Exploring Silence: Yoga Philosophy and the Documentary Film Into Great Silence

Sonika Jain

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Exploring Silence: Yoga Philosophy and the Documentary Film Into Great Silence

In: Giving Voice to Silence

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Sonika Jain

Sonika Jain
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 53–63

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848884007_007

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Materially, silence is understood as the absence of noise, movement and conflict. But the relationship between these, on one hand, and silence, on the other hand, is complex, fluid and overlapping in nature, rather than rigid or binary. Silence is an integral part of human communication. Cinema, as a form of cultural expression, is embedded with silence. Cinematic language, consisting of various elements - narrative construction, cinematography, editing, mise-en-scène and soundtrack - manifests and explores silence in different ways. Silence is a complex phenomenon with liberating and repressive aspects. In capturing the monastic life inside the Grand Chartreuse in French Alps, the documentary Into Great Silence (Philip Gröning, 2005, 162 minutes) offers the experience of silence as a liberating one. The cinematic, material and meditative dimensions of silence as a process are examined in the documentary. Internally, silence is perceived in the shape of inner peace that can exist irrespective of calm or chaos in the external environment. In spiritual terms, it is perceived as a metaphor for inner stillness. Silence in the documentary is also analysed by drawing from yoga philosophy, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, a text written over 2,000 years ago, which discusses yoga as the restraint of fluctuations of the mind, leading to stillness, deep silence and heightened awareness. While the term silence is not used in the text, some yogic concepts are discussed in the chapter to throw light on the idea of inner silence such as sukham which means good space in Sanskrit and sthiram which means stability; svadhyaya which translates as study of scriptures and self; abhyasa referring to a steady and devoted practice to focus the consciousness (citta) away from distractions (vrttis); and vairagya which means detachment from effort and from the results of the effort.

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Giving Voice to Silence

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848884007

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 01 Jan 2016

Subjects
- Philosophy
  - General
- Social Sciences
  - Cultural Studies

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Exploring Silence: Yoga Philosophy and the Documentary Film Into Great Silence

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Giving Voice to Silence

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