Violin Works at Yeshin Norbu

Violin Works at Yeshin Norbu

On September 14, 2025, a portrait concert of my music was held at the Yeshin Norbu Meditation Center in Stockholm. The program featured three pieces for solo violin, performed by Maya Bennardo. I read the following program note as an introduction:

Sound, emptiness, and resonance

The late autumn moon lights up the forest,

And mountain mists fill the secluded woods. 

I love to look at this crystal clear landscape, 

It helps me sustain an empty and clear mind. 

On the flat moss, I can sit in stable meditation, 

As the wind whips its way deep into the woods. 

An old nun comes to see how I am getting along, 

We light some incense, play a bit on the qin. 

(modified from Grant 2003, 97)

This is a verse by the Chinese nun Xíngchè. It connects to a theme that runs deep in recluse-poetry: from a calm mind attuned to emptiness arises music—a music that does not stray from emptiness, but is a spontaneous function of it. Music that naturally teaches the fundamental insight of the Mahāyāna:

Whatever appears is necessarily empty,

Whatever is empty necessarily appears

Because appearance that is not empty is impossible (Mipam in Duckworth 2008, 10)

What kind of music might arise from Xíngchè’s qin? While no musical notation survives, Bái Jūyi gives us, in another verse, a sense of the style of recluse performers:

The cadence, slow; and leisurely the strumming:

Deep in the night, a few sounds, no more. 

Bland, without flavor, they enter the ear;

The heart is tranquil, feelings lie beneath. (in Jullien 2004, 83)

I find this description deeply inspiring. The pieces performed at this concert might be thought of as my own attempts to clothe this attunement in sound: sparse tones, extended silences; sounds bland and without flavor, silences ordinary; leisurely, yet luminous. They strive to create a music of forgetting—a theme that also runs through the qín repertoire, with many pieces containing sections named after the meditation practice simply known as sitting and forgetting (zuò wàng 坐忘): forgetting meanings, forgetting ourselves. As it is written in the Zenrin-kushū, 

Sitting motionless, 

    nothing happening 

Spring coming,

    grass growing 

(Zenrin-kushū no. 380, in Shigematsu 1981)