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Buddha statue and Incense.

The Hatters Mad

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Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 8:42 pm

I hear people talking about Buddha statues and Incense.

Are those like nessecities for meditation? and that sort of thing.

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:32 pm

Nope, all you really need is yourself and a quiet place. I'm sure others can give you a better explanation as to what burning incense stands for, as my memory seems to have failed me tonight.

[M]arquis de LaFayette

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The Hatters Mad

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Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:22 am

Okay, thank you.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:14 pm

I think the burning insence and candles or lights represent the light of wisdom...I think but this is what I heard when it is used as an offering.

Shokai

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Sepher_Seraph

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Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 12:12 am

The statues and incense are reminders. Mental place markers like a book mark. They are originally intended to help you attain a state of mind more quickly than if you did not have them. A tool, you could say. Sometimes though people put too much energy into the tools and not what they are supposed to be doing?

They can be helpful and they can he a hindrance too. For example, if you put off practicing because you are out of incense.

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 5:54 pm

I don't really know the real reason of burning incense but for me, whenever i smell the burning of incense, it always puts me in a state of calmness..Just to clear things up, im not a meditator.. My mom burns incense every morning, so i guess they're not just for meditating purposes.

x-Hitokiri-x
Crew

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Soujiro Masakuni

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Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 7:31 pm

I have an altar with statues of bodhisattva's, images of buddhas and to top it off a thangka (Tibetan painting) of the Buddha of Wisdom--Manjushri. I'm bad...I like symbols (XD). But I feel that I am not attached to them and that they do provide a nice way to meditate.

Sometimes I meditate on the breath, sometimes on one of the Buddhas. On one occasion when I was meditating on the breath, I had a vision of Manjushri. He popped into my head saying, "I'll help you out." It was then that I had the sensation of falling through space, to my surprise.

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 10:16 am

It's not at all necessary, but it can be helpful if it's your sort of thing. The smoke of incense represents pure ethical conduct, and when we offer it to the image of a Buddha, it is an act of giving away our purest ethical conduct with no sense of attachment. This helps to generate the ability to be generous with tangible things like money and food in the future, and it also causes us to recognize that the Buddha we are really making the offering to is the Buddha within ourselves.

Thus, we are giving to ourselves our pure ethical conduct, so that we can have the skill of a Buddha. Because samsara clouds our minds, it's not easy to act in such a way, but we have it in us. So this is a way to bring some of it out, and give it.