Is this Abideism dead?

[Rev. Australia]

Hey dudes,
I know we are probably all just taking it easy but I just had to ask whether this whole Abideism section is dead - it seems like there is not much discussion here, I haven't seen anything from Rev Ed C for a while etc.

I only ask as I am setting up the Australian Brethren of Dudeism, and working on finally getting Dudeism recognised here in Australia and submitting what feels like a million pieces of paperwork in order to allow our Ordained Ministers to conduct wedding ceremonies here.

However, as part of the set up we were keen in dropping all the Lebowski references as a poll on our FB group stated people are more about the 'way of living' rather than the iconology. And was hoping that I could turn to this section for guidance, advice and to bounce ideas off to piece it all together.

So my big question is there anyone around who is still into abideism?

[DigitalBuddha]

Is this Abideism dead?

Today I abided. Today, the Dude abided.

Ergo; abiding is not dead.

......I'm staying, finishing my coffee. 

[Rev. Australia]

Awesome to hear Dude...
Just seemed like an eternity since this section had been posted in so thought I would ask.

Good to know its not dead - its just being dude

Abide

[DigitalBuddha]

Awesome to hear Dude...
Just seemed like an eternity since this section had been posted in so thought I would ask.

Good to know its not dead - its just being dude

Abide

He's out there, takin' er easy for all us sinners. 

[Masked Dude]

Yeah, still abiding. However, lately have had a rough go on things, so I've had to be more Walter than Dude. Maybe one day soon I can more Dude after I take care of things.

[BikerDude]

Yeah, still abiding. However, lately have had a rough go on things, so I've had to be more Walter than Dude. Maybe one day soon I can more Dude after I take care of things.

A big part of being Dude is abiding. Including abiding Walter.
Don't knock Walterism.
It may run counter to the central Taoist doctrines.
The three treasures.
But I still think that one of the main lessons of the film is that neither the Dude or Walter (and I guess Donnie) are sufficient.
It takes all of them to form a team that will make it to the finals.
Abide as much as you can. But don't over abide. Or it will be more gutters than strikes. Guaranteed.
Aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again.

[Masked Dude]

That's why I don't wholeheartedly try to suppress my Walter. Hell, I even think we all are part Donny, too. We get things wrong, we have our "special moments," and we'll all shuffle off this mortal coil one day.

I mean, I'd like to be more Dude, but being Dude doesn't pay my bills.

[BikerDude]

I am the walrus.

[DigitalBuddha]

I abide, therefore I burn a J.

[Rev Dave Man]

I abide every day, I just do it on the other side of the globe from you dude.  But there are still plenty of us out here abiding. 

[brother]

abiding in hiding from now to now

[BikerDude]

I abide the death of abiding.
Times change.
Wrong Dude for the time.
The pendulum swings and the Dude ascends and then Walter rules for a time.
And that's cool man.
The Dude is not in.
He'll be back.

War Poetry
'The Teeth Mother Naked at Last' by Robert Bly
I

Massive engines lift beautifully from the deck.
Wings appear over the trees, wings with eight
               hundred rivets. 

Engines burning a thousand gallons of gasoline a minute
sweep over the huts with dirt floors. 

The chickens feel the new fear deep in the pits of
their beaks.
Buddha with Padma Sambhava. 

Meanwhile, out on the China Sea,
immense gray bodies are floating,
born in Roanoke,
the ocean on both sides expanding, "buoyed on the
               dense marine." 

Helicopters flutter overhead. The death-
bee is coming. Super Sabres
like knots of neurotic energy sweep
around and return.
This is Hamilton's triumph.
This is the advantage of a centralized bank.
B-52s come from Guam. All the teachers
die in flames. The hopes of Tolstoy fall asleep in the
              ant heap.
Do not ask for mercy. 

Now the time comes to look into the past-tunnels,
the hours given and taken in school,
the scuffles in coatrooms,
foam leaps from his nostrils,
now we come to the scum you take from the mouths of
              the dead,
now we sit beside the dying, and hold their hands, there
               is hardly time for good-bye,
the staff sergeant from North Carolina is dying—you
               hold his hand,
he knows the mansions of the dead are empty, he has an
               empty place
inside him, created one night when his parents came
               home drunk,
he uses half his skin to cover it,
as you try to protect a balloon from sharp objects... . 

Artillery shells explode. Napalm canisters roll end
               over end.
800 steel pellets fly through the vegetable walls.
The six-hour infant puts his fists instinctively
               to his eyes to keep out the light.
But the room explodes,
the children explode.
Blood leaps on the vegetable walls. 

Yes, I know, blood leaps on the walls—
Don't cry at that—
Do you cry at the wind pouring out of Canada?
Do you cry at the reeds shaken at the edge of
               the sloughs?
The Marine battalion enters.
This happens when the seasons change,
This happens when the leaves begin to drop from the
               trees too early
"Kill them: I don't want to see anything moving."
This happens when the ice begins to show its teeth in
               the ponds
This happens when the heavy layers of lake water press
               down on the fish's head, and send him deeper, where
               his tail swirls slowly, and his brain passes him
               pictures of heavy reeds, of vegetation fallen
               on vegetation... .
Hamilton saw all this in detail:
"Every banana tree slashed, every cooking utensil smashed,
               every mattress cut. 

Now the Marine knives sweep around like sharp-edged
               jets; how beautifully they slash open the rice bags,
the mattresses... .
ducks are killed with $150 shotguns. 

Old women watch the soldiers as they move.

II

Excellent Roman knives slip along the ribs. 

A stronger man starts to jerk up the strips of flesh. 

"Let's hear it again, you believe in the Father, the Son, and the

               Holy Ghost?" 

A long scream unrolls. 

More. 

"From the political point of view, democratic institutions are

               being built in Viet Nam, wouldn't you agree?" 

A green parrot shudders under the fingernails.
Blood jumps in the pocket.
The scream lashes like a tail. 

"Let us not be deterred from our task by the voices
               of dissent... ." 

The whines of the jets
pierce like a long needle,   

As soon as the President finishes his press conference,
               black wings carry off the words,
bits of flesh still clinging to them.

               *   *   *

The ministers lie, the professors lie, the television lies,
               the priests lie... .
These lies mean that the country wants to die.
Lie after lie starts out into the prairie grass,
like enormous caravans of Conestoga wagons... .

And a long desire for death flows out, guiding the
               enormous caravans from beneath,
stringing together the vague and foolish words.
It is a desire to eat death,
to gobble it down,
to rush on it like a cobra with mouth open
It's a desire to take death inside,
to feel it burning inside, pushing out velvety hairs,
like a clothes brush in the intestines—
This is the thrill that leads the President on to lie

               *   *   *

Now the Chief Executive enters; the press
               conference begins:
First the President lies about the date the Appalachian
               Mountains rose.
Then he lies about the population of Chicago, then he lies
              about the weight of the adult eagle, then about the
               acreage of the Everglades

He lies about the number of fish taken every year in the
               Arctic, he has private information about which city is
               the capital of Wyoming, he lies about the birthplace of
               Attila the Hun. 

He lies about the composition of the amniotic fluid, and
               he insists that Luther was never a German, and that
               only the Protestants sold indulgences, 

That Pope Leo X wanted to reform the church, but the
               "liberal elements" prevented him,
that the Peasants' War was fomented by Italians
               from the North. 

And the Attorney General lies about the time the
               sun sets.

               *   *   *

These lies are only the longing we all feel to die.
It is the longing for someone to come and take you by the
               hand to where they all are sleeping:
where the Egyptian pharaohs are asleep, and your
               own mother,
and all those disappeared children, who used to go
               around with you in the rings at grade school... .

Do not be angry at the President—he is longing to take
              in his hand
the locks of death hair—
to meet his own children dead, or unborn... .
He is drifting sideways toward the dusty places

III

This is what it's like for a rich country to make war
this is what it's like to bomb huts (afterwards described
    as "structures")
this is what it's like to kill marginal farmers (afterwards
    described as Communists")

this is what it's like to watch the altimeter needle
    going mad

Baron 25, this is 81. Are there any friendlies in the area? 81
from 25, negative on the friendlies. I'd like you to take out as
many structures as possible located in those trees within 200
meters east and west of my smoke mark.   

diving, the green earth swinging, cheeks hanging back,
    red pins blossoming ahead of us, 20-millimeter can-
    non fire, leveling off, rice fields shooting by like tele-
    phone poles, smoke rising, hut roofs loom up huge as
    landing fields, slugs going in, half the huts on fire,
    small figures running, palm trees burning, shooting
    past, up again; ... blue sky ... cloud mountains 

This is what it's like to have a gross national product.
It's because the aluminum window shade business is
               doing so well in the United States that we roll fire
               over entire villages
It's because a hospital room in the average American city
               now costs $90 a day that we bomb hospitals in
               the North 

It's because the milk trains coming into New Jersey hit
               the right switches every day that the best Vietnamese
               men are cut in two by American bullets that follow
               each other like freight cars 

This is what it's like to send firebombs down from air-
               conditioned cock-pits. 

This is what it's like to be told to fire into a reed hut with
               an automatic weapon.   

It's because we have new packaging for smoked oysters
               that bomb holes appear in the rice paddies 

It is because we have so few women sobbing in
               back rooms,
because we have so few children's heads torn apart by
               high-velocity bullets,
because we have so few tears falling on our own hands
that the Super Sabre turns and screams down toward
               the earth. 

It's because taxpayers move to the suburbs that we
               transfer populations.
The Marines use cigarette lighters to light the thatched
               roofs of huts because so many Americans own their
               own homes. 

IV

I see a car rolling toward a rock wall.
The treads in the face begin to crack.
We all feel like tires being run down roads under
               heavy cars. 

The teen-ager imagines herself floating through the
               Seven Spheres.
Oven doors are found
open.
Soot collects over the doorframe, has children,
               takes courses,
goes mad, and dies. 

There is a black silo inside our bodies, revolving fast.
Bits of black paint are flaking off,
where the motorcycles roar, around and around,
rising higher on the silo walls,
the bodies bent toward the horizon,
driven by angry women dressed in black.

               *   *   *

I know that books are tired of us.
I know they are chaining the Bible to chairs.
Books don't want to remain in the same room with
               us anymore.

New Testaments are escaping ... dressed as women ...
               they go off after dark.
And Plato! Plato ... Plato wants to go backwards... .
He wants to hurry back up the river of time, so be can
               end as some blob of sea flesh rotting on an
               Australian beach.

V

Why are they dying? I have written this so many times.
They are dying because the President has opened a
               Bible again.
They are dying because gold deposits have been found
               among the Shoshoni Indians. 

They are dying because money follows intellect!
And intellect is like a fan opening in the wind— 

The Marines think that unless they die the rivers will
               not move.
They are dying so that the mountain shadows will
               continue to fall east in the afternoon,
so that the beetle can move along the ground near the
               fallen twigs. 

VI

But if one of those children came near that we have set
               on fire,
came toward you like a gray barn, walking,
you would howl like a wind tunnel in a hurricane,
you would tear at your shirt with blue hands,
you would drive over your own child's wagon trying to
               back up,
the pupils of your eyes would go wild—

If a child came by burning, you would dance on a lawn,
trying to leap into the air, digging into your cheeks,
you would ram your head against the wall of
               your bedroom
like a bull penned too long in his moody pen—
If one of those children came toward me with both hands
in the air, fire rising along both elbows,
I would suddenly go back to my animal brain,
I would drop on all fours, screaming,
my vocal chords would turn blue, so would yours,
it would be two days before I could play with my own
               children again.

VII

I want to sleep awhile in the rays of the sun slanting over
               the snow.
Don't wake me.
Don't tell me how much grief there is in the leaf with its
               natural oils.
Don't tell me how many children have been born with
               stumpy hands all those years we lived in St.
               Augustine's shadow. 

Tell me about the dust that falls from the yellow daffodil
               shaken in the restless winds.
Tell me about the particles of Babylonian thought that
               still pass through the earthworm every day.
Don't tell me about "the frightening laborers who do not
               read books." 

Now the whole nation starts to whirl,
the end of the Republic breaks off,
Europe comes to take revenge,
the mad beast covered with European hair rushes
               through the mesa bushes in Mendocino County,
pigs rush toward the cliff,
the waters underneath part: in one ocean luminous
               globes float up (in them hairy and ecstatic men—)
in the other, the teeth mother, naked at last. 

Let us drive cars
up
the light beams
to the stars ... 

And return to earth crouched inside the drop of sweat
that falls
from the chin of the Protestant tied in the fire.