I recently ran across a nice article about Bill Murray that relates to Buddhism, or at least I'm seeing a clear connection. A quote of the passage, following the link and title:
http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/7-steps-to-living-a-bill-murray-life.html He says:
You think, Dammit, someone else is trying to be me. ... I don’t have to armor myself against that idea if I can really just relax and feel content ... If I can just feel, just think now: How much do you weigh? This is a thing I like to do with myself when I get lost and I get feeling funny. ... try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bottom right now. ... if you can come back into the most personal identification ... which is: I am. This is me now. ... There’s just a wonderful sense of well-being that begins to circulate up and down, from your top to your bottom.
Actually the advice just before that, step 6 of 7 on how to live a Bill Murray life in the article, provided some context:
You have to remind yourself that you can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed. No matter what it is, no matter what your job is, the more relaxed you are, the better you are.
Both of these points relate to ideas from Buddhism, although to some extent Buddhism also relates to ordinary life, so everyday perspective, wisdom, and Buddhism need not be different. In fact to me to the extent these are separate things, and Buddhism is more about an abstract set of ideas, then in that case it's really not Buddhism at all.
Interpretation section
The context is being relaxed in everyday life, and the second more specific point (step 7) relates to being present in the present moment to help achieve this. I won't get too far into Buddhist terminology and concepts for this since it really does defeat the points being made, which are probably about as clear without explanation as with one.
I will reference a couple related concepts but bear in mind these are interpretations of interpretations of individual ideas within a large framework of concepts in Buddhism. Building the individual ideas up as a system of related ideas helps describe them to some extent, and also drifts off the point in another sense, related to tying them back to actual experience. In the end it has to be about a simple change to everyday perspective, taking something problematic away, removing conceptual structure, rather than adding a lot of ideas.
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| not exactly the same but related |
What Bill Murray is saying works well as real Buddhism because the context is there, about being relaxed, and also "when I get lost and I get feeling funny." There's no way to really describe getting caught up in ideas and attachments well so that works. About "trying to be me," I'm not so sure, but the general idea of rejecting self and attachments is that unnecessary connections cause problems for people. This could involve trying to force the past or the future to be a certain way, even though both are out of reach in different ways since we act only in the present, or getting hung up on ties to expectations or self-image.
The part about weight is nice; an easy to grasp and use tie to the present moment.
The apparent connection to self is not as much a problem as it would seem to people without a grasp of what it means to reject self in Buddhism. As I've been going on and on about in other posts it's a limited form of rejection. It could be interpreted related to people saying absurd things, in effect rejecting the continuity that being a person must involve, or some could see even that approach as a useful tool.
My take is that stating absurdities completely misses the point, except perhaps as a limited thought model (perhaps not the best framing since "thought model" invokes lots of what is being rejected in the first place). Gaining a more developed relation to a continuity of self is the point, not imagining or creating a world where some internal consistent person doesn't exist at all. A relatively continuous perspective is no problem, per Buddhism; interpreting that as what it's not and stressing over what really isn't real is a real problem, and a very common one, part of a conventional worldview.
More interpretation, closer to Buddhist concepts
The cited passage is talking about being in the moment. Dragging in concepts and relations between them, like non-attachment, doesn't help much, but I will a little anyway. A rejection of self could be tied in even though this seems to be saying the opposite, the "I am" part, but again that's more about shaking concepts than adding them.
Relaxing is about non-attachment, dropping ideas of self and other imaginary connections that aren't useful, that invoke stress of different kinds. One useful tool for doing this is mindfulness practice, being aware of the present moment, including one's own mental state and perspective.
Talks on Buddhism regularly provide examples of ways to practice better momentary awareness. For me spending a few moments watching breathing and relaxing the breathing process works, naturally drifting into more stomach breathing than chest breathing. Others are a bit simpler yet. One technique (trick?) a monk described in a dharma talk once as "doorknob zen:" you can take a single second to check on momentary awareness before opening a doorknob, losing essentially no time out of your day to trigger better momentary awareness.
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| bumps! photo credit linked |
When I used to snowboard a lot different types of centering and focus techniques really did help me set aside my "self" and get on with the boarding. It was actually necessary because I loved to ride bumps (moguls, if you rather), and hitting large obstacles and making extreme turns more rapidly than once a second isn't something one can consciously do.
Think about it and you can't keep up, and fall.
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| this was my house, Beaver Creek; credit Dave Park |
I experimented with lots of methods. One was to focus on my hands briefly on the ski-lift ride up. Why my hands? Lots of nerves there, a familiar body part, easy to keep a focus point on them. On the actual runs sometimes I would "play" music in my head. To improve the focus before going out I would do some yoga.
In the end I could keep up a very long run of very extreme boarding, indefinite, not really by establishing a rhythm since the rhythm was coming from the terrain, not from me. Riding in trees was another way to reinforce consistent, effective turns since the alternative--crashing into a tree--would serve as immediate negative reinforcement.
The Razor's Edge
To me this is Bill Murray's best work related to Buddhism, although there is more on the internet comparing Groundhog Day to Buddhist themes (related to cycle of rebirth, of course; more on both here). There are different references about this movie but nothing seems to really capture what works and what doesn't related to Buddhism (to me), so maybe the Wikipedia summary is as good a stand-in for actually seeing the film as there is. But it's quite worth seeing.
The movie is interesting for directly engaging Buddhist concepts; his character went to India to find himself, after war experiences led to a personal crisis and reading and introspection didn't suffice. His character is not exactly portrayed as enlightened, or anything of the sort, but there are explicit references to spiritual insight. The movie doesn't work as a story about where such insight actually leads, since his character is involved with more difficulties that show the limits of transcending normal perspective.
So why do I bring it up, if the deep insight isn't really there, in the form of a how-to? It's about as good as story-based movie fragments of Buddhism get, and worth watching, and Bill Murray is the lead. To me any criticism of the movie is about someone just not getting it, which is fine, no reason why most viewers would have much background knowledge of Buddhism.
The third movie of Murray's referencing Buddhism is Caddyshack, related to his character Carl Spackler, the greenskeeper, who says a little about Buddhism (see some quotes here, or movie background here). Chevy Chase's character Ty Webb was even more Zen-like and cryptic. To me it's one of the best comedies ever made but I'm not sure how much Buddhism one could pick up from it.
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