Way back in the early 00s I was handed a home burned CD by a friend of mine. It was a recording from a live show in Houghton, NY that my buddy’s brother’s band played in. I really don’t know much more than that!

Vocals/Acoustic – Beave Sorenson
Bass – John Buffine (sp?)
Drums – Josh Walter
Lead Guitar/Acoustic on Lay Down Your Arms – Noodle/Tuck (My Friend’s older Brother)

I’m posting the tracks here for posterity…and so I can post this band on the music review forum: https://thehundo.boards.net

I have searched and searched and I have not been able to find this album anywhere else. I do not own this music, but I fear I may be the only one who still has a copy of this album…

Jeff Bridges and his friend, Zen Master Bernie Glassman got together and had conversations on Buddhism and Life. They recorded the conversations and transcribed it into a book: The Dude and the Zen Master

I used a section of this book as a reading for one of our Dudeism Services back before the pandemic shut the world down. This is the reading I did. (****** indicates a jump forward in the book)

BERNIE:        Row, row, row your boat,
            Gently down the stream.
           Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
           Life is but a dream.

          Imagine that you’re rowing down a stream and you’re trying to figure out how to do it. Do I first row with the right oar and then with the left, or is it the other way around? What does my shoulder do, what does my arm do? It’s like Joe, the centipede with a hundred legs, trying to figure out which leg to move first.

JEFF: Art Carney of the centipedes.

BERNIE: He can’t get anywhere, just like the person in the rowboat. And while he’s hung up with all those questions, the stream is pulling him on and on. So you want to row, row, row your boat – gently. Don’t make a whole to-do about it. Don’t get down on yourself because you’re not an expert rower; don’t start reading too many books in order to do it right. Just row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.

JEFF: Merrily, merrily.

BERNIE: That’s important. An English philosopher said that whatever is cosmic is also comic. Do the best you can and don’t take it so seriously.

******

Another thing about Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. There are different streams. Sometimes you come to a fall and sometimes you come to white water. Your rowing has to adapt to the situation. You can’t do the same stroke coming down a small stream as you would coming down Niagara Falls. Even if you’re only rowing down a stream, different things happen: maybe the wind changes, maybe the current, and suddenly everything’s different. So gently is really important. Don’t power yourself or blast through; rock with the way things are. Ask yourself: What’s the deal here? I want to get over there but there are things in the way. How do I flow with the situation? Do I wait or go on? If I wait, do I wait one day, one year, five years? If I go on, do I tack? Bear witness to the situation and have faith that the right thing to do will naturally arise. Otherwise, I get stuck and think, I can’t do anything, everything’s all wrong.

JEFF: And we take it so seriously! Thoughts will change and shift just like the wind and the water when you’re on the boat, thoughts are no different than anything else.

******

BERNIE: But most of us aren’t just being, we’re rowing to get someplace, to some other shore, to a goal or some ideal place we want to reach. So where are we headed? What’s the other shore?
In Zen we say that the other shore is right here under our feet. What we’re looking for – the meaning of life, happiness, peace—is right here. So the question is no longer, how do I get from here to there? The question is: How do I get from here to here? How do I experience the fact that, instead of having to get there for something, it’s right here and now? This is it; this is the other shore. In Buddhism we sometimes call it the Pure Land.
In practice, it’s hard to grasp that right here, where you’re standing, is it. You can hear is over and over, but there’s a piece of you that doesn’t believe it. Instead, we work to get over there. And once we get over there, we reconsider: Oh no, this isn’t it, so now I have to get over there. Off we go again, trying to get to the next other shore. And once we get there, the whole thing starts again. At first I think, Oh, finally I got somewhere; now I’m happy. But after a while I say, No, this isn’t it, I’ve got to get over there.

******

JEFF: We may think that this other shore is something we have to achieve, like fame, success, or enlightenment. But that prevents us from seeing that we’re already there. I think the Dude is an example of someone who doesn’t feel that he needs to achieve something. He likes lying in the bathtub drinking his White Russians with the whale music on. He’s just taking it easy, taking it the way it is. There’s a lot of generosity in that, you know? People talk about being seekers, searching for meaning, happiness, whatever. I think of myself as a finder, because I find all these things right around me.

******

BERNIE: I’ve never met anybody who honestly says all the time, This is it. This shore, where I’m standing right now, is the place; whatever I need is right here. Such a person is fully in the moment, here and now, but I’ve never met anyone who’s always like that. No matter how hard we try, situations come up that we’ll want to separate from and leave behind us.
But if you are going somewhere else, let me say this much: At least change the boat and the oars. Say I get to the other side, what do I do? Well, I got here thanks to this beautiful boat with the set of oars, so I’ll just hold on to them and carry them wherever I go. Isn’t that weird? Now I’ve got the burden of carrying around whatever got me here. Instead I get ride of it, and I’m free. Time passes and now I want to get to the next other shore. I’ll probably need a new kind of boat and different oars, because maybe now the other shore is on the other side of the ocean and that requires a whole other mode of transportation.

******

BERNIE: To get to a new other shore, we have to choose a different path from the first, like getting a different vessel: rowboat, sailboat, dirigible –

JEFF: — submarine, pogo stick –

BERNIE: — glider. We choose our vessels and the methods to propel them, which are our practices, to get where we want to go. But now there’s a problem; something is not right. So maybe we’ve got to set down the vessel we chose and say, Okay, here I am. Using that vessel and oars got me into a bad situation, so what should I use instead to get the next step? And there’s always a next step; it’s a continuous practice. Keep on trucking. We say that life flows, but we’re always choosing the vessels and the means of propulsion that we want for the next part of the trip. That includes people, too. The people who’ve had an impact on our lives are also in some way vessels that take us to the other shore. As we aim for a new destination, we often choose new company.

Recently I have been swamped. With the formation of Diligent Loiter Entertainment, LLC I haven’t had time to be me and do all the fun hobbies I enjoy: Blacksmithing, Magic, Music, Woodcarving, Podcasting…the list goes on. Well, this has taken a toll on my self esteem. I don’t understand why it has, but it has. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to do too much and expect too much from myself. But, that’s not the focus of today’s blurb. Today is about what you can do to help boost your self esteem using the skills and hobbies  you already have.

I’ve been focusing on boosting my self-esteem lately. What I’m doing is looking at the things I enjoy doing. For this example, it’s playing guitar. I really like playing the guitar; one thing I’m not too happy with is my singing voice. I feel that, even though it’s confident, it’s not as musical as it could be and my range is rather limited. So! To combat this, I’ve been learning songs that fit my vocal range and sound. I have been told that I sound like the singer from Social Distortion so…I have been learning and playing a bunch of Social Distortion! My vocal range/singing style is very similar to his and when I play a Social Distortion song I feel good about it. It actually sounds like it’s supposed to without trying too hard. This boosts my Self Esteem and I like that.

Now, I’m going to start looking at my other hobbies and see what I can do to help myself feel better about those hobbies and me as a person. Sometimes, taking a step back and re-evaluating what you like to do then approaching it from a “this is for ME” standpoint instead of “this is what I want OTHERS to see” point of view is the best option. It’s your life and you should live it your way. I have forgotten that recently. It’s something we all do from time to time.  We want others to look at us in awe of what we can do, when really, all you need to be is you!

Long days and pleasant nights,

 

Joe

Over the Father’s Day Weekend, Nicky and I went camping with the Boy Scouts of America. We went to the Whitesville Marsh Fishing Camporee as leaders for Troop 736 out of Angelica NY. Here are some pictures showing all of the fun we had!