I got an e-mail today from a German traveller,Chris. He plans to land at Narita Airport on the 8th of June, and he said he needs help for some details. So, we will keep in touch.
Anyway, for the sake of the 49-day Buddhist memorial service of my great-aunt, I went to buy incenses to offer it to the altar.
There were many kinds of incenses. For example, slight-smelling incenses, non-smoking incenses, a kind of fruity-smelling incenses and so on. And if you want to make it look better, there are also gorgeous boxed set of paulownia wood.
To my big surprise, there were some electric type incenses such as LED illumination. I knew there are electric type candle, but I didn't know that.
To burn incenses could be source of a fire, so I understand why they sell that sort of thing. However incenses are burned for cleansing of the soul and the atmosphere. Although I can say it is rational, there is no sense of the sacred.
When I was child, my grandma taught me how to light incenses. I remember I tried to wave my wrist quickly to extinguish the flame. But sometimes they were keeping burning, I tried to blow them out, then my grandma said to me "Don't do that."
If everyone changed to the electric ones, that kind of scenes will disappear in front of the altar.
The salesclerk said the electric type incenses were selling well recently. Um, times have changed.
