RUTH OZEKI • NATALIE GOLDBERG • GETTING BEYOND BLAME • DOES THE BUDDHA EVER LIE? SBUDDHISMHAMBHALA CULTURE MEDITATION LIFE SUNMARCH 2014 “You can connect with the mind of nowness at any moment” Pema Chödrön’s 4 Keys to Waking Up Rise Up! GPS for the Mind Thanks to Yoko bell hooks & Eve Ensler Sylvia Boorstein Lisa Carver Harold Ramis says the spiritual resonance so many people felt with his quirky comedy Groundhog Day came as a surprise. After a chance meeting, author PERRY GARFINKEL embarks on a mission to explore the film- maker’s life in the limelight. And if he sees his shadow... SO THERE I AM at a literary cocktail party on Martha’s Vineyard, and this man who looks like a Vineyarder I know comes up to our small circle of writers. Just as I’m about to say, “Hi Fred,” he extends his hand and says, “I’m Harold Ramis.” I know the name, but can’t quite remember from where. I say, “Wow, you look like someone who looks just like Harold Ra- mis.” A lame opener, but it gets a chuckle. I do a double-take when the conversation turns to Buddhism and he rattles off the four noble truths and the eightfold path. “This guy knows his Buddhism,” I say to the group. “Not really,” Ramis smiles sheepishly. The man who brought us such rollicking comedies as Animal House, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day, wants to make it clear that he is not a Buddhist. Director Harold Ramis on the set of his new comedy, Year One. phOTO COURTESY OF COLUMBIA PICTURES “I don’t want to be the Buddha,” he says, with what I would come to learn is his typical self-effacement and a you’re-in-on-the-joke smirk. “I just want to admire him.” 34 SHAMBHALA SUN JULY 2009 SHAMBHALA SUN JULY 2009 35 Ramis seems so sincere, thoughtful, and intelligent in this drunkards; Padmasambhava, the Indian teacher who brought short encounter that I realize he is someone I would really like to Buddhism to Tibet and was known for his trickster qualities; know. Months later, we arrange to get together. and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, widely acknowledged for in- C Groundhog Day, the 1993 film Ramis directed and co-wrote troducing American Buddhist practitioners to “crazy wisdom.” OU R T with Danny Rubin, pinged a deep spiritual nerve, despite the fact “Harold Ramis should be considered a revered lineage holder E S Y neither Ramis nor Rubin intended it to be Buddhist or Christian in the crazy wisdom tradition of the Tibetans,” Nisker says. O F or Jewish or any of the other denominations that say it speaks to “The primary rule of Buddhist humor is that you never laugh C O L them and for them. And despite the fact that the film is, after all, at someone else’s expense. But, rather, laughter arises when we re- UMB a comedy. That alone could earn merit points these days, when alize our futile attempts to escape the first noble truth. Pointing IA P many Buddhist meditators and scholars seem to have forgotten to our common bumbling deluded nature—with humor—appar- I CTU the light touch of numerous teachers over the centuries. ently relieves some of the suffering. Ramis has done that in most RE “There seems to be some stigma lately against joking about of his films, but especially inGroundhog Day, where he seems to be A © 1993 S, Buddhism, as though the so-called three precious jewels are saying, ‘This is what it’s like. Every day is the same thing; we make too precious to poke a little fun at,” says Wes Nisker, a longtime the same mistakes over and over.’ Ramis is always trying to shatter LL Left to right: Harold Ramis as Dr. Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters; Ramis with Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Ernie Hudson on the set of Ghostbusters; in the role of L’Chaim vipassana meditation teacher, Buddhist stand-up comedian, and our ordinary take on reality, to reveal hidden dimensions. He is R author of several books on Buddhism. trying to create what Buddhists would call ‘beginner’s mind.’ ” IGH from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story; and acting in his new comedy, Year One. “But there are longstanding traditions and practices of do- When I ask Ramis for his take on Buddhism, he recites, from R TS E S ing exactly that,” Nisker says, offering a few prominent examples: memory, something he had written when he and his second S erved of becoming—an ongoing miraculous creation. Every day we And, as if to underscore that, we discover during an interview Drukpa Kunley, a.k.a. the Divine Madman, the fifteenth cen- wife, Erica Mann Ramis, helped sponsor the Dalai Lama’s visit RE awaken to that miracle with gratitude, respect, and compassion that his ukulele teacher was, years later, a friend of mine when CTU tury Tibetan rascal saint who blessed fornicators, beggars, and to Chicago in May, 2008: “The universe is in a constant state I P for all who share the gift of being.” I lived in San Francisco. Ramis hadn’t talked to him in twenty IA “To me,” he says, “that felt like a nice distillation. I thought it years, so I called him, and when Ramis got off the phone he pat- UMB Below: Harold Ramis directing Bill Murray during the filming of Groundhog Day. L was good enough to remember.” ted his heart. “I feel warm,” he beamed. O C He went on to sing with folk groups, covering songs from the F O Y HAROLD RAMIS waS BORN in 1944 to a Jewish couple of likes of the Kingston Trio and the Limelighters. He sang in the S E T modest means but rich in love. At age twelve, he started work- high school chorus, was selected for all-city chorus, and per- R OU ing in his father’s grocery and liquor store, in a largely African- formed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. C . American neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. He attributes “All of these experiences were peepholes into worlds that were his humor to his father, who would critique comedians on TV heretofore alien to me,” he said. “But it helped demystify things. erved S E like Groucho Marx, Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, and Red Skelton. At that time, I was part beatnik folksinger, part choirboy, and TS R TS “Dad would point me to the good stuff,” he said. “Red—‘too part entertainer.” IGH cloying, too sentimental.’ Steve Allen—‘funny, intelligent.’ Sid At Washington University in St. Louis, he was still trying to R LL Caesar—‘great stuff.’ I grew up going to movies: Abbot and Cos- decide between writing and showbiz when he became friends C., A C., tello, Laurel and Hardy, and of course the Marx Brothers.” with fellow student Michael Shamberg, whom he described as N S, I S, “When I was twelve, I read the line, ‘An unexamined life is not an “extraordinarily confident, snide, and brilliant guy who was RIE worth living.’ I took it seriously to heart. And literally. Like it was a sort of spiritual brother and creative co-conspirator.” He and UST a requirement in life, akin to the Buddha’s suggestion that we Shamberg wrote skits and performed them on campus. ND maintain ‘sufficiently inquiring minds.’ ” “Michael and I made a pact and shook hands on it,” Ramis said. S I RE By sixteen, they’d moved to Rogers Park, a middle-class neigh- “We agreed to never take work that wasn’t fun, to do only what we CTU I borhood on Chicago’s P IA North Side. He got In Groundhog Day Phil says, “I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t his first peek into the UMB L O world of journalism even exist anymore.” “Now,” Ramis comments, “Phil is ready for change.” C when he was hired by the Chicago Tribune as a messenger for its ad department. He was wanted to, and never take a job that we had to dress up for.” ” © 1984 ” S ER editor of his high school yearbook, and thought his logical career Shamberg went on to become a Hollywood producer of such step would be ad copywriter. But the seeds of a growing interest in films as Erin Brockovich, A Fish Called Wanda, and Pulp Fiction. entertainment were planted when he took ukulele lessons from a “Harold is my most enlightened friend,” Shamberg said. “I always OSTBUST friend, and found he could sing. thought he was funny, but the reason I was drawn to him was that “GH His life, as he puts it, has been a study in “coincidences that in he was smart, honest, and had a generosity of spirit. As far as I un- retrospect were probably what you would call karma.” derstand Buddhism, it’s a system of seeing things with clarity and 36 SHAMBHALA SUN JULY 2009 SHAMBHALA SUN JULY 2009 37 Ramis takes particular glee in a zany rant in Caddyshack by Bill Murray about caddying for the Dalai Lama, which he says is perhaps the first time His Holiness is mentioned in an American film. Laughs” list. He proudly displays the plaque in the foyer of the small Rabbi Irwin Kula, a spiritual advisor to Ramis, said he found offices of his production company,O cean Pictures, upstairs from his the shadow of what Buddhists call the “hungry ghost” in one of favorite Greek restaurant in Highland Park, north of Chicago.