Do you remember the story about the man trapped in Groundhog Day, forced to relive it over and over, until he overcomes his material desires and escapes the cycle by becoming the best possible version of himself? If so, you’ve just grasped the underlying philosophy of Buddhism, one of the world’s oldest living religions.
Groundhog Day is one of Woodstock’s biggest claims to fame, but not everyone knows about the spiritual inspiration behind it – Harold Ramis, the film’s director, identified himself as “Buddish” (“I proselytize it without practicing it,” he stated in a 2008 interview with Chicago Magazine), and considered the religion to be a major influence on his life. Friends such as Judd Apatow recall him handing out a self-made, Chinese menu-sized “Five Minute Buddhist” primer, which listed The Four Noble Truths, The Eight-Fold Path, and other basics of Buddhist philosophy. He shared the belief with his wife, mother-in-law, college roommate, and with Danny Rubin, the film’s writer.
Twenty years after Groundhog Day was filmed, Woodstock gained its own connection with Buddhism – the Blue Lotus Buddhist Temple at 221 Dean St. I reached out to Tod Nielsen, the office manager at the temple, to talk about the themes in the movie and how they related to his group’s beliefs. The most apparent of these themes is Samsara. “Samsara is the cycle of life and birth according to Buddhist philosophy,” said Tod. It’s the process by which humans are born into the material world, indulge in it, suffer from it, and are inevitably returned to it over and over as long as long as they are attached to worldly desire. “In the movie it’s the same day lived over and over, so it’s sort of a compression… of the regular Buddhist philosophy of being reborn.” Phil (Bill Murray) is at first perfectly happy to indulge in crime, gluttony, and casual violence, but soon these physical pleasures lose their appeal, and he tries to kill himself to end his suffering. But just as in Samsara, death is no escape – he comes back to the “material world” of Groundhog Day over and over, with no apparent end to the cycle.
But eventually Phil gives up on both desire and despair. “He starts to understand he should be a good person, then toward the end of the movie he understands he should also help people… that’s the Bodhisattva ideal,” says Tod. Where Phil had once used his limitless time and foreknowledge of events to cheat and manipulate others, he instead uses it to perfect both himself and the lives and experiences of those around him. By using his knowledge of Groundhog Day’s Samsara for good, he becomes a kind of transcendental figure, or Bodhisattva. “A Bodhisattva is someone who… [is] ready to go into enlightenment, however they decide to wait and help other people also reach enlightenment before they themselves are enlightened.” Kwan Yin, for instance, who is immortalized in a 20-foot statue outside the temple, is said to be a Bodhisattva of mercy and compassion.
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