The Dude and the Zen Master

In Japan there’s a phrase that says that the higher a tree grows, the more wind it has on it. It’s a natural part of what it means to grow. You could try to force the wind to stop, but you could also work with it, just like you do in sailing. Be patient; let the circumstances take you there. Go with the wind, and you’re either going to get there or

you know what your story reminds me of? Those dolls that are full of sand at the bottom. You push them and they oscillate quickly from side to side, and then come back to center. So as you practice, you’re filling up with sand. At first, even a weak force hits you and almost knocks you over, but you oscillate in big arcs till you come up standing a

you’ve got to put down the boat, let go of the way you did it before, and get in that empty space again. Let’s say the question is timing. You might think, See how you paused there two and a half seconds? That was so great, that’s the right timing. That won’t be necessarily true the next time around, because everything changes.

Wholeness reminds me of the word context. President Obama declared that by 2015 we’re going to end childhood hunger. In doing that, he created a context, a national agreement that childhood hunger has no place in our country. So the question now becomes, how are we going to do it? By providing the context, the general agreement, he gets us basicall

My friend the clown and activist Wavy Gravy also tries to change the system, but in a very different style from Lenny Bruce. Wavy once told me he was picketing against the nuclear work at the Livermore National Laboratory in California. The police came to break up the sit-in and he was in a Santa Claus clown costume. They grabbed him, took off his

if you’re going to wait to get all the information you think you need before you act, you’ll never act because there’s an infinite amount of information out there.

Part of the problem is caring. On the one hand, you want to care, but if your aim is too tight, caring can get in your way. I often write the word aimless in my scripts to remind myself not to get my aim so tight that I miss the target. It’s a little like what happened to the master bowler, who finally couldn’t even release the ball.

My definition of enlightenment is realizing the oneness of life. And whatever you exclude and call not me, or whatever you’re not willing to deal with, is going to thwart you. Any action you take that does not include all viewpoints is going to fail, and it will fail exactly in the areas you excluded.

Even when people see the value of something, the desire to keep their identity as a conservative, a liberal, or anything else can be stronger than their sense of interconnectedness—even if it means that kids go hungry. How can I work with a liberal, even if we have the same goals? It makes no sense, but the differences can take over. That’s what we