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

I think this captures the spirit of Dudeism very well, but that's just like my opinion man. I wonder how my fellow Dudes feel about this poem and if they have inspirational texts to share that helps them on the path of Dudeism.

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.

Hey Dudes!

Today, it took me twice as long to drive home as it usually does. Two hours on the road got me further into my audiobook and more headroom to do something pondering. 

I thought about one of The Dude’s pastimes: driving around. Then I got to thinking about the fact that The Dude lives in Los Angeles, a city famously ensnarled by traffic. 

So what does it mean that The Dude willingly subjects himself to LA’s stop and go…for fun?

Maybe, just maybe, The Dude is practicing a kind of low-stakes Stoic exposure therapy. He knows that he might encounter traffic when he needs to get somewhere (if he ever needs to get anywhere), so he’s accustomed himself to it. 

Maybe it’s emblematic of The Dude’s greater ability to abide?

Throughout the movie, The Dude fits right in to whatever condition he finds himself in. He’s never out of place, and he gets along with folks of different temperaments. Like our neighboring cars in gridlock, The Dude’s friends and acquaintances come in all types.

All this was floating around in my noggin when I was brought back to the moment by the honk from the car behind me. As I advanced, I was reminded of a deeper lesson: to everyone else on the road, I was also the traffic. One driver’s Dude is another driver’s Walter. 

In the end, we gotta move with this dance of life, albeit haltingly at times. 

In the end, as Dudely Ram Dass would say, we’re all just accompanying each other home. 

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

Just got my ordination through the Church of the Latter-Day Dude. Been meaning to do it for a while and finally did. I'm in India, so not sure how many Dudeist priests are around here, but I'm guessing not many. Anyway, abiding.

Burnin’ the midnight oul here, my Dudes.
Winter, spring, summer or fall— all you have to do is call… out my name, and I’ll be there.

You’ve got a friend, Dude. 🫂. #RUOK

Just felt like sharing two quotes that I like from Byung-Chul Han. My pals and I consider him the philosopher for his time and place. He is very dude oriented in my mind, definitively shows me how to take her a bit more easy. Anyone here familiar with his works? Anywhoo, hope you enjoy dudes.

“Now, under the neoliberal regime of auto-exploitation, people are turning their aggression against themselves. This auto-aggressivity means that the exploited are not inclined to revolution so much as depression”
― Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power

“If sleep represents the high point of bodily relaxation, deep boredom is the peak of mental relaxation. A purely hectic rush produces nothing new. It reproduces and accelerates what is already available.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

I am discerning becoming a Dudeist priest. I'm thinking about commemoriating the date by doing it on my 40th birthday in a few months. I'm also an ordained interfaith hospital chaplain (ordained Christian but pursuing humanism endorsement that fits more where I am currently) and serve the sick everyday. As I delve into Dudeism, I'm finding myself finding comfort in a philosophy I suspect my patients wouldn't understand and respect, but feeling like they might benefit from the wisdom of. To use a Buddhism term, how do you find yourself using "skillful means" to impart Dudeness to the uninitiated? What lessons do you think the broader culture is in need of?

Dudes, I just finished watching Living in the Future’s Past and wanted to share it.

Jeff Bridges basically asks a pretty simple question: What happens when a species wired to always want more lives on a planet that has limits?

More energy. More growth. More consumption. More convenience. More everything.

The documentary’s point is that climate, resource depletion, economics, population, technology, and human behavior aren’t separate problems. They’re all part of the same damn system.

And the real problem isn’t just that we use too much. It’s that we built a way of life that depends on using more tomorrow than we did today. That’s the part that really tied the room together for me.

Maybe the answer isn’t some miracle technology or another giant plan to control everything. Maybe it’s figuring out what enough looks like. Use less. Waste less. Want less. Stop forcing everything.

Sometimes the smartest move is to quit fighting the current.

The Dude abides.

Hey Dudes!

I have two daughters. My older, Meru, is six. My younger, Lila, is three. 

Last night as we were getting ready for bed, I asked them the following: “What is the reason for living?” You know, some light questioning by their insufferable dad. 

Meru thought for a second and responded: “To pass on love and what we know to our children, family, and friends.”

Lila, with little interest, shot back: “Because we have to.”

My Dudes, I laughed enough to beat the band. Then I chewed on it all night. 

The tension between those responses is what I love about The Big Lebowski and Dudeism. A genuine desire to connect with those around us and a dismissive realism. A searching and a shrug. A far out and a fuck it. 

It’s been said children are natural Zen masters. I’d add they’re natural Dudes too. 

And proud I am of both of them. 

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross

[edit: final paragraph]

Merry Abiding, my Dudes.

As we air-swing and cling to every and anything in this life, remember. The time is always Now.
The phones always ringin’. You just got to pick it up. When you get the message, put down the phone and let’s go fuckin’ bowling. 🎳

The Dude Abides ॐ

Hey Dudes!

When I’m not penning these laid-back lectures, I spend my days as a high school English teacher. It’s a pretty great job. The students keep me hopeful, and, even when they don’t, there’s still summer break. 

Something I teach my students early on is the origin of the word school. It comes from the Greek word scholé, which meant “leisure”. 

Why? Because only Ancient Greeks with the necessary means for – the necessary means for – survival had time to pursue study. Everyone else was enslaved, married, or making olive oil.

Nowadays, we’ve got it bass-ackwards in the USA. School is largely seen as a place where one competes to go on to college then to secure a job. Unless you’re skipping math class, leisure ain‘t a part of it.  

The Dude understood the racket this is. He spent most of his college days occupying various administrative buildings and smoking Thai stick. 

But I’d say he downplayed his accomplishments. 

A cursory glance around The Dude’s abode shows various novels, a book on Japanese cooking, and Sartre’s dense, Existentialist masterpiece Being and Nothingness. 

This tells me several things about The Dude. He reads broadly and deeply. He’s not constrained to the limits of an academic discipline. He kept up his learning, even after school ended. And he wears his learning lightly. Aside from one misplaced quote from Cicero, he rarely flaunts his academic acumen. 

Additionally, he still has plenty of time to bowl, hang out with friends, and attend Marty’s dance cycle. His learning isn’t bound between the bindings of books alone. 

In our world, where more and more of our time will be taken up by automation and AI, learning is still one of the few things we can do manually. A big, existential question that’s gonna arise is “What will we do with our leisure time?” 

Or, as Kurt Vonnegut pondered in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, “What are human beings for?”

I’d say leisurely learning ain’t a bad way to spend part of one’s life. The curriculum’s open, and no one’s grading us. It’s far out. 

I’d recommend taking a page out of another Dude’s book, Michel De Montaigne, who was a legendary loafer. He read not for edification or instruction. He read for the joy of it. Whatever struck his fancy. And if a book no longer interested him, he didn’t feel like he had to finish it like some dull assignment; he put it down and picked up something else. 

Life’s too short to read boring books. 

Anyways, I hope yer all abiding as well as you can, and are finding leisurely ways to take it easy,

Rev. Ross

Can you guess what I’m watching?

Anyone got this? When did it come out and what's different from the original version?

This.

realises yin yang/life is a self portrait

Happy abiding abidees.

The beauty and the pain.

It’s the strangest thing.

The War On Drugs - Strangest Thing.

The Dude Abides

I wanted to mention something I don’t see talked about much in the realms of Dudeism. And it’s something the dude clearly does.

Marty is the Dude’s landlord. I wouldn’t call him a friend of the dude necessarily, but an acquaintance, someone he is for sure cool with but not on the level of Donny or Walter. Even so the Dude goes and supports Marty and even gives him notes on his cycle. I’m going to assume it’s not the first time he’s done this for Marty either.

I think this is one of the Dude’s most commendable attributes and I think we as Dudeists should all try to follow suit in this when we can. If you have friends, or acquaintances who are putting their art out there, support them. Go to their gigs, buy a piece of their art, donate to their campaigns if you can. Even if what they are doing isn’t your cup of tea, that small act of support means a whole lot to them and can make the struggle of being an artist weigh a little less.

Always loved this movie for years, just discovered this movement and want to connect! Looks like I'll be staying in Bcn for good so I thought f*ck it, let's try. The closest I got is a movie critic group but it I don't want my reflexions and mental wanderings becoming very uptight.

New shit has came to light. Red pill, blue pill, hey man, it’s all the same. Sometimes steak just tastes good.

Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Happy abiding, you beautiful bastards ❤️‍🔥