Conventionally, Buddhist incenses are made from aromatic biotic material that emits fragrant smoke when burned [ 32 ]. The incense smoke emitted during the burning process is a complex mixture of gases and particles, which contain a multitude of possible carcinogens, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs [ 3 ], carbonyls [ 4 ], aliphatic aldehydes [ 5 ], and benzene [ 8 ].
For instance, scholars [ 35 ] have preliminarily indicated that exposure to carcinogens emitted from incense burning may increase the risk of cancer in temple workers more than control workers. An increased risk of cardiovascular mortality is associated with long-term exposure to incense burning in the indoor environment [ 36 ]. Furthermore, a large number of inferior incenses are revealed using chemical fragrance, such as sawdust, industrial resins, and flavors to reduce costs.
In this context, relevant studies have investigated various approaches to incense-related health issues, such as smoke emission reduction [ 6 , 13 ] and ventilation conditions improvement [ 14 ]. Though recent scholars have studied the public actions of risk behavior reduction e.
Alternative electronic solutions, such as electronic cigarettes [ 15 , 16 , 17 ], are introduced and adopted to intervene in health-threatening behaviors. Through the usage of electronic simulation of incense burning, people might have similar religious experiences under the condition of retaining the original burning process, setting up a bridge between traditional Buddhism and a healthy life [ 42 ]. In this view, various health-friendly electronic incense products have been designed and developed, aiming to replace traditional incense burning at temples and other indoor places [ 18 , 19 ].
The third category is more experiential and relatively health-friendly than the previous two categories. Its health effects are mainly decided by the perfume or essential plant oils used their qualities are controlled by national food and drug administration departments. Though more and more governments and religious institutions advocate health-promotion behaviors in religious practices, electronic incense products and rituals are still seldom adopted [ 20 ].
Similar to other religions, Buddhism welcome scientific discoveries [ 46 ]. Also, relevant research has indicated that Buddhists have long embraced the spirit of science [ 47 ]. Buddhism and Buddhists are open-minded to accept scientific principles or technology innovations [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]. Therefore, Buddhist doctrines do not refuse technology; instead, they might embrace changes in their practice [ 46 ].
It has been suggested that religiosity is the primary reason people feel reluctant to use electronic incense products [ 21 ], since keeping the traditional way of Buddhist rituals is regarded as necessary in shaping religiosity.
Nevertheless, the latest research has argued that technology and science might facilitate religious practices, promote spirituality, and transform concepts of religion and myth [ 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ]. Accordingly, the reason why electronic incense lacks large-scale adoption might not lie in the fact that Buddhism and Buddhists are reluctant to accept new technology in their religious practices [ 53 , 54 ].
An investigation of the psychological patterns of incense burning can help practitioners to generate the managerial implications for reducing traditional incense burning.
Perceived religiosity has been widely adopted in relevant social studies to predict consequent religion-oriented behaviors [ 55 , 56 , 57 ]. According to Glock and Stark [ 58 ], five dimensions, namely experiential, ritualistic, ideological, intellectual, and consequential, have been identified to describe the concept of religiosity.
Among those, the ritualistic domain involves the worship experience within a religious community and sites, such as temples. Allport and Ross [ 59 ] have further concluded that religiosity is a two-dimensional intrinsic and extrinsic construct. Those preliminary definitions of religiosity provide an understanding that religious beliefs involve a cognitive evaluation of devotion and fulfillment through ritualistic practices [ 60 ].
Given this, Buddhist worship aiming to improve and fulfill self-image [ 61 , 62 ] is associated with the degree of religiosity. The effects of incense for worship, nevertheless, are ambiguous in influencing the degree of religiosity. Although religiosity stays to a certain level, in the long run, previous scholars have reported that religiosity can be increased temporarily [ 63 , 64 , 65 ].
If an individual presents a similar degree of religiosity whether facing a traditional incense and an electronic one, it helps to exclude the previous concern of religiosity for the reluctance of electronic incense products. According to the widely accepted theory of reasoned action [ 67 ], the stronger the motivated intention to engage in a behavior, the more likely its performance. Attitude, influenced by the evaluation of the behavior and subjective norm, indicates the degree of intentions to perform the behavior.
This model has been applied to health-related studies of the relations among beliefs, attitudes, behavioral intentions, and behaviors. However, the importance of these constructs relative to one another is likely influenced by cultural differences, which means the intentions to perform behaviors are more possibly predicted by attitudes, rather than subjective norms [ 68 , 69 ].
The issues addressed in this line of inquiry mediate the relationship between knowledge and action. That explains why people often fail to behave optimally, even though they know full well what to do and are motivated to do it. In this view, the factor of behavioral control, known as perceived self-efficacy, has been considered to improve the predictive power of the reasoned action.
Self-beliefs of efficacy, referring to the degree of confidence in the ability to take action, is useful in the self-regulation of motivation [ 65 ]. In other words, high self-efficacy leads to sufficient effort to execute a behavior, whereas low self-efficacy is likely to cease effort early [ 66 ].
The behavior control of self-efficacy contributes to mediate the psychological path of behavior performance. Relevant studies on public health, like condom use [ 71 ] and smoking cessation [ 72 ], have applied this model to predict health-promoting behavior. In addition, studies construe that self-efficacy is predicted by multiple temporary determinants, such as communicative concerns e.
Based on these findings, we assume that the incense could work as a physical cue to remind people of relevant doctrines in Buddhism e. Based on the literature in Section 2 , we propose that people might present similar religiosity and worship intention towards electronic incense products and the traditional ones. Also, electronic incense products might significantly improve health-promotion intention, and this process might be mediated by the perceived self-efficacy.
Accordingly, we hypothesized as follows:. People would hold similar religiosity towards electronic incense products and the traditional incense burner. People would hold similar worship intention towards electronic incense products and the traditional incense burner. Electronic incense products would elicit higher self-efficacy in religious practices compared with the traditional incense burner. Electronic incense products would elicit a higher health-promotion intention in religious practices compared with the traditional incense burner.
The effect of an incense burner on health promotion behavior intention in religious practices is mediated by perceived self-efficacy. As for the measurement items, we adopted a nine-point Likert scale to measure the factors mentioned before. All the measurement items or scales were retrieved from the relevant research. Following Filipkowski et al. The whole measurements could be found in Table 1. Concerning the experiment stimuli and design, we deployed a between-subjects experiment to examine Hypotheses 1—5.
To specify, three burner scenarios were designed: A traditional burner, an electronic burner, and an electronic burner with semantic reminding. We recruited a professional product designer to 3D-model these scenarios see Figure 1 a—c. In order to control the confounding factors in the designed stimuli, the designer carefully made the burner with the same height, width, size, etc.
Accordingly, we made sure that the differences among these three scenarios were the health-friendly technology function and the semantic reminder. AMT is a valid data collection source with over , workers all around the world and many health-related, mental, or medical experiments have been conducted through it [ 80 , 81 , 82 ].
It has been proved to have sufficient quality and reliability when compared with experimental data collected in physical laboratories [ 83 ]. One of the most significant advantages to adopting AMT lies in that it could recruit workers from various regions and countries, not only avoiding snowball sampling but also representing the Buddhist population to a larger degree [ 84 ].
Thus, we decided to use this platform to recruit our participants. Firstly, we created the questionnaire with Qualtrics, a prevalent web-based survey software. Then, we published our task in AMT with specific requirements e. The structure of the questionnaire included several parts: 1 a short introduction describing the procedure of the experiment; 2 the informed consent participants consent to us recording their key-press responses via AMT, the data would be kept completely confidential and anonymous, and they were informed that they could withdraw at any time if they felt uncomfortable ; 3 personal characteristics age, gender, etc.
We used SPSS There were no missing or incomplete responses. To begin with, we checked the manipulation check, indicating a significant difference between the three scenarios. It suggested that our manipulation was successful. Besides this, the skewness and kurtosis of all the constructs were also examined. While skewness estimates symmetry of the data set, kurtosis examines whether the data set is heavy-tailed compared with normal distribution [ 85 ].
Accordingly, the current dataset generally followed a normal distribution. Table 2 shows the means, SD standard deviations , and Pearson correlations of the different factors. Comparison of religiosity in different scenarios. Note: ns stands for non-significant. Comparison of worship intention in different scenarios.
Thus, both H1 and H2 were supported. Accordingly, H3 and H4 were supported. Comparison of the perceived self-efficacy in different scenarios. Comparison of the health-friendly Buddhist practice in different scenarios. Indeed, there are several ways to test the mediation effect.
The reason why we did not use a structural equation model or path analysis [ 88 ] lies in that they overly emphasize different variables in the model, rather than treating the model as a whole. It was believed to be a statistical method focusing on analyzing the indirect effect and the structure as a whole [ 93 ]. Figure 6 shows all psychological paths revealed in this study. All psychological paths revealed in this study. There are some limitations worth noting. First of all, this study mainly examines the psychological factors associated with incense burning.
Although previous research has validated the relationship between perceptual intention and actual behavior [ 94 ], it might be interesting to collect evidence of actual health-promotion behavior with physical electronic incense burners. Second, although all the items in the current study are adapted from the relevant literature in Table 1 , some items might be confusing for the readers since there are no specific scales for the constructs.
Thus, it might theoretically be helpful to develop the related scales on self-efficacy in future research, because it is seldom discussed in the prior research [ 69 ].
Third, the cultural difference of incense burning needs to be considered in future studies. This is to avoid too much smoke inside the temple.
Please let others know that if a person has suffered violence and any sent was present at the time — the violent reach will be activated when they smell it again. This can be a floral smell that was in the room, etc. I use incense successfully but am very sensitive to others if they will be part of what I am doing. A simple question — is there any smell that is upsetting to you — and then I choose my incense according.
Thank you for this posting — it will be very helpful to so many. Are there any rituals, or practices that involve taking care of the ashes from the incense.. I would think pouring them on the earth would be fitting. Anyone else know? Good evening Lee!! Greetings from Montreal! I landed on this beautiful and very educational website because I recently read an article about the benefits of Frankincense. I made a lot of research and I definitely want to enjoy its properties.
However, I would like to have your personal opinion on what would be the best way to use it. Is there any difference or benefits between using Frankincense in its traditional form incense with the Electric Incense Heater — Golden Lotus versus using Frankincense in oil form with an oil diffuser? Thank you so much for any input you might have on this dilemma!
I have been researching this specific topic for hours and have not found anything. Good evening! However, I would like to have your opinion on what would be the best way to use it. Is there any difference or benefits between using Frankincense in its traditional form incense with an electric incense heater like the one recommended on this article versus using Frankincense in oil form with an oil diffuser?
Dear Julian, Thank you for writing. The benefits are similar, but for those concerned about the smoke especially in a small room , the incense heaters are helpful. The oils with a diffuser is another method as it uses lower heat and vaporizes. Also, be very cautious with the older traditional methods charcoal incense burners which should never be used in closed environments. Hope that helps. Great post! You make some really interesting points about meditation and incense, thank you for sharing!
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Tara, like any Mother, is ready to jump to our aid, even in mundane areas of life. June 5 to October 31, — New! Originated from ancient cultures in Egypt, India and China, Incense burning has been an essential part of Buddhism rituals and meditation practices for thousands of years. In fact, to proclaim devotion of these three things is one major step to become a real Buddhist.
From spiritual perspective, the incense burning resulting in fragrant smoke teaches the necessity to burn away negative qualities within oneself in order to reveal the pure self within. Making Tibetan Incense. Tibetan incense is made up of many different types of herbs, spices and flowers, and can contain as many as 28 different ingredients. The main ingredient of Tibetan incense is wood. The wood is cut into small pieces and then ground into a fine powder. The other required ingredients are then added and the mixture is put into a container and left to dry.
The main ingredients found in most incense are: sandalwood, agar wood, pine or cedar; myrrh, amber, frankincense, snow lotus herb, hibiscus, saffron, red orpine, clove, borneol and Chinese Caterpillar Fungus. The incense always contains one of the types of wood, and many other ingredients. Charcoal powder is sometimes added, as is makko powder, made from the bark of the tabu-no-ki tree, which helps to bind the powders together, with a little water.
With the mixture bound together, it is extruded into strips by hand - although they would traditionally use a bulls horn drilled with holes - and left to dry. Raw material of the Tibetan Incense.
Tibetans also use a rope incense. This is made using thin sheets of rice paper, cut into strips. A small amount of the dry, powdered ingredients are placed on the paper, and it is spread evenly along the length of the paper. It is then gently twirled between the fingers, twisting the paper, making sure not to break or rip it. Once it is twisted along its length, it is doubled back on itself and the two halves are twisted together in the same fashion.
The sticks are traditionally burned in incense holders, standing upright,while the rope incense is normally burned either lying flat on a bed of ash, or in a miniature cast iron cauldron in bundles. Incense in Tibet is believed to have come from India over 1, years ago, and has been made in a time-honored method ever since.
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