motion, and stays calm all the while. Bob has a reason to be stressed, but so does Sensei. The only difference is Sensei must’ve asked himself, “Will getting stressed out be helpful?” and answered with a resounding “No.”
• Show up for your friends. We don’t know the full history of Sensei’s relationship with Bob, like we don’t know the depth of The Dude’s relationship with Walter and Donny. But we know that, what’s true in both movies, is that they’re there for each other no matter what. A true friend takes comfort in that. 
• Even after the plane crashes into the mountain, there might be further catastrophes. …and still, nothing is fucked. Sensei’s plans don’t go perfectly. Bob is apprehended. His getaway car is pursued by the cops. Sensei is pulled over and arrested. Yet he still is “calmer than you are”. He recognizes that, even at life’s extremes, it’s all just a dance. Which is why he’s able to cha-cha real slow as he’s being cuffed.
• It’s not about your opinions, man. It’s about your actions. Sensei doesn’t pontificate like the other Lebowski. He doesn’t hold court like Walter. He doesn’t even seem to be Mitch for small talk. He acts.
• “Ocean waves. Ocean waves.” Probably the Dudeliest saying Sensei repeats to pacify Bob. Sensei frames his experience as an ocean cresting and falling. Sometimes the tide rises. Sometimes it recedes. Is it good or bad? Who knows? It’s just what the ocean does. Further, to paraphrase a piece of Zen wisdom, it’s all ocean and we’re but temporary waves. That means we’re all connected and we’re all only here for a short while. So best to follow the flow.

 

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can. 

Courage, Dudes. Courage. 

Rev. Ross

[edited for grammar]

Hi Dudes!

I’ve spilled an ocean’s worth of digital ink writing about Dudeism and The Big Lebowski, and I thank you for your kind attention.

But I’ve been remiss. I haven’t written about Maude. Sure, I’ve referred to her as a foil to The Dude or to her goldbricking father, but she’s fascinating. And, as our community treats “Dude” as a gender-neutral appellation, Maude’s example is one I’ve long-overlooked and is deeply instructive.

So, let’s get down to cases.

It’s worth noting in the Tao Te Ching, that the Tao is assigned traditionally feminine qualities. It’s receptive, nurturing, and generative. But it’s not passive. And neither is Maude.

We’re first introduced to Maude as she works on her art. It’s a rendering of the feminine form, making use of the blank canvas and the paint upon it. It’s also interesting to note that the canvas rests on the floor while Maude floats above it. Like the Tao, Maude is both below and above The Dude – like Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang, Maude’s double positioning orients The Dude as the connection between the upper and the lower.

Additionally, Maude is the one holding her family’s purse strings, which she inherited from her mother. Even though her father doesn’t agree with her lifestyle, she doesn’t cut him off. She allows him to live as he wishes to live: ostentatiously, full of puffed up virtues, with little substance behind the stuffiness. This is a kindness that he does not return, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Maude lives her life as she sees fit.

And sure, compared to The Dude, Maude might seem pretentious and affected, but who cares? It’s her role she chooses to play and she plays it well. It also allows her to gently chide The Dude when he’s feeling a little full of himself. When he makes the snarky comment about Karl Hungus “fixing the cable,” Maude dismisses him, stating “Don’t be fatuous, Jeffrey.” 

Indeed, Maude is the only character to consistently call The Dude by his given name, subtly pointing out that his laid-back sobriquet might be its own kind of affectation. As much as we love it.

Still, Maude has no qualms opening herself up to The Dude…metaphorically and literally. She shares his bed, makes love to him, and is transparent about not wanting him to be involved as a parent. While this might at first blush seem cold and transactional, it also belies Maude’s sensitivity to The Dude’s preferred way of living. The Dude gave no indication he’s interested in parenting, and Maude’s not about to make him. The arrangement benefits both of them, and is, in a way, beyond conventional notions of responsibility and duty. Besides, as any Dudeist cum Taoist might argue, responsibility and duty only appear when we lose sight of the Way.

There’s much more that can be written about Maude, and I’d be curious to read what you all think.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross      

Hey Dudes!

I came across a delightful and hilarious story in The New York Times. Soon after becoming pope, Leo XIV had to call his Chicago bank to transfer his account. He used his pre-papal name, Robert Prevost, and was prompted by the customer service agent to answer some security questions.

Apparently, his answers, while correct, weren’t sufficient, and the agent informed the former Bob Prevost he had to come in person to see the transaction through. Growing somewhat frustrated, he responded, “That would be very difficult. What if I told you I’ve recently been made the pope?”

The customer service agent hung up on him.

I mean, say what you will about the power of The Holy See, it doesn’t hold a candle to customer service.

But I think there’s a lesson here.

Like Pope Leo, The Dude is, well, The Dude, man. On this subreddit, we often associate the name Jeffrey Lebowski with the other Lebowski, the goldbricking one. And rightly so. We’re a loose affiliation of Dudeists, not Lebowski-ists. Like followers of Zeno are Stoics, not Zenoians. Or followers of Siddhartha Gautama are Buddhists, not Sid…ah, you get the point. There’s a quality of Dudeliness that is embodied in The Dude but transcends the person of Jeffrey Lebowski. As there is, for Catholics, a quality in The Pope that is both embodied and transcendent.

But that’s not the lesson I’m getting at.

The lesson is this: one might draw a lot of water in one domain, but be sucking at puddles in another. Even The Pope (THE POPE) is, to quote another Bob, “a complete unknown” to his bank. Heck, I’m sure that customer service rep has heard all the excuses for why someone can’t come in person. They weren’t trying to get scammed, man.

Likewise with The Dude. To his friends and the folks in the bowling alley, he’s The Dude. Everywhere else, he’s a dude. Despite their intimacy, Maude insists on calling him Jeffrey. As does the other Lebowski. To the sheriff of Malibu, he’s just a deadbeat.

That’s not to bring The Dude down. It’s to remind myself that in most spaces, I’m not The Dude. I’m, at best, a dude. I’m not my username. I’m not given the honorifics my students use with me. I’m not accorded the kindness of “Dad,” which my daughters apply.

And that’s cool. That’s how it should be. We’re all The Dudes of our own personal movies. And we’re all background characters in the movies of others.

That’s the humble rock upon which this Dudeist belief is built, friends.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

Hey Dudes!

There’s a scene in The Hateful Eight in which bounty hunters, played by Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson, share a stagecoach ride. Russell has Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character in tow, and she’s ornery as all get up. 

Witnessing her resistance, Jackson mentions that “The 'Wanted' poster said she could be brought in dead or alive.” 

Russell snarls, “No one ever said this job was easy.”

Then Jackson retorts, “Yeah, but no one ever said this job had to be this hard.”

I love that line, and I think it highlights something in my appreciation of Dudeism.

My own approach to Dudeism is a synthesis of Stoicism, Zen, Taoism, my inherited Judaism, and Western philosophy. Many of these approaches, Stoicism in particular, provide guidance on how to navigate life’s difficulties. The gutters, if you will.

But sometimes, it’s like Samuel L. Jackson said. Sometimes, taking it easy can be…well…easy.

And this is where Zen, Taoism, and many of the other wisdom traditions also factor in: notice when things are going right. Notice when you’re throwing rocks. Or move past noticing right and wrong entirely.

Or, as Walter would say, notice when “nothing is fucked here, Dude.”

So I’m asking you all to share. What’s going right right now? What’s a small win? Anything that elicits a Dudely “Ahhhhh…far out” like when he’d heard his car was found.

For me, it’s noticing that my younger daughter has gotten into playing guitar. She’s three, so she just strums the thing and makes up silly lyrics. But she wants to play with me, and that’s pretty great. 

Sure, it might all go to shit a day or an hour from now, but right now let’s enjoy it.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

Hey Dudes!

So despite my posts and ponderings, I’m not constantly thinking about Dudeism. Indeed, I think that’s probably for the best at least in terms of abiding. Let me explain by way of analogy.

Sometimes I’ll overfill a glass. And when I have to carry that beverage from point to point, I’m likely to shake and spill it if I’m focused on the glass itself, worrying I'll screw up. 

Better to fix my gaze on what’s in front of me and where I’m going than to fixate on the beverage. 

The same principle applies to takin’ it easy. If I’m going through my day obsessing over my cup o’ abidance, I’m likely to get hung up on all the ways I’m not walking the Dudely path.

That said, there will likely come times when we’ll be forcibly grabbed and transported from one limousine to another… metaphorically, I hope. But there’s no sense in seeking out those hardships. They’ll find us regardless.

And the more time we spend minding our steps and focusing on what’s in front of us in the moment, the more likely we’ll be able to keep our caucasians steady.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

[edit: clarity in 2nd paragraph]

Hey Dudes!

In rereading the excellent The Dude and The Zen Master, a conversation between Jeff Bridges and Zen teacher Bernie Glassman, I was struck by Bridges’s way of calling his conversations with Glassman and other friends “jams”. 

Both Bridges and I are musicians, so I get how getting in the groove of a great conversation has all the elements of technical skill, harmony, and call and response. Like jamming, one can really lose one’s self in a good hang. 

It also made me think of the way we use words in Dudeism. Sure, we have stock phrases that are like the “heads” jazz musicians circle back to in their improvisations. They’re also signifiers referring to something in Dudeism that exists beyond language. Like fingers pointing to the moon. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that so many of my posts and reflections about my interpretation of Dudeism are like knowing music theory. Sure, it’s helpful to have a shared vocabulary to articulate Dudeism, but what’s the point if it’s just to master some kind of philosophical Dudespeak? 

What really counts is showing up to the jam session of life. There, we interact with fellow Dudes, Walters, Maudes, and Jackie Treehorns to play this Dudely tune. 

Or, to paraphrase Ludwig Wittgenstein, “of that which we cannot speak, we must pass over it with a ‘Fuck it, Dudes.’”

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can. I appreciate jamming with you all,

Rev. Ross

Hey Dudes!

Often, when trying to keep my head in the middle of an argument or when receiving invalid criticism, I’ll repeat The Dude’s line in my head or (if my interlocutor is a good sport) aloud:

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

Judiciously applied, it can disarm many a mental bomb.

But I’d argue the phrase has as much, if not more, effectiveness when it’s pointed inward.

Recently, I’ve started rereading Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher. Specifically, his Enchiridion, or Handbook. It’s fifty-three short chapters on the Stoic way to abide life’s strikes and gutters. A point Epictetus drives home again and again is this:

It’s not events, but our opinions about events, that cause us distress. It’s not things, but our opinions about things, that make us suffer.

In other words, it’s all well, you know, just, like our opinions, man.

It’s a simple truth to grasp, but a difficult one to practice. I find The Dude’s line helpful for several reasons.

First, it aligns with Epictetus’ teaching about opinions causing distress and suffering. Events and things are neutral. They just are. It’s our opinions, the stories we tell about events and things, that influence us.

Second, The Dude’s quote is phrased in the second person, you. I find it’s so much easier to dish out advice to others rather than listen to advice myself. Hell, look at how often I post on this sub! So, directing the quote at myself but using “your” instead of “my” gives me a degree of cognitive distance to be more receptive to the statement’s truth.

Last, quoting the phrase verbatim includes a number of pauses. Like Viktor Frankl, psychologist, concentration camp survivor, and fan of the Stoics, once wrote, “Between the stimulus and the response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Giving myself time to say the quote, pause, and breathe, allows me to transform a reaction into a response.

Especially if it’s during a league game.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

Hey Dudes!

Sometimes, I like to speculate on what The Dude was like in his youth. When he was drawing up the uncompromised first draft of the Port Huron Statement or occupying various administrative buildings. Who was this idealistic Dude? What did he stand against? What did he stand for? When did he pick up bowling?

Well Dudes, we just don’t know. But I think we learn something as important by watching him in The Big Lebowski.

Wavy Gravy, the counterculture’s iconic clown, famously said the 90s were just the 60s standing on their head. It’s no accident The Big Lebowski takes place during the 1990s. This isn’t exactly a movie about ideals or cynicism or critiques. Though one can find all of them down there. Just let me take another look.

Assuming The Dude is about the same age as Jeff Bridges, we can assume he experienced the hippie movement of the 60s. He watched as the Summer of Love sold out and became commodified in the 70s. He witnessed society walk over the thin, white line of greed and capitalism in the 80s. And he found himself standing on his head in the 90s.

But unlike Uli and the nihilists, The Dude did not become jaded. He did not let his ideals curdle into cynicism. Instead, he realized something important about idealism:

The other side of idealism isn’t nihilism or cynicism, it’s acceptance.

Cynicism and nihilism are idealism gone bitter and mad. They’re the rueful refuges of those who are still holding on to a wish for the world to be other than what it is and the disappointment that comes when one realizes the world does not start and stop at our convenience. 

Acceptance, on the other hand, is the clear-sighted understanding that the world is what it is. That it has no obligation to bend to our will. And to carry on anyway. It’s not giving up. It’s learning to ride the waves of reality as best as we can perceive them.

In the parlance of our way, to accept is to abide.

I've been thinking about this more in recent days. In about two weeks’ time, fate permitting, I’ll be turning forty, entering the same decade as The Dude in The Big Lebowski. In some ways, the strident idealism of my youth has mellowed. I hope I’ve become more open to the myriad ways there are of moving through this human comedy. At the same time, I’ve largely avoided the nihilism and cynicism of my peers.

Part of that, I think, is because I’m a teacher. If the scariest thing, according to Kurt Vonnegut, is waking up one day and realizing one’s high school class is running the country, my greatest comfort is knowing some day I’ll wake up and my students will be in charge. For all their strangeness, they’re a great group.

Another part is looking to The Dude. As Ram Dass once said, “The only work we have to do is on ourselves.” In easing into my forties, working on the parts of myself that need working, and abiding the craziness of the world, I hope to be the change I wish to see and to accept the rest. 

In taking it easy, I hope to provide some ease. And I thank you all and the example of The Dude for inspiring me and keeping me company along this path.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

[edit: paragraph spacing]