What are the three systems of incense culture?

China traditional incense culture is extensive and profound. From burning incense to offering sacrifices and driving away epidemics, in the 5000-year development of incense culture, three systems of using incense have been formed: nourishing the heart and keeping healthy. In modern times, due to the great changes in the ideological field, the incense culture that nourishes rituals and souls has been greatly subverted, and the health-preserving incense culture that banishes plague and avoids popularity has also declined with the development of medical science and technology. In recent years, Hunan culture seems to have the trend of "making a comeback", and it has the trend of gradually starting a prairie fire.

The mainstream of contemporary Chinese mainland incense culture is the incense culture returned from Japan or Taiwan Province Province of China. Mainly manifested in the display or pursuit of the culture of nourishing the heart. At the same time, the "Xiangxue", which reveals the profound details of Hunan culture, has also risen rapidly. The fragrant culture returned to Taiwan Province Province is mainly the heart-nourishing literati culture represented by Mr. Liu Liangyou. What is outstanding is that scholars participate in incense and enlightenment in the study. Its environment, incense, utensils and rituals are all open traditional China incense culture.

Japanese incense culture

However, in the Muromachi era, about the Ming Dynasty in China, Japanese incense culture formed a "incense road" culture with elegant artistic enjoyment and relatively standardized procedures and rules for tasting incense, that is, incense roads represented by aristocratic royalty and samurai branches appeared. Japanese incense sticks pay attention to form and have a strong sense of ceremony, aiming at improving personal cultivation through action ceremony. Japanese incense sticks or incense contests, although "incense" (an elegant collection of guessing incense), also belong to a closed "single item" (single incense material), which is different from the open whole body absorption of China traditional incense culture, but because its fine materials can only be absorbed by the nose.

The principle, structure and system of incense culture between China and Japan are quite different. For example, the difference between China's open style and Japan's closed style, the difference between China's Hehe fragrance and Japan's group fragrance single product, the difference between China's giving fragrance and keeping in good health and Japan's distinguishing fragrance and keeping in good health, the difference between China's taste and Japanese taste and Zen, and the difference between China's quietness and dynamism and Japan's quietness.

-smell the incense and realize the Tao-

China Aromatic Culture

What is the traditional incense culture in China? China's fragrant culture began with Shennong tasting a hundred herbs. Fragrant culture means that the Chinese nation uses different spices and produces fragrance in different ways in the long historical process in politics, economy, military affairs, culture, religion, diplomacy, home life and personal feelings, and then deduces China's unique fragrant culture system, that is, from cultural phenomena to cultural concepts, accompanied by China people's unique religious, cultural and life views.

To sum up, the composition of China's traditional incense culture is: tasting spices, making incense and producing incense, giving gifts at incense seats, driving away epidemics and avoiding filth, and participating in incense and understanding.

From the perspective of the "three educations" of China traditional incense culture, it is not only as simple as showing the flavor, meaning and rhyme of spices on incense mats, but also "revealing" its context, especially the important responsibility of education and health care undertaken by China traditional incense culture.

"Nurture ceremony" shoulders the responsibility of inheriting Chinese excellent traditional culture genes, and represents the height of China traditional incense culture. "Nourishing the heart" leads people to explore the spiritual realm, which represents the depth of China traditional incense culture. "Health preservation" pays attention to all aspects of people's daily life, and represents the broadness of traditional incense culture in China.

The so-called "nurturing ceremony" is the ethical use of incense. The culture of offering incense first appeared in Shennong era. China has been known as a country of etiquette since ancient times. This ceremony is an institutionalized and procedural ceremony to respect the relationship between heaven and earth. The main content of the ceremony is to burn incense and worship, so that cigarettes can convey the world's prayers for the relationship between heaven and earth. In addition, there were "ritual incense" in ancient China. Wang Jia, the alchemist of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, once wrote that the Yellow Emperor "educated hundreds of princes by virtue, first listed jade on the Lanpu table and burned the fragrance of elm" (Wang Jia of the Eastern Jin Dynasty wrote "A Collection of Notes, Volume I"). The rituals cultivated by these incense cultural activities are the main purpose of the ancients to achieve unified thinking. In the early years of Zhenguan in the Tang Dynasty, "discuss affairs under each battle and live in daily life", and "If the battle is there, the cabinet will divide the incense case" (Book of the New Tang Dynasty, vol. 47, edited by Ouyang Xiu in the Song Dynasty). Obviously, burning incense played an important symbolic role in the sacred and solemn political life of the ancient court in China, that is, burning incense marked the king's adherence to the Oracle, which meant the wisdom and dignity running through heaven and man.

-smell the incense and realize the Tao-

In China's traditional incense culture of offering sacrifices to heaven and ancestors, the ritual mechanism is to guide people's thoughts and behavior norms through the interpretation of incense seats and rituals, from the behavior of head, hands and body to the thinking of heart and brain, to alert people to always be grateful, awe and merciful, and to observe people's daily words and deeds with "courtesy, righteousness and shame" so that people can have a moral standard and order that they can abide by.

The "nourishing the heart" of incense culture is based on the natural attributes of incense. The different smells expressed by the "four flavors" of incense, such as cold, hot, warm, cool, pungent, sweet, sour, bitter and salty, will cause people to have different emotions such as emotions, joys, sorrows and fears. Therefore, the "nourishing the heart" of incense is to refine the fragrance of incense itself, especially after artificial secondary processing, similar to the monarch, minister and assistant in the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, so that each fragrance presents a different fragrance. During the Song and Ming Dynasties, the literati developed the interaction between the hearts by tasting incense around the stove and taking incense as the medium, which became an advanced spiritual enjoyment activity, and was later inherited by Japan and developed into a fragrant road in Japan.

Homologous fragrant medicine

Since Shennong tasted a hundred herbs and learned all about them, the homology of incense and medicine has supported the "health" function of incense all the way. Shennong discovered and extracted many aromatic substances that can prevent and treat diseases. The nature and taste of fragrant materials can make people's body produce a physiological reaction, and achieve the effects of physical therapy and treatment, removing annoyance and relieving depression. Especially since the appearance of Harmonious Fragrance in Han Dynasty (referring to the fragrant products made by selecting high-quality fragrant medicines and blending various fragrant medicines according to the origin of Harmonious Fragrance), spices can not only "nourish" people's body and mind, but also be directly used as medicine to treat diseases.

From the content and form of incense culture to the making of incense utensils and even the development of incense culture theory, the incense culture in Song Dynasty reached the peak in the history of China incense culture. Nowadays, the elegant "four busyness" of literati in the Song Dynasty-ordering tea, burning incense, hanging pictures and arranging flowers-are what we call "tea ceremony, fragrant path and flower path" in Japan today. Unfortunately, many people today give up their ancestors' cultural initiative and discourse right in ignorance of history, and also lose their cultural consciousness and self-confidence because of cultural ignorance. It can be said that the traditional incense culture in China, which carries the philosophical thoughts of the Chinese nation, is a special contribution to the world incense culture.