Smelling Meditation

This evening, during the group sharing period, Venerable Chang Hu introduced us to a practice which he calls "smelling meditation". He took a piece of incense and burned it, after which he passed the bowl of incense around so that the others can smell it as well. The participants then reported on what they experienced with using the object of smell to meditate.
   I found one interesting observation, and that is that smell is a very non-pervasive object. So long as the smell is not overbearing, it actually forms a very subtle object which allows the mind to be less distracted. When I was meditating, I was reminded that sometimes we need some kind of object to allow our minds to rest and not be easily stirred by the surroundings. What's interesting about smell for me is that it's not an object that is likely to lead to other associations, the way sight or sound is. A smell is often just a smell, and unless there are specific memories associated with it, it's not likely that it will sway one's mind state in other directions. The other thing I observed is that when the smell is pleasant and comforting, the way incense is, I will have a tendency to breathe a little bit deeper and finer. For this reason, I quite appreciated the practice tonight. I even symbolically associated the incense rising upward with the way that the group was coalescing in the meditation together. There was definitely a sense of a shared experience in the act of passing a fragrance around the room.
   In general, I think Chang Hu Fashi's teaching is something I need right now the most: to learn to relax in every condition, no matter what it happens to be. When I asked Chang Hu Fashi how I could relax at work, he offered many suggestions, including slowing down to observe my body turning on the computer, taking short breaks in between to be mindful of my body state, and even setting an alarm which will allow me to take meditative breaks or slow myself down to appreciate the way I do my work rather than rushing through it all the time. I find that when my body is tense, I am always interpreting my experiences as a state of danger or fear. Chang Hu Fashi's teaching reminds me to take care of the basic elements of my experience rather than getting caught up in theories about meditation.