Rilke's Buddha in Glory with the Moonlight Sonata
How To Use This Video
When I (Don) first read the poem, “Buddha in Glory” by Rainer Maria Rilke, I heard Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata playing in my head. It seemed to me almost as though Rilke had written the poem with that music in mind. Jan and I put the poem and the music together in this video.
We invite you to use it as an opportunity to pause, allow your mind and heart to let go of whatever they’ve been preoccupied with, and just let the words, music, and images carry you effortlessly into a calmer, more easeful state of being. (Please note: The effect of the video will be more powerful if you view it in full screen and listen to it through headphones or earbuds.)
The way we often attend to our experience is with a kind of narrow, detached attention that holds things at a distance and is cut off from feeling, imagination, intuition, and from the sensing of the body. There’s a very different form of attention in which we’re so fully immersed in what we’re doing that, for a time, all sense of worry, pressure, and concern is absent. This is sometimes referred to as “being in the zone,” or being “in flow.” It’s often accompanied by a great sense of joy and ease.
One way you can use this video to facilitate this kind of flowing, immersed attention would be to gently let go of any attempt to figure out what the words mean, any attempt to follow the music or to make sense of the images. Just let your attention rest in whatever feeling is evoked by the images, music, and words. Here “feeling” refers to any emotions, feelings in the body, or any changes in your breathing that may arise.
If you notice your mind wandering off to other things, just gently bring your attention back to the images, music, and words. You may find, in particular, that focusing on the sense of vastness of outer space helps to calm the mind and bring about a greater receptivity to the poetry, music, and imagery.
There’s no right or wrong, good or bad, about what you notice or don’t notice. The power of the practice lies simply in the gentle noticing of whatever is there, free of judgment, agenda, or a need for it to be any different than it is.
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Here is Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem "Buddha in Glory" in its original form:
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet
— all this universe, to the furthest stars all beyond them,
is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that will be,
when all the stars are dead.
Video created by Jan, using Motion 5. Music arranged and performed by Don, using Logic Pro X
Shifting from Narrow, Detached Attention to Wide, Immersed Attention During the Day
Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga has referred to the left hemisphere of our brain as the “interpreter module.” Its job is to interpret and make sense of our experience. It does this almost compulsively, without necessarily caring whether it gets the facts straight.
When we focus our attention in a narrow, detached manner, it tends to intensify the insistence of our left hemisphere on explaining everything we encounter in terms of what we already know – in other words, in terms of past experience. This often works to our detriment, adding fuel to any anger, anxiety, or depression that may be present. Much of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) involves undoing the ill effects of this tendency of the left hemisphere. Through examining the distorting influence of the assumptions, expectations, and beliefs we impose on our experience, we free ourselves to see things anew, more as they actually are, and to come to know the joy of pure experiencing.
Psychologist Les Fehmi tells an extraordinary story about an intensive care nurse, Paula, who, under the stressful conditions of her work, had developed numerous symptoms, including anxiety, headaches, stomach pains, depression and insomnia. Fehmi gave her one exercise – he had her shift from a narrow, detached mode of attention to a wider, more immersed mode of attention. One of the most powerful techniques he gave her for facilitating this shift this was to focus on space rather than objects (much as you may have focused on the vastness of outer space in the video).
Paula said that within just three weeks, literally all of her symptoms were gone, and within three months of daily practice, virtually every aspect of her life had changed for the better.
After playing with shifting to a more immersed mode attention while watching the video, you can play with this in the midst of your day. Here are a couple of suggestions:
Without making any effort to control your attention, notice whether it shifts naturally from detached to immersed, from narrow to wide and back, at different time during the day.
When you’re feeling stuck or tense, see if shifting to noticing the space around you changes your experience at all.
Please be very gentle with yourself. It may take some weeks of playing around with this before you get a sense of how powerfully our lives are shaped by the way we attend to ourselves and the people and world around us.
About Our Online Course “Train Your Brain, Change Your Life”
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of pausing for your brain and nervous system, and how you can train your brain to be more receptive to experiencing the state of deep peace, contentment, and creativity that we refer to as "open, heartful awareness," you can check out our online course, Train Your Brain, Change Your Life.
When you hear the word “Course,” does it bring to mind memories of being in school, the effort of paying attention in class, the drudgery of homework? We wish we could have called it a vacation instead of a course because it’s radically different from any school course you’ve ever taken.
We decided to spread the learning process out over 12 weeks. Not because there’s tons of material – there isn’t. But because you learn best in small chunks over time. And most importantly, your brain changes gradually with lots of repetition.
But there are many ways of going through the course. Here are just a few.
If you only watched the videos and did the guided practice audios, it would take you a grand total of 6 hours. You might set aside a day, take a vacation from your electronic devices, pick a setting you love to be in, and spend a few hours just absorbing the practices.
You’ll have the videos, text and guided audios for life, so you might do this a few times a year, allowing the benefits to seep slowly into your nervous system, making way for the peace and contentment of open, heartful awareness to blossom in your life in ways you might not be able to imagine right now.
Or, you could take each week of the course and spend a whole month on it. It only takes about an half hour a week to watch the video and do the guided practices. You’ll discover countless ways you can apply the practices to your life - like helping you get to sleep, releasing unhealthy food cravings, reducing anxiety, transforming negative emotions, enhancing relationships, decreasing chronic pain, among so many other possibilities.
Or you could come up with your own way of going through the course, one that best suits you. You can also be part of a Facebook group where you can share what you discover with others.
If you feel you’re not ready for the ‘full course,” you can take a “short vacation” with our Free Sampler Course. It’s a 7-day course, but it only takes about an hour if you do it in one sitting.
We also invite you to check out our Facebook page and YouTube channel where we’ll be posting a wide variety of brief videos designed to balance and harmonize your brain and nervous system in a way that makes it easier to shift to open, heartful awareness.
