Incense and the Buddha
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     Once upon a Zen time, there was a nun who went to a temple and said, “I want to burn some incense.  I want to burn some incense for my Buddha. But I don’t want any of the other Buddhas to get any of the incense.  I don’t want any of them to smell my incense offering.  I only want it to go to my Buddha.” And so, day after day after day, she created this special cone that blocked off the incense so that it only went right to her Buddha and so that none of the other Buddhas could get a single sniff of the incense.  And every day, after she would leave, people would come into the temple and they would laugh because all the Buddhas looked so beautiful, gilded in gold and smiling.  All except for this one Buddha which had a blackened face and a blackened nose because all the incense smell, and soot had gone up to blackened this Buddha’s face. 

 In her attempt to take the gift of life and only give it to one, she had made that one less than beautiful.  She had taken the beauty from that form and she couldn’t see the ugliness.  The ugliness of the soot on the Buddha was reflective of the closed stinginess of her heart.  Had she only opened her heart, the incense would have gone to all the Buddhas.  But can you imagine feeling like you don’t want but one person to smell the beauty?  That others in life should not smell the beauty?
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     In exactly the same way, there was a man living in a village, as the story goes, in ancient Japan and he became quite wealthy.  He went to the master of the monastery, the head monk, and he said that he would like to have a special ritual done only for his wife.  The master said, “Of course, I’d love to do this ritual.  There is only one thing, when you do this blessing ritual everyone is blessed by this ritual. Just so you know your wife will get the blessings but everyone in the village, everyone also gets this blessing.”  The man says to the priest,  “I’ve got a problem.  You can do the blessing for everyone but my neighbor.  You have to make it possible that my neighbor doesn’t get that blessing.”  Well, it’s impossible.  So what happens?  The priest can’t do the ritual because the man is so angry with the neighbor.  Everybody else can have it but that one person.

     In exactly the same way, we all have that part of our consciousness that says, "I can bless everybody in the world but this one person.  I can give to everybody but this one person because they are not worthy."  Well, if you think that one thought, that they are not worthy, then think about Shelly saying that it doesn’t matter if they are worthy or not, just do it.  Give it to them anyway.