SadhanaOriental Meditation and Christian Prayer
To pray with body (taking a breath)
[14] Meditation with the scent that we smell
To smell the fragrance and scent indicates that we are always breathing as long as we are alive.
While our eyes and ears tend to be strongly connected to reason, what we sense through our nose instinctively and immediately become sense impressions, skipping over the domain of reason.
Let’s go to a place with clean air. At a garden with fragrant pine or camphor trees, or in a room with narcissus, lilies, or roses, let’s find a place where we can smell them. It may also be good to use artificial aromatic materials if we can use them effectively.
Let’s start meditation in a correct posture, which we are already familiar with by now.
Close our eyes, get rid of everything in our mind, and focus on breathing. Pay attention to the triangle spot between the tip of our nose and upper lip. Inhale slowly and deeply, and exhale.
The scent that comes with gentle breathing enters through our nose, blows through the core of our body, and reaches our soul deep inside. Let’s draw breath into our soul, feel the delicate fragrance in the air, and enjoy it fully.
If we don’t smell anything in particular, let’s use imaginary odors such as the scent of grass in the field that we smelled when we were young, the scent of straw that was drenched in sunlight, the scent of a sea breeze that we experienced when we went to the beach, the scent of jasmines, fragrant olives, and other flowers as well as fruits such as apples, oranges, and peaches, or even some artificial scents such as delicious cakes, cookies, coffee, and tea.
Let’s observe the depth of scent, the rich variety of the world of odor.
In this domain, as in other domains, we can feel that the place where we live is infinite in breadth and depth. Our lives are open to such breadth and depth.
When we breathe in the scent of fragrant olives and wisteria, we cannot help praising God’s dignity and tender heart.