Incense Stick Quotes

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To exemplify that particular situation, we can look to a cool day in late June. Rudy, to put it mildly, was incensed. Who did Liesel Meminger think she was, telling him she had to take the washing and ironing alone today? Wasn’t he good enough to walk the streets with her? “Stop complaining, Saukerl,” she reprimanded him. “I just feel bad. You’re missing the game.” He looked over his shoulder. “Well, if you put it like that.” There was a Schmunzel. “You can stick your washing.” He ran off and wasted no time joining a team. When Liesel made it to the top of Himmel Street, she looked back just in time to see him standing in front of the nearest makeshift goals. He was waving. “Saukerl,” she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a Saumensch. I think that’s as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
In Memory of M. B. Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense. You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain. You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes, and suffocated inside stifling walls. Alone you let the terrible stranger in, and stayed with her alone. Now you’re gone, and nobody says a word about your troubled and exalted life. Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast. Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.
Anna Akhmatova
My captain will help you be very quick. Within three sticks.” The unit of time was the time it took for a standard stick of incense to smolder away, approximately one hour for one stick.
James Clavell (Shōgun (Asian Saga, #1))
My eyes are open for always, my mouth is empty for always, and always will my soul reach for yours. In the land of the dead, there are only blackbirds, and I send this one to you, in the hopes that you remember me still. Light me a stick of incense, and so long as it burns, let me sit in the chamber outside your bedroom again. Until it goes out...Let me stay and be for you.
Nghi Vo (When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (The Singing Hills Cycle, #2))
How a sip of water from a brass cup or a few drops from a brass spoon of the size of finger or how can one keep rose petals and marigold spreads between the pages of one's books for years or how the fresh shoot of barley could be put behind one's ears or how a dot of vermilion on the forehead or how fasting for a day or how praying or chanting or lightening an incense stick or how lighting a cotton wick dipped in mustard oil or how being blessed by priests and saints or how sitting in a lotus posture or how reading the holy books could kindle in one that thing called faith
Aporva Kala (Life... Love... Kumbh...)
Sandalwood" The ash keeps dropping from the incense stick. I keep turning you over in my mind. I keep turning you over in my heart. The stick shortens, burning. The ash grows and falls. I keep turning you over. I keep turning you. I keep turning. The ash keeps falling, piling up, more of the silent reduction. Burning earns such clean wages, eye of ember, eye of ash hastening. I keep turning your eyes over to find your thoughts. Turning your voice over to find your meaning. Turning your body over to find a place to hide me. And you keep turning inside me.
Li-Young Lee (The Undressing: Poems)
Sacrifice yourself for the sake of your strong passion, like an incense stick burning itself to bring out the best in it. -Reshma Cheknath Umesh-
RESHMA CHEKNATH UMESH (DEAR READER BY JULIE)
So many gods. Which was the god of test scores? Which was the god of unmarried shopgirls who wished to stay that way? She decided to simply pray to all of them. “If you exist, if you’re up there, help me. Give me a way out of this shithole. Or, if you can’t do that, give the import inspector a heart attack.” She looked around the empty temple. What came next? She had always imagined that praying involved more than just speaking out loud. She spied several unused incense sticks lying by the altar. She lit the end of them by dipping it in the brazier, and then waved it experimentally in the air. Was she supposed to hold the smoke to the gods? Or should she smoke the stick herself? She had just held the burned end to her nose when a temple custodian strode out from behind the altar. They blinked at each other. Slowly, Rin removed the incense stick from her nostril. “Hello,” she said. “I’m praying.” “Please leave,” he said.
R.F. Kuang (The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1))
Often, after extinguishing the oil lamp in our house on stilts, we would lie on our beds and smoke in the dark. Book titles poured from our lips, the mysterious and exotic names evoking unknown worlds. It was like Tibetan incense, where you need only say the name, Zang Xiang, to smell the subtle, refined fragrance and to see the joss sticks sweating beads of scented moisture which, in the lamplight, resemble drops of liquid gold.
Dai Sijie (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress)
My parents bedroom was now draped in damask, air heavy with the scent of incense sticks displayed in ornate stands. On the dressing table, a selection of exotic massage oils and a pamphlet on Tantric Breathing techniques. All this from my mother. A woman who called green tea, ‘hippy juice.
Patricia Caliskan (Awful By Comparison)
You should sit, concentrating inwardly for a while in the Nio-zazen style of Shozan,57 controlling your ch’i. This is not necessarily a matter of lighting an incense stick, fixing a time period, or sitting in the correct Buddhist zazen posture. It is just sitting in your usual fashion, in a proper posture, and enlivening your ch’i. You should train yourself to sit like this for a little while several times a day whenever you have some free time. If you do this, your sinews and bones will be measured and coordinated, your blood will flow without obstruction, your ch’i will have substance, and illnesses will disappear of themselves.
Issai Chozanshi (The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts: A Graphic Novel)
Thor looked at Maddy. "What d'you mean, Father?" He had loosened his grip on Loki, who was now flattened against the cell wall as far from Jormungand as he could manage while Ellie, incensed at this latest invasion, lashed out at the serpent with her walking stick. "Terrific," said Loki under his breath. "Come to Netherworld. Meet the kids.
Joanne Harris (Runemarks (Runemarks, #1))
And she knew her defiance in escaping his grasp, even temporarily, had shown Jasu the depth of her strength. In the months afterward, though he behaved awkwardly, he had allowed her the time and space she needed. It was the first genuine show of respect he had made toward her in their four years of marriage. Jasu’s parents made no such concession, their latent disappointment growing into relentless criticism of her for failing to bear a son.Kavita walks outside and spreads her mat on the rough stone steps, where she sits facing the rising sun in the east She lights the small ghee-soaked diya and thin stick of incense, and then closes her eyes in prayer. The wisp of fragrant smoke slowly circles its way up into the air and around her. She breathes deeply and thinks, as always, of the baby girls she has lost. She rings the small silver bell and chants softly. She sees their faces and their small bodies, she hears their cries and feels their tiny fingers wrap around hers. And always, she hears the sound of Usha’s desperate cry echoing behind the closed doors of the orphanage. She allows herself to get lost in the depths of her grief. After she has chanted and sung and wept for some time, she tries to envision the babies at peace, wherever they are. She pictures Usha as a little girl, her hair wound in two braids, each tied with a white ribbon. The image of the girl in her mind is perfectly clear: smiling, running, and playing with children, eating her meals and sleeping alongside the others in the orphanage.Every morning, Kavita sits in the same place outside her home with her eyes closed until the stormy feelings peak and then, very gradually, subside. She waits until she can breathe evenly again. By the time she opens her eyes, her face is wet and the incense has burned down to a small pile of soft ash. The sun is a glowing orange ball on the horizon, and the villagers are beginning to stir around her. She always ends her puja by touching her lips to the one remaining silver bangle on her wrist, reconciling herself to the only thing she has left of her daughters. These daily rituals have brought her comfort and, over time, some healing. She can carry herself through the rest of the day with these peaceful images of Usha in her mind. Each day becomes more bearable. As days turn to weeks, and weeks to months, Kavita feels her bitterness toward Jasu soften. After several months, she allows him to touch her and then, to reach for her at night.
Shilpi Somaya Gowda (Secret Daughter)
1. Do not chase those who go, and do not stop those who come. -Blind- 카톡【AKR331】텔레【RDH705】라인【SPR331】위커【SPR705】 저희는 7가지 철칙을 바탕으로 거래를 합니다. 고객들과 지키지못할약속은 하지않습니다 1.정품보장 2.총알배송 3.투명한 가격 4.편한 상담 5.끝내주는 서비스 6.고객님 정보 보호 7.깔끔한 거래 제품을 구입하실때는 저희가 구매자분들께 약속지켜드리는것만큼 구매자분들도 저희와 약속 꼭 지켜주시기 바랍니다 구체적인 내용은 문의하셔셔 상담받아보세요 클릭해주셔셔 감사합니다 24시간 언제든지 문의주세요 2. Watch out for those surrounded by dark clouds. – Balthazar Graciasian 3. Rather than let me live in Paradise alone There will be no greater penalty. Goethe 4. When you associate with others, the first thing you should not forget Because the other person has their own way of life In order not to confuse them, they should not interfere with others' lives. Henry James 5. You have a bad relationship with others I hate that person being with you, If you are right and you don't agree, The person will not be reproved It is you who should be reproved. Because you have not done your heart and devotion to that person. Tolstoy 6. If you want to be liked by others, Just show that you are having a great time together. If you do that, instead of just having fun Better to hang out with the other person. And people with this temperament Even if you don't have great culture or wisdom, you have common sense. That behaviour, Who have great talent and lack this disposition I greatly move others' minds. Joseph Addis   7. Anyone who accepts others generously Always get people's hearts, Who rules with dignity and force Always buy people's anger. -King Sejong- 8. I want to interest others. Don't close your ears and eyes yourself Show interest in others. If you don't understand this, However talented and capable It is impossible to get along with others. Lawrence Gould- 9. Take care of others' interests. Undistributed profits never last long. -Voltaire- 10. It is only sin that I do not know others. What's the sin of not letting others know? Jang Young-sil 11. What comes out of you returns to you. -Blind- 12. It is never a good thing to be someone's half. We are a perfect person. Andrew Matthews 13. Treating others Cherish his body as mine. My body is not only precious. Do not forget that others' bodies are also precious. And do what you desire for others first. -Confucius-   14. Most people Neither my side nor my enemy. Also what you do or yourself There are people who do not like it. It's too much to want everyone to like you. Liz Carpenter 15. In general, introverted humans Outgoing humans get along well with outgoing humans. It is because the mind is at first comfortable and easy to understand. But the state of being at ease It is not a good condition for your own growth. Theodore Rubin   16. Stick when you're hungry, and leave when you're hungry, When it's warm, it flocks, when it's cold This is the widespread dismissal of recognition. Chae Geun-hwa 17. With people You can't share the ball together, Together with the ball envy one another. Tribulation with people, but comfort cannot come together. Comfort will be an enemy of one another. Chae Geun-hwa 18. People must change their positions and positions. -Confucius- 19. A person is originally clean, All call for sin and blessing according to ties. The paper smells close to incense, That rope is like a fishy fish. Man dyes little by little and learns it, but he does not know how to do it himself. -Law law- 20. A person's value can only be measured in relation to others. Nietzsche 21. Be strict to yourself and generous to others -Confucius- 22. Beware of your impression of the other person Worrying is why you're the main character. Usually, a person's crush is about first showing others You should know what appears as a reaction. You don't wait Give you first. Lawrence
22 kinds of relationship sayings
In America, my father began working as a clerk for a government agency. He rented an apartment in a place called Queens, New York. A year after he left us, he sent airplane tickets. The Delhi of the seventies is hard to imagine: the quietness, the streets empty of traffic, children playing cricket in the middle of the street and rarely having to move out of the way to let cars by, the vegetable vendors who came pushing their carts down the streets in the late afternoon, crying out their wares in tight, high-pitched voices. There weren't VCRs back then, let alone cable channels. A movie would play for twenty-five or fifty weeks in huge auditorium theaters, and then once the movie was gone, it was gone forever. I remembered feeling grief when the enormous billboards for Sholay at the end of our street were taken down. It was like somebody had died. It is also hard to remember how frugal we were. We saved the cotton that comes inside pill bottles. Our mothers used it to make wicks. This frugality meant that we were sensitive to the physical reality of the world in a way most people no longer are. When my mother bought a box of matches, she had my brother sit at a table and use a razor to split the matches in half. When we had to light several things, we would use the match to set a twist of paper on fire and then walk around the apartment lighting the stove, the incense stick, the mosquito coil. This close engagement with things meant that we were conscious that the wood of a match is soft, that a bit of spit on paper split on paper slows down how it burns. By the time our airplane tickets arrived, not every family hired a band to play outside their house on the day of the departure to a foreign country. Still, many families did.
Akhil Sharma
》Insidious《 "Why are you so cold hearted", she asks. Words of wise say 'There is a pagoda inside every human being'. I want to see. She drops a destination pin twisted at end. In his silence, she sinks into abyss inside him, travelling canyons, caverns and reaches a red dead barren land like amidst of kangaroo country. The only things one see here are Zigzag paths created by Horned vipers, young barrel cactus and corpus of human emotions. "Come under the shelter of this Uluru hill", a thunderous voice she hears. This is blood which trickles like sand in hour glass. The lightning in anonymity is the veins where it flows. That dark clot moving towards mind is sudden anger, spreading in entire body and generates uncontrolled hypertension. Deceit, dishonesty, falsity and hypocrisy of travellers from ages has evolved this place. "But.. but where is that heart soft as fairyfloss? Let me go inside that rock" she urges. You don't need to go there. Purify your heart as of a child in cradle. You will inhale the fumes of fragrance approaching you like incense stick. Then again visit and observe this place, no less than Garden of Eden.
Satbir Singh Noor
Excuse my lengthy exposition, but in short what I mean to say is that we should regard everything that appears to us during our meditation as makyo. Even if Buddha appears, even if glorious light shines, even if the ash of the incense stick is heard as it falls six feet away, and even if the absolute nothingness reveals itself, they all belong to makyo regardless of whether they are good or bad, as long as they occur to us during our meditation. When we come face to face with makyo, we should brace up mind and body and become courageous so that we may smash them all into pieces paying no attention to them. We find the following passage in Kaian Kokugo,37 “If you want to maintain your life, cut the thoughts of protecting your life. It is only when you cut everything that you will be secure for the first time.” HOW TO GET TO YOUR FEET AFTER SITTING When we sit for the duration of one incense stick, that is for thirty or forty minutes at a time, it is not necessary to pay any attention to the problem of getting to our feet after meditation. However,
Omori Sogen (Introduction to Zen Training: A Physical Approach to Meditation and Mind-Body Training (The Classic Rinzai Zen Manual))
Excuse my lengthy exposition, but in short what I mean to say is that we should regard everything that appears to us during our meditation as makyo. Even if Buddha appears, even if glorious light shines, even if the ash of the incense stick is heard as it falls six feet away, and even if the absolute nothingness reveals itself, they all belong to makyo regardless of whether they are good or bad, as long as they occur to us during our meditation. When we come face to face with makyo, we should brace up mind and body and become courageous so that we may smash them all into pieces paying no attention to them. We find the following passage in Kaian Kokugo,37 “If you want to maintain your life, cut the thoughts of protecting your life. It is only when you cut everything that you will be secure for the first time.
Omori Sogen (Introduction to Zen Training: A Physical Approach to Meditation and Mind-Body Training (The Classic Rinzai Zen Manual))
So you think someone is going to shoot at me twice in one campaign cycle?" Sticking out her hand, she started counting off on her fingers. "Reagan, Johnson, Nixon, Carter. They've all had over fifty assassination attempts. Some over a hundred!" His sisters were the earth's most annoying creatures. "Those are all presidents. And they all survived the attempts." "William Goebel, gubernatorial candidate. George Wallace, gubernatorial candidate." "You're in the wrong century." "And you're underestimating the power of racial hatred," she snapped. "Bill Richardson, Deval Patrick, Bobby Jindal, David Paterson, Susana Martinez, Michelle Grisham-" "And listing all the minority governors from this century proves what?" she snapped again. "It proves that we can run for elections without ending up dead.
Sonali Dev (Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes, #3))
In those days, I wanted to believe our love was something tangible and permanent, like a good luck charm I could always wear around my neck. Now I know that it was more like the wisp of smoke trailing off a stick of incense: most of what I could hold on to was the memory of the burning, the aftermath of its scent.
Jean Kwok (Girl in Translation)
If I’ve shifted anything, it’s only because you, Mama, and Nai Nai lent me your strength.” As Mulan out a long breath, a spark leapt from one of the incense sticks. As it floated downward, it seemed inexplicably to multiply, over and over until there were hundreds of sparks floating in the air of the temple. “Baba,” Mulan whispered. The sparks rearranged themselves, clustering, expanding, and re-forming, until they became a dragon that soared through the air. Next to it, a fiery bird flapped its wings. They cavorted together, chasing each other in dizzying circles, until, suddenly, they scattered again into ash. The glowing sparks floated slowly to the ground and winked out one by one.
Livia Blackburne (Feather and Flame (The Queen's Council, #2))
Bria, with her Necromancy kit and a lighter. “Hang on to it, Lexi,” she said, her hands moving fast. “Kieran’s a horrible twatwaffle. Everyone hates him. What a dick. Let’s kill him.” She rolled her thumb across the top of the lighter and it sparked to life. She put it to one of her incense sticks. “Kieran, blast that bitch.
K.F. Breene (Sin & Magic (Demigods of San Francisco, #2))
Canadian forward J. P. Parise became so incensed and was ejected for attempting to swing his stick at the head of the East German ref. For a school full of wide-eyed primary school students, we could feel the animosity building to a crescendo of hatred.
Ken Doran (My Canadian Hockey Journey)
Looking for Store Where to Buy Sage Near Me? Crystalis #1 Smudge Sticks Store Offer Wide Collection of Sage Incense and White Sage.
Sage Incense
I sat there in silence before her altar for a time, then lit a stick of incense and rang the little bell as I continued penning apology letters in my head, ones I knew would only ever be returned to sender.
Mei Hachimoku (The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes)
Zen is Buddhism made simple again. The robes worn by Zen priests are plain black affairs (unlike the colorful getups favored by the Tibetans and their other Buddhist cousins), and even after receiving Transmission, the Zen master's daily dress is a dull brown robe. You can sit anywhere; Dogen Zenji said that the heart is the real zendo. This informs temple architecture. Plainness here is neither false humility nor a facade. It is true to the bone. Skeletal beams and rafters are seamlessly joined; they are not nailed or screwed into place; they are made to fit together. Inside a zendo, there is mostly open space, dimly lit, with a small central altar and a tan, a two-foot-high wooden platform built around the perimeter, where meditators sit on plain black cushions, facing the wall. There are few ceremonial objects—the teacher's staff, a stick of incense burning in a bowl—and it is rare to run into more than one or two bronze or wooden Buddhas. Zen rituals are spare, too. Music is reduced to an isolated ding or bong of a bell, the flat report of a mallet tapped against a slab of wood, and a thrumming bang from a giant bass drum. Even the chanting is monochromatic; students pitch their voices toward the deep, dark end of the register and grumble in unison.
Michael Downing (Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center)
In Japanese Buddhist temples the presiding monk watched the stick of incense burn to tell when it was time to stop meditating and begin the next communal activity.
Thomas A Tweed (Religion: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
In an Asiatic (Semitic) settlement (c. 1876–1560 B.C.) that was discovered at Avaris (Tell el-Dab’a), there is a monumental tomb where archaeologists found fragments of a colossal statue of an Asiatic dignitary that had been broken up. The statue had been deliberately destroyed and defaced. The original statue of the seated official was 150% of life size, approximately 2 m high, made of limestone and carved by Egyptian sculptors. This Asiatic man has a red mushroom-shaped hairstyle, yellow painted skin (traditional color of an Asiatic in Egyptian artwork), a long multi-colored cloak (red, white, and black stripes) which is non-Egyptian, and a throw stick (the Egyptian hieroglyph for a foreigner) held against his right shoulder. There is no name on the statue to identify the person, but the size of the statue indicates a person of great importance. Although some have suggested that this is Joseph, a more plausible explanation is that it is Jacob, the patriarch of the family. The clothing on the statue and its color are Asiatic; Joseph was clothed in Egyptian garments of fine linen (Genesis 41:42). The hairstyle on the statue is distinctly Asiatic; Joseph’s hairstyle would have almost certainly been Egyptian given that his brothers did not recognize him when they saw him (Genesis 42:8). Also, a fragment of the statue’s base shows that it was inscribed with the Egyptian word sntr = incense (a word used on funerary inscriptions), which signifies death. The statue was apparently built to commemorate a dead person. The style of the fragments that come from this statue are in harmony with statuary that came from a facility that produced statues during the reign of Amenemhat III, who came onto the throne the year Jacob died (1859 B.C.).34 It makes perfect sense that the statue is made to honor Jacob, who was not buried in Avaris but in Canaan (Genesis 47:29–30, 49:28–30).
Simon Turpin (Adam: First and the Last)
Bà Ngoại was usually in the kitchen cooking and taking menthol hits of green Eagle oil from her front pajama pocket. She wasn’t exactly the freshly baked cookies and milk kind of grandma. When I got a runny nose, she would scratch my back skin off with the edge of a quarter, leaving pink lines all over my body. And if I got really sick, she would scoop out some black liquid from a five-gallon glass jar she had at the top of the pantry that housed a giant dead black cobra. Tracing the smoke from a burning-hot incense stick up and down my back, she would spit the black mystery juice all over me as I lay face-down on an old ragged towel. After that, I much preferred taking a teaspoon of thick cough syrup, even if it made me gag.
Susan Lieu (The Manicurist's Daughter)
...the sight of his dead body in a coffin. Gathered around the coffin, petrified, and captivated by the lumps on his face, I fixated on it, smelling the flowers from the wreaths and garlands, incense sticks, perfume, and the dead scent. To shut out the cacophonous wailing around me, which alternated between crescendo and diminuendo, I concentrated on the beard hair, where the gray outnumbered the black.
DR NEETHA JOSEPH (A Recusant’s Incarnation: A Memoir)
Though she looks slightly stunned, she gives me her trademark smile: small, grim, determined. “I’m fine,” she says. Just as, from behind her, a pair of talons grasp her head— And twist. The crack shoots through the room. There is no blood. No gore. Only an abrupt dimming of light in those astute, tawny eyes, and the off-kilter tilt of Chenna’s lovely head on her broken neck. Blood pumps in my ears as I lift my gaze to meet Madam Himura’s piercing yellow eyes. She’s incensed, her feathers sticking on end. She drops Chenna unceremoniously—and comes for me.
Natasha Ngan (Girls of Fate and Fury (Girls of Paper and Fire, #3))
Patience is a fragrant incense stick running its course, allowing us to focus on the immaterial spirit within us, the source of our sanity.
VD.
Patience is a fragrant incense stick running its course. Patience is needed for concentration on the immaterial spirit within us. It is the source of our sanity, where order rests. Impatience an invitation to chaos.
VD.
Patience is a fragrant incense stick running its course. Patience is needed for concentration on the immaterial spirit within us. It is the source of our sanity, where order rests. An invitation to chaos is impatience.
VD.
We believe that the dead have power,” May translated. The old man gestured toward the corner of his room, where framed black and white photos of an Asian man and woman stood between two sticks of incense in front of a red backdrop decorated with gold lettering.
Bentley Little (The Handyman)
She lit a long stick, sharpened and dipped in sweet incense, and carried the flame to the four unlit tapers that sat in each corner of the temple.
Sasha Summers (Medusa, A Love Story (Loves of Olympus Book 1))
For instance, the disciple has chosen a tree, as an object of meditation, and has identified himself with it. That is to say that he has lost the consciousness of his own personality and experiences the peculiar sensations that one may ascribe to a tree. He feels himself to be composed of a stiff trunk with branches, he perceives the sensation of the wind moving the leaves. He notes the activity of the roots feeding under the ground, the ascension of the sap which spreads all over the tree, and so on. Then, having mentally become a tree (which has now become the subject) he must look at the man (who has now become the object) seated in front of him and must examine this man in detail. This done, the disciple again places his consciousness in the man and contemplates the tree as before. Then, transferring his consciousness once more into the tree, he contemplates the man. This alternative transposition of subject and object is effected a number of times. This exercise is often practiced indoors with a statue of a stick called gom shing (meditation wood). (Properly speaking, the gom shing is merely a stick at which one gazes to obtain fixity of mind. The burning incense stick is a variety of gom shing. A burning incense stick is also used in an obscure or completely darkened room to dispose the mind to meditation.
Alexandra David-Néel (Magic and Mystery in Tibet)
Monastery Nights I like to think about the monastery as I’m falling asleep, so that it comes and goes in my mind like a screen saver. I conjure the lake of the zendo, rows of dark boats still unless someone coughs or otherwise ripples the calm. I can hear the four AM slipperiness of sleeping bags as people turn over in their bunks. The ancient bells. When I was first falling in love with Zen, I burned incense called Kyonishiki, “Kyoto Autumn Leaves,” made by the Shoyeido Incense Company, Kyoto, Japan. To me it smelled like earnestness and ether, and I tried to imagine a consciousness ignorant of me. I just now lit a stick of it. I had to run downstairs for some rice to hold it upright in its bowl, which had been empty for a while, a raku bowl with two fingerprints in the clay. It calls up the monastery gate, the massive door demanding I recommit myself in the moments of both its opening and its closing, its weight now mine, I wanted to know what I was, and thought I could find the truth where the floor hurts the knee. I understand no one I consider to be religious. I have no idea what’s meant when someone says they’ve been intimate with a higher power. I seem to have been born without a god receptor. I have fervor but seem to lack even the basic instincts of the many seekers, mostly men, I knew in the monastery, sitting zazen all night, wearing their robes to near-rags boy-stitched back together with unmatched thread, smoothed over their laps and tucked under, unmoving in the long silence, the field of grain ripening, heavy tasseled, field of sentient beings turned toward candles, flowers, the Buddha gleaming like a vivid little sports car from his niche. What is the mind that precedes any sense we could possibly have of ourselves, the mind of self-ignorance? I thought that the divestiture of self could be likened to the divestiture of words, but I was wrong. It’s not the same work. One’s a transparency and one’s an emptiness. Kyonishiki.... Today I’m painting what Mom calls no-colors, grays and browns, evergreens: what’s left of the woods when autumn’s come and gone. And though he died, Dad’s here, still forgetting he’s no longer married to Annie, that his own mother is dead, that he no longer owns a car. I told them not to make any trouble or I’d send them both home. Surprise half inch of snow. What good are words? And what about birches in moonlight, Russell handing me the year’s first chanterelle— Shouldn’t God feel like that? I aspire to “a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration,” as Elizabeth Bishop put it. So who shall I say I am? I’m a prism, an expressive temporary sentience, a pinecone falling. I can hear my teacher saying, No. That misses it. Buddha goes on sitting through the century, leaving me alone in the front hall, which has just been cleaned and smells of pine.
Chase Twichell
you do find yourself getting incensed by their response, stick to your reasons without becoming too aggressive. And if things do fail, just say something like, “I respect your views, and I think it’s best that we stop here,” and ask them if they want to do this again later on. Perhaps cooler heads will prevail next time.
James W. Williams (Communication Skills Training: How to Talk to Anyone, Connect Effortlessly, Develop Charisma, and Become a People Person)
As if I were an incense stick incrementally burning off, first into smoke, and then becoming a part of the room.
Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)
The most devoted complete a 25-mile run every day for a thousand consecutive days. They wear straw sandals and carry a knife at their waist, to be used to kill themselves should they fail to continue. After five years, they conduct a nine-day fast, after which their senses are heightened to such a degree that they can hear ash fall from an incense stick. In the seventh year of their pilgrimage, the monks undertake the “Great Marathon” of 52.5 miles a day every day for a year.
Scott Jurek (Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness)
For 'The scent of yoga' she chose Black Lapsang because its smoky opening always made her think of incense and sacred spaces- which is what she tried to create in her former dining room, but without using joss sticks because she didn't think they went well with deep breathing. She closed her eyes as the perfume developed to reveal its Assam-tea middle note, which made her think immediately of that first yoga breakfast with Shirlee and Maxine and the yogi bears.
Maggie Alderson (The Scent of You)
Thamel" A narrative written by Avijeet Das The feelings of Paarijat linger as an epiphany and the smoke and aroma of incense sticks welcome you into a dream land. Myriad Thanka paintings splash colors in your eyes and the melodious chants of the Buddhist monks add tranquility to your heart. Cafes and restaurants mushroom here all the year round as does the grass in the valley around Kathmandu. While drifting in these lanes of Thamel, you feel like Alice in Wonderland, discovering the magic of hand crafted wooden sculptures, pashminas and yak wool shawls. And meeting foreign tourists from all around the world, smiling and greeting you a "Namaste" will serenade you with the fragrance of Nepal, intoxicating one and all!
Avijeet Das
MUGWORT: Mugwort is a supermystical herb. When burned, mugwort can clear and protect the space from ghosts and welcome in psychic dreams. CEDAR: will add some protection to your space when used for clearing. Cedar carries an ancient, masculine energy that will ground your space while clearing and raising the vibrations. SWEETGRASS: instead of removing negative energy, sweetgrass brings in—well—sweetness. It comes in the form of a long braid and can be burned like incense in a dish, rather than moved around the space like a sage stick. It calls on ancestor energy and invites all of your most positive spirit guides into the space.
Erica Feldmann (HausMagick: Transform Your Home with Witchcraft)
Sesame oil sizzled in the air, popping out of a hot wok filled with stir-fried enoki mushrooms, mustard greens, baby bok choy, and strips of pork tenderloin. My mother had danced by the stove against snakes of smoke emanating from sticks of sandalwood incense stuck in nearby pots of ash. scent filled our Chinatown apartment.
Roselle Lim (Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune)