Sometimes in Buddhist sermons the destruction of Karma by virtuous effort is likened to the burning of incense by a pure flame,—sometimes, again, the life of man is compared to the smoke of incense. In his “Hundred Writings” (Hyaku-tsū-kiri-kami), the Shinshū priest Myōden says, quoting from the Buddhist work Kujikkagō, or “Ninety Articles”:—
“In the burning of incense we see that so long as any incense remains, so long does the burning continue, and the smoke mount skyward. Now the breath of this body of ours,—this impermanent combination of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire,—is tike that smoke. And the changing of the incense into cold ashes when the flame expires is an emblem of the changing of our bodies into ashes when our funeral pyres have burnt themselves out.”
He also tells us about that Incense-Paradise of which every believer ought to be reminded by the
in act and thought. Dhyâna (called by Japanese Buddhists Zenjō) is one of the higher forms of meditation.
