Incense
Every morning, before the family wakes and after the cat has been fed, I light a stick of incense, bow toward a kakejiku of Amida Buddha, and plunge it into the little bowl of sand and ash.
It’s said that our sense of smell is more closely linked to memory and emotion than any other. It bypasses the Thalamus; straight to the dome. Shoyeido's Kyoto Autumn Leaves (Kyonishiki) incense takes me places.
There’s a whole world in that tiny stream of smoke, rising in the light of a fake candle. It speaks of countless hours of zazen, of emptiness and contentment. A reminder that this life is transient and fickle, dispersed with a sharp exhale and ultimately reduced to ash, indistinguishable from what burned before.