Ritual, Incense and Ritual Incense
Hello all 🙂
Several people asked me weeks ago to order incense and it has arrived. Much of this comes from Nepal, made by hand by the monks, and the rest from Japan, and has been on back order. I was going to just post this, but in offering my own incense this morning, of course I started thinking about random things and off on the boat ride of my stream of consciousness we go.
Most people who come here for sessions walk in, take a deep breath and comment on the distinctive scent of the space. That is the result of high quality ritual incense. Incense has been burned for centuries as part of ritual offering to the Divine. True incense is made from aromatic resins or herbs, and can be used for prayer, offerings, medicine and healing. The incense I use for meditation is a Japanese incense and is burned in Zen temples all over the world. I also use Tibetan incenses for healing and meditation at times. For the ancients, who didn’t have a watch or iphone with a ginormous clock on it, incense was also used as a meditation timer. So most incense sticks are 20 minutes, some are 45 minutes. The one I generally use here are 20 minutes and are gently aromatic.
Incense used as part of ritual has been noted in every spiritual tradition. In Psalm 141, David prays,
Oh Lord, I call to You, come to me quickly. Hear my voice when I call to You. May my prayers be set before you like incense, may the lifting of my hands be like an evening sacrifice…
Numerous studies have concluded that the use of ritual has a deep impact on the brain and behavior of humans and animals. The truth is that we all have rituals…how you decide to take time in the morning, rituals around mealtimes and grooming, around holidays and all the expectations about that. Ritual used with intention creates sacred space and is good for body and soul, and this is part of why good incense is used for prayer and meditation. I suspect this use of ritual is why people who have a spiritual tradition or faith practice they utilize regularly tend to be healthier in general and live longer than non participants. Volumes of research have shown repeatedly that oxygen saturation levels increase, hormone levels change, the stress hormones decrease, while there are numerous brain changes that move into the delta state, which is a brain wave normally associated with deep sleep and relaxation.
As with everything though, intention matters: Some studies have shown that the use of pornography changes the brain and body for the negative more than the use of heroin. Sacred ritual is meant to be different than bad habits, but the truth is that the brain will strengthen the neuro-nets of whatever we practice regularly. So offering ritual incense is different than just random rituals that are really just habits or burning incense to change the smell of the room.
Here is a piece on the offering of incense in the Zen tradition. Translation: Gassho is the term for the prayer position of the hands in most traditions, hands together and fingers pointed up.
INCENSE OFFERING
In Zen, the offering of incense at the Temple altar is of the highest significance. Offering the incense is an unselfish act in which we express our conviction of the Oneness of all things and the transient nature of all existence.
In the incense, we see the potential that is in ourselves, just as the Incense itself is worthless until it is put to the flame. We know that our lives are useless, too, unless our potentials are fulfilled. In the incense, we recognize, too, that our lives are just as fleeting as its sweet smoke. In offering incense, we should walk in a dignified manner to the altar, bow in gassho before it, place our offering in the plate, and then take a pinch of the granulated incense, placing it on the burning part of the charcoal. After placing the incense on the smoldering fire, gassho again in a graceful manner, and return to your seat.
The gassho used during the incense offering symbolizes the Unity of ourselves, the Buddha, and the world. Our one hand is ourselves, and it is placed, palm to palm, with the hand symbolizing the Buddha. Our slight bow at the time of the gassho is a sign of the respect we feel for the benevolence of the Universe with which we are One. In the act of offering incense, the true nature of ourselves is expressed.
For those of you who are trying to find a meditation practice, incense is a powerful tool for that discipline. If you would like to try some incense to see if you like it, let me know and you can try it at home. If you would like to buy some or create a practice at home, let me know if you would like suggestions.
Have a great day! 🙂
Showers of Mercy
I’ve gotten a few 911 calls this morning from people in crisis or pain. This is such a deep time for people, it seems like everyone I know and most of my clients are in some kind of relationship shift, some kind of transition or deep grief. Lots of people are sick, lots of things are in a big transition. I am acutely aware of the pains and joys of the people in my inner circle and beyond…aware that like the breath rising and falling, life ebbs and flows, ever moving into something new and different. But the memories linger, the hopes and dreams and hurts and forgiveness become part of the fabric that is the weave of our lives, and I am always amazed by the way the taste of those things remain, lightly sweet yet heavy on the tongue.
As I am witness to the journey of others today, I am also thinking a lot about my grandmother. She’s been gone 9 years, the anniversary of her death is this week. I have never known a woman with more ancient wisdom about people, lumber, the growing of crops, of plants and what to do with them. She was a sharecropper and a child in the Depression, and could make anything out of nothing. She chopped cotton for years, worked in a saw mill for much of her life and somehow raised 9 kids on, as the expression goes down South, “spit and baling wire.” Everything she cooked seemed to have gravy on it, everything just tasted better at her house. She could take a cut rose (usually from a funeral arrangement, no less) and 1/2 a potato and — I’m not making this up– dig a hole and put them in the earth together and end up with a rose bush. I have tried this at least a dozen times and end up with a dead rose and a stinky potato. I’ve asked other family members about this–they all remember that she could do it, but no one knows how she did it.
I think wisdom is like that…not just knowledge, although that’s part of it. But a true wisdom of the ages, an understanding of how to do things that is simply long gone. Yet just because something is ancient, it doesn’t mean it’s obsolete. I watch myself and many others of my generation relearn things about gardening and sustainability that she just lived because it was what they did then. She was from a time that has entered the larger flow of history and is a distant memory for those left from her generation. She lived through an abusive husband, through wars and the development of antibiotics, through the advent of television and ballpoint pens, through computers and space travel and life and death and things that would destroy most people.
So this morning, I’m thinking of her and all those who knew and loved her, and all of us who love and have lost someone we love. Certain people leave a lingering taste on the lives of others, a smell and a sound that is always present, ripples in the waters of our souls that just keep echoing out into all we become. If I believed in Heaven, I would believe it smelled like her house and tasted like her cooking. It would smell like beans and cornbread, biscuits and bacon, fresh air and cookies, it would smell like wood stoves and sweet tea and a scent that was hers alone. It would have that same quality of light, that ringing laughter that made anyone with her laugh even more, a full-on delightful laughter that made babies grin and giggle. Even at the end when she was in hospice, she had the same quality of light…that mystical quality twilight has about this time in the summer when the fireflies are dancing in the fields, bestowing upon us a shower of grace and wonder as time rolls by; the quality Light has as a life becomes a memory but the love remains, ever-present, ever accessible, ever with us.
As is the nature of my stream of consciousness, this led me to thinking about other things, which led me to thinking about George Washington Carver (I realize this is quite a leap, but just try to follow the bouncing ball). Someone once asked him how he figured out so many things about peanuts and what to do with them. His response, “Anything will share its secrets with you if you love it enough,” is so beautiful, so instructive. I think this is why my grandmother ended up with rose bushes and I ended up with a pile of compost. She lived with and in her life, not at it. She went through a lot in her life, saw a lot, learned a lot, finished her GED when one of her daughters graduated from high school, made do and thrived on it. She is remembered fondly by all, and we still laugh about her laugh and how much we miss it. Stories about people don’t get a great deal better than that.
So that led me to thinking about a quote by Rabindranath Tagore, “If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.” She saw the sun and stars in everything and I just love that about her.
So today, when so many are having such a hard time, and I remember one of the beloved people in my life with sweet sadness but a big smile, I think of another Tagore poem, a beautiful prayer…
“My God, when the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy. When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.
When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from beyond, come to me, sweet God of silence, with your peace and rest.
When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.
When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O holy one, ever wakeful, come with your light and your thunder…”
To those experiencing grief today, we hold you in the tenderness of hope and joy, of compassion and sweet silence, of peace and rest. May you experience ever present showers of mercy and find the comfort of the ages in it. Above all, may you love something enough for it to tell you all its secrets, and bloom in that love. Years from now, may you remember those you loved, and they remember you, and may enduring loving relationships brighten your life. Showers of Mercy, indeed. Stories just don’t get a great deal better than that.
Peace and blessings,
T
Morning Prayers & Ponderings…
I’m catching up on some reading and prayer this morning. Prayer literally means “to beg.” There is a lot of begging going on these days around me, a lot of people are having a hard time. So, as is my daily practice, I am settling in soon to pray, to meditate and to be more in touch with the Divine presence I believe is always whispering sweetly around me. But, as the Maharishi said, “the winds of God’s grace are always blowing, but it is up to us to raise our sails.”
This morning I was catching up on 4011 emails and came across this nifty prayer from another blog and would like to borrow it. But, like most things I read or am inspired by, it wandered me down a path of thinking my own convoluted, not-quite-fully-caffeinated-yet thoughts. I mean, can you really borrow a prayer?? Can you borrow the earnest entreaties of another, can you take the intentions and hopes of another and mix them in your own internal soup and make it your own?
I would like to think so….I’d like to think on those days when it is hard or scary or sad, on the days when I am so tired or overwhelmed, on the days when it’s too much to do anything but just trust it’s all gonna be ok…those are the days we probably need to borrow a prayer the most. Today I’m feeling good, great in fact, so I’m simply being the conduit for the prayers of others and trusting that like all good things, they move into the collective to water the fertile soil of our souls.
Pema Chodron describes being overwhelmed as “horrified anxiety.” That’s probably the best definition I have ever heard. There is a lot of that going around lately…just about everyone walking in my door is in a state of flux, transition, overwhelm or grief. There seems to be something powerful moving in the collective as the old washes away and the new rolls in…like all tides, it brings things with it and this is no different. Whatever is happening in the collective these days is deep and it’s hard on folks. If you are having a rough time, know you are not alone…
We are all having interesting ups and downs with the change. The water element is still pretty out of whack and there is a lot of transition for people. For those who aren’t into the elements, the bottom line is that water is the element of emotions, and so when it is out of balance then the emotional state of humans also tends to be out of balance. In these times, I find it helpful to remember that Divine Peace and Love dwell in and around all of us, and that we can trust the process of life… that we can move through life knowing we are safe, Divinely inspired, protected and guided, that we are safe and all is well. In the words of St. Julian of Norwich, “and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…”
So in this time when there is a lot of prayer borrowing going on, I’m going to pass on some of my own favorites, as well as borrow from others who are in the habit of sending out prayers.
The wonderful folks at The Virtual Abbey listed this prayer on July 25, evidently taken from A New Zealand Prayerbook, and I love it. So I’m taking it directly from her blog…
God, come to my assistance.
Lord, make haste to help me.
Lord, it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.
It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done
what has not been done has not been done;
let it be.
The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness
of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.
The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace
enfold us, all dear to us, and all who have no peace.
The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Thanks be to God.
I can’t say it any better than that. So today, let us look expectantly to this new day, to new joys and to new possibilities. If you need a prayer, feel free to borrow one. If you have a prayer, feel free to share it…no prayer is ever held for long and certainly never goes to waste.
I’m off to raise my sails. Have a great day.
Peace and blessings,
T 🙂
Philosophers, Poets & the $64,000 Question
Today I had one of those interesting days, the kind when it all sort of flows and time bends softly and warmly around the looking glass, the kind that feels somehow touched by the Divine yet is sort of emotionally exhausting in that same way. This morning I blogged on the Spirituality of Grief and Joy site about my many ponderings…from Jean Piaget to Buddha and CS Lewis and a bunch of other stuff… and at the time it even seemed to make sense 😉
Tonight I’m thinking of Rumi and oddly enough, the Buddhist sense of the 8 Worldly Dharmas. The 8 Worldly Dharmas are: praise and blame; pleasure and pain; fame and disgrace; gain and loss. Buddhism basically says that these become our attachments and aversions in life– we want the ones we enjoy or make us feel good. Therefore we constantly seek something outside of ourselves to hold onto the feelings we like and avoid the ones we don’t. This creates a cycle in which we are forever caught in the wheel of life, trying to have pleasure, praise, fame and gain, seeking an ever elusive happiness, because the things we view as the opposites are always there as well.
Our whole culture–nay, our whole economy– is based on the search for these things. This frightens me somewhat. We are led to believe that if we have the newest shiny whizbang or the right car or the right mate or the right beer or the right whatever, then–Finally! you can be happy. And as humans we fall for that, over and over and over again. But then that changes too, and the new whizbang goes out of style, the nifty new phone becomes a dinosaur in a few months, the kids go to school or the person you love dies or the job you thought would be so good falls apart. And then, there we are, back into what is viewed as the opposite, the “bad” feelings, the aversions and the pain.
This happens to all of us at some point, and there are so many choices. But one of the choices is to look in the mirror and ask some hard questions, like… So now what? Who am I without my stuff, my comforts, my stories, my attachments, my distractions, my toys? Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, said, “As humans we are always running after something— some pleasure, some reward, some way to avoid pain. But here’s the real $64, 000 question–when all of that is over, how much have you ever really connected with yourself in your whole life?”
So I was thinking this morning in the spirituality blog about Piaget and object permanence and how much trivial stuff is held in the gray matter between my ears, and that led to Buddha and the 8 Worldly Dharmas, which then led me to think of this Rumi poem…
Why Cling
Why cling to one life
Till it is soiled and ragged?
The sun dies and dies
Squandering a hundred lives
every instant
God has decreed a life for you
And He will give you
another and another and another and another….
So tonight, I am thinking of many things, watching it all sort of spin by, lazy on its axis, watching it pass through in the most interesting of ways…I ponder the $64, 000 question and think of worldly dharmas of pleasure and pain, attachments and aversions and all of the many ways in which they disguise themselves. I love Rumi’s take on the clinging, somehow understanding that it is in the letting go, it’s the fall into the soft spots of the heart and soul that bring us to new life. It’s not just about who you are, but who you are becoming, and if you are OK with that. And, like the child crying “do it again!” to a fun silly grown up trick, the sun will rise tomorrow and we get to choose all over again. And how cool is that? Always another chance to accompany the changes in life.
So tonight I ponder this garden party of philosophers and poets, and I thank them for their contributions to my life and soul. And I offer thanks for all the changes and chances to do it again. And on that note, I’m off to practice the $64,000 question.
Night moon.
Night stars….
Peace 🙂
Object Impermanence
Today I am thinking of Jean Piaget and his theory about object permanence.
As you may remember from your college psych 101 class, Jean Piaget theorized that the role of maturation was instrumental in a child’s increasing capacity to understand their world. Put another way, we cannot undertake certain tasks until we are psychologically mature enough to do so. For those of you who didn’t make it to class that day, or had more sense than to major in psych and minor in Eastern philosophy, here’s the bottom line: Jean Piaget had a bazillion theories about the cognitive development of children. Some of his research has been questioned, but it is still taught and used, especially in early childhood education.
One of the many terms Piaget coined was object permanence, which is the basic understanding that an object exists even when it cannot be seen or touched. Until this stage of development is reached, it’s basically “out of sight, out of mind” for the child. This is illustrated by the utter joy adults and babies get playing peek-a-boo. The child squeals in utter delight each time the adult’s face suddenly reappears again, and of course the adults (all being well) love to hear the giggles of happy children.
This is all very lovely and (all being well) part of normal childhood development. It obviously creates stability– you know the ball doesn’t really disappear from existence when your crazy Uncle Joe hides it behind his back, you know mom is coming back (again, all being well), you know your bed really exists even when you leave the room, and so on. The fun part of the developmental stages, and in my mind the most fascinating, is at about age 3, when children believe that if they can’t see you, then you can’t see them. So a 3-year-old will stand in the middle of everyone and cover his eyes, believing this makes him invisible. And wouldn’t that be a lovely trick during high stress meetings?
In case you are beginning to wonder if all those psych and philosophy classes fried my brain and if we will ever get to the point, the answer to both of those questions is yes. So, here we go:
I’m fascinated that we need to know things are predictable and stable, that there is object permanence, but also that this very same need and belief creates enormous stress for people. It is the belief that things are permanent and will never change that creates a lot of fear and grief in humans. It is my clinical experience that people who are depressed are stuck in the past, and people who are anxious are stuck in the future. People who are in present time and mindful of their present life tend to be pretty relaxed. But most anxiety and depression comes from the experience of loss, or at least the projection of the fear of loss or change. The anxiety comes from being afraid of losing something you think you have, or of not getting something you think you want. We know that things are not permanent, yet we tend to fear change.
I don’t think we ever outgrow the need for knowing there is object permanence, what as an adult I call predictability, stability or security. We rely on it, need it, thrive under it. And, just like a child giggling playing peek-a-boo and crying, “do it again!” I find myself trying to be that present, joyful and mindful of my own little corner of the world. C.S. Lewis said he thinks sometimes God delights in creation in this same way, making the sun rise each day, like a giggling child each morning, saying “do it again!” I love that image of the Divine, as a happy, giggling child, full of trust and goodness, and that the Divine sees us in that same giggly, happy way. It’s a great way to view my world…thinking of daisies blooming all summer and giggling while saying do it again, the moon cycling through and saying do it again, the joy I get from watching my tomatoes grow or the cicadas sing their bluesy summer songs, the redness of cardinals and the flow of rivers. And when I pay attention to the natural world, I find stability and a deep spiritual connection there. And, just like a child with object permanence, I have to have a certain level of maturity to trust it in this way. And I find that ability also seems to ebb and flow, just like everything else in the universe.
It is when I confuse predictability with permanence that things can get sticky. So the sun comes up each day, yet we are in a different place. The river is always there, but as Heraclitus said, you can’t ever step twice into the same river. So things remain constant because they are always changing. But it is the belief that things will always be the same and never change, or at least the desire for this, which creates much stress and grief in life. Buddhism teaches that understanding the concept of impermanence is central to our liberation from suffering.
The Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hahn said of impermanence,
Nothing remains the same for two consecutive moments. The Buddha implored us not just to talk about impermanence, but to use it as an instrument to help us penetrate deeply into reality and obtain liberating insight. We may be tempted to say that because things are impermanent, there is suffering.
But the Buddha encouraged us to look again. Without impermanence, life is not possible. How can we transform our suffering if things are not impermanent? How can our daughter grow up into a beautiful young lady? How can the situation in the world improve? We need impermanence for social justice and for hope.
If you suffer, it is not because things are impermanent. It is because you believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, you don’t suffer much, because you understand that flowers are impermanent. But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one, and you suffer deeply when she passes away. If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to make her happy right now. Aware of impermanence, you become positive, loving and wise. Impermanence is good news. Without impermanence, nothing would be possible. With impermanence, every door is open for change. Impermanence is an instrument for our liberation.
So today I am pondering our need for stability with our need for understanding the ever-changing, impermanent nature of things. Today I recognize that my parents are sick and one day will die. Today I recognize that while there is war and some folks are experiencing a tough time economically, this too shall pass. Today I recognize that it’s about 100 degrees in my little corner of the world and the tomatoes are coming in, but in a very short time I’ll be donning sweaters and jeans again because that will have changed too. Predictability can be a wonderful and grounding thing, and it is necessary to create a sense of safety in children and in adults. But taken to an extreme it can create a false sense of control and result in terrible anxiety when we lose that false sense of power regarding people, places and things.
Einstein said the most important question to ask is, “Is the Universe a safe place?” He said we formulate all of our understanding of the universe and beyond based on the answer to that question. I think he was right. I believe the Universe is a safe place, full of predictable change. And the truth is that when I like the changes, like the seasons always flowing into one another, knowing it will flow back around again, I like it. It’s when I try to hold on, or grasp or cling to how things are in this moment, or how I think I want myself or someone else to be without ever changing, dying or leaving that things get cumbersome and stressful. I think it’s human nature to want things we label as bad or hard to change quickly, but want to hold onto the things we enjoy or love.
So today I am thinking about object impermanence and trusting that just like the sun coming up today and tomorrow and probably the day after that, the Divine delights in me and all of us, in our changes and growth, in our ponderings and questions, in our holding on and and letting go. And each time I hold on or let go, make a mistake or learn something new, I trust the Divine is there, unchanging and permanent in that giggling joy. And that we can all just keep doing it again and again and again, ever mindful, ever giggling, ever present to predictable change.
A child has to have a certain level of maturity to understand objects are permanent. And I have to have a certain level of maturity to understand that they are not. Things are ever flowing, ever changing, flowing back into the One, into cycles of beginning and end, knowing I can always start where I am and pick up the flow. And then do it again… how cool is that?
Have a great weekend.
peace 🙂
Merton & the Path
This morning I am thinking about Thomas Merton.
For the uninitiated, Thomas Merton was one of the great mystics of our time. A Trappist monk and a prolific writer, in his later years he connected with Buddhist teachers and declared them brothers in contemplation. His autobiography, Seven Storey Mountain, is a road map, his own experience with starting off as an atheist and becoming a monk. Merton spent 13 years of silent meditation at the Abbey of Gethsemani, praying for God’s will. He came out and wrote this:
My God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do i really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please You. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it at the time. Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone….
That prayer is found in his book Thoughts in Solitude.
Today I am contemplating Merton. I have been thinking a lot about him and this path of late…watching myself and others on it, sometimes feeling my own sense of inadequacy, elation, giggles or frustration, my own attachment to outcomes, my own humanness coming in many disguises.
It’s funny– I don’t think most of us have an emotion that has a shelf life of more than about 20 minutes. Even in the depths of grief or loss, of joy or elation, you cannot hold onto that for more than a few hours…things are always changing. You can choose to stay angry or as a victim, and that can become habitual as well. But mostly emotions ebb and flow, like waves coming and going, rising and falling on the shores of our souls.
Our thoughts and emotional states come and go like clouds in the sky. And when we recognize this and let them float on by, without getting caught in the stickiness of trying to hold onto a cloud, it all seems to flow pretty well… Yet when we are experiencing one we label as “negative, ” aka “uncomfortable,” we want that one to end. I have had long periods of meditation where there is a sense of One, of elation, of the bliss of knowing there is no separation. It is a practice not to cling to any of it, to let them all come and go, like clouds moving across the blue sky.
This morning I felt my frustration rise over what now seems fairly trivial, at least my part of it. But it rose nonetheless. I felt my chest tighten, my breath grow more shallow, felt myself try to get back to my practice of openness…to breathe it away…ventilate it, give it some space and air, let it pass gently. If that same person had called to tell me we just won the lotto, those same places in me would have expanded instead of contracted. Most spiritual traditions teach that the more we hold onto anything, the more it holds onto us. So this morning, I am letting go, letting my heart space expand and fill with the Light and air that is always available to me.
Separation is illusion. Divine peace dwell in and around all of us, and we can all trust the process of life. But isn’t it funny that we only want to trust the things we label as “good?” So much of our experience is based in the stories we tell ourselves about life and our experiences. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional, and I think a lot of the suffering in the world is the result of the stories we tell ourselves about the pain, about clinging, grasping and being afraid to let go.
So this morning, I think of Merton. Because if Thomas Merton– mystic, teacher, writer and fellow traveler on the path– doesn’t know God’s will after 13 years of silent meditation in a monastery, then I probably won’t figure it out today either. But I’ll keep on the path, and keep asking, keep showing up, keep contemplating. On that note, I’m going to meditate, letting myself become one of the clouds in this ever moving sky.
I’m curious– what do you do to stay on the path and let it all pass through?
Have a great day. 🙂
Seek and ye shall find
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