Read Online The Dude and the Zen Master by Jeff Bridges, Bernie Glassman - Free Book Online

happen at, say, eleven o’clock.”
    The angel agrees. Eleven o’clock rolls around, the king’s guys assemble, Brahma shows himself in all his glory, and they all disintegrate because they can’t handle his full glory. There’s nothing left, not even ashes; they’re just gone.
    Then the angel goes to the humble man and asks, “How do you want Brahma to show himself?”
    The man answers, “I want Brahma to show himself in all of the faces that I see every day, in ordinary life.” That’s what he gets, and he doesn’t die because he took the glory in manageable doses.
    So the question is, how much are you ready to take on? How much are you ready to bear witness to? What’s it going to cost you?

6.
NEW SH** HAS COME TO LIGHT
     
    J EFF : T Bone Burnett told me this about performing with my band: You don’t have to feel like you’re pulling the train. When you’re up there on the stage with the rest of the band, you’re opening the door for them to go through. You don’t have to push them—
Come on, we gotta do this!
—thinking that otherwise it’s not going to get done. It’s more of a moving out of the way than trying to muscle it through.
    B ERNIE : When you first start doing Zen meditation, we give this instruction:
Thoughts will come; the brain’s job is to produce thoughts. Don’t try to stop them, and also don’t follow them. Pretend it’s an open door; let the thoughts come in and let them go. Don’t try to manipulate them because you’ll get into trouble
.
    I love talking about Zen and jazz bands. We’re instruments of life. You perfect your instrument, which is yourself, to become a player. But playing in a band, where you hear the sounds of all the instruments, is very different from playing alone.
    J EFF : Playing in a band makes you bigger. It takes you to places you’d never go just on your own.
    B ERNIE : Imagine if you’re sitting there as part of the band and you say,
I’m gonna play these chords no matter what the other guys do.
It kills the whole thing.
    J EFF : Or
I’m gonna force these guys to do what I do
. You don’t get the benefit of hearing another aspect of yourself. The creativity’s gone.
    It’s a little like that when I work on a movie. I can see that everyone is different, that we serve different purposes and are all aspects of the whole. For instance, one of the things that I find very freeing in making a movie is to turn it over to the director. I hold his opinion above mine unless I get something that comes from a higher power; if it’s that intense, I’ll be subversive and try to sneak my way in there. But generally, I like to empower the director and give him power over me so that I can transcend myself and make something bigger than what I have in my own mind, maybe even surprise myself. All the folks there have different opinions and visions of what’s going on, which enrich my experience and also make for a better movie.
    My stand-in, Loyd Catlett, is a deep friend. He’s from Texas, a hunter with trophies on his wall, and was raised very differently from me. I’ve probably spent almost as much time with him as I’ve spent with my wife. My father’s name was spelled with two
l
s, Catlett’s name is spelled with one. Over the last forty-five years we’ve done around sixty films together. That may be a record:
Most Movies Made by an Actor & Stand-in Team
. I met him on
The Last Picture Show
in 1971 and he’s been the thread that runs through most of my movies. The stand-in’s job is to work with the director of photography to set up the lights and cameras before the actual shooting takes place. This can be tedious and go on for hours, but Loyd is a professional and he knows how I move and speak, which is very helpful in getting the movie made.
    We have a wonderful relationship; he’s invaluable to me in so many ways, not only as a stand-in and occasional stuntman but also as my role model for many roles, from
The Last Picture Show
to
True Grit
.