Solala Blog for week of 2/10/14

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Watching the Incense

I like to burn a lot of incense in my office, home and temple. I always enjoy watching the smoke rise in elegant shapes from the incense burner, drifting off slowly into the air. It looks like some sort of slow motion dance, much like the taiji or qigong dance that I practice. Sometimes I can see animals or trees or shapely clouds in the smoke. I like to use something simple like sandalwood or aloes wood incense, nothing too sweet or cloying.

I also have some incense that I was given by the vice abbot at the Jade Springs monastery at Hua Shan, a sacred Daoism mountain, years ago. I don’t know what it’s called. I call it “Daoist incense.” I have only seen it at that one mountain. The last time I was there I bought a huge amount of it, enough for years, from a woman who sold from a little cart at the bottom of the mountain. She was so amazed when this “big nose” kept buying her entire store of the incense. She even ran inside and found a few more bundles of it. She laughed and laughed when I bought it all.

Incense or incense like plants have been used for thousands of years by various cultures abound the world to call in the spirits and communicate with helpful guides. Sometimes I recite an invocation for burning incense, taught by my teacher, Hua Ching Ni.

It starts off:

I cultivate myself and follow the Heavenly Way

            With a lucid mind and subtle energy.

with this incense I connect my whole being

            with that of all Divine Immortals.

(You can see the rest of this in Master Ni’s book, Workbook for Spiritual Development.)

Shanti and I have also been having fun with some really high quality essential oils from Young Living, especially one called Joy and one called Sacred Mountain. Diffusing these into the air in our home brings about a beautiful energy and lightens our spirits.

Whether it is ‘Daoist incense,” sage, sweetgrass, essential oils or myrrh or other aromatic oils from ancient times that are used, they become gateways into the spirit world and help us communicate with “all the Divine Immortals.”