Buddhism and Smell

Overview

Buddhist cultures, like many others, tend to be oriented primarily around the senses of sight and hearing. But Buddhists do pay attention to what smells sweet and what stinks. This module is about some of the complex meanings smells can carry for Buddhists, focusing on both textual accounts of good and bad smells from across Buddhist traditions and on olfactory culture in Japanese Buddhism particularly.

From the beginning, Buddhists imbue smell with moral meaning. The bodies of Buddhas and bodhisattvas are recognizable by the fragrance that exudes from their pores– fresh smells of sandalwood, agarwood, cloves, saffron, camphor; such beings smell good because they are good. The bodies of ordinary beings, however, smell bad, and the bodies of sinful beings smell even worse: we stink of fecal matter, rot, death, and decay. Some good smells are to be avoided– perfumes that rouse our sexual desire trick us into thinking there is something attractive about the impermanent human body. But virtuous beings also welcome the pleasant scent of flowers, fragrant wood garlands, and incense; the personal residence of the historical Buddha is imagined as having been so constantly full of such offerings that it is referred to as the gandhakūtī, or the Perfumed Chamber.

Smell is also used to mark social difference: in Japan, women were barred from entering some sacred sites on the grounds that the divine beings present would be offended by the lingering stench of menstruation; outcaste groups who worked in meat and leather production were imagined as carrying with them a lingering scent that could pollute those who came into contact with it. On the other hand, this logic of smell as, like touch, a “contact sense” likewise shapes rituals in which one’s body and possessions can be saturated with the fragrance of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, bringing good luck, healing, and even awakening. As Lina Verchery shows in the reading recommended below, the ways that smell suggests contact and intimacy also allow smell to do important philosophical work for Buddhists, as an opportunity for thinking about the porousness of the body and, by extension, the constant exchanges that take place between one self and another.

Bringing smell back down to earth, we might note that scent has an economic dimension too: in East Asia, a desire for the scents described in South and Central Asian Buddhists texts drove a thriving trade in imported spices and aromatic plants, as well as in the production and sale of incense, the burning of which served both as a Buddhist offering and as a form of timekeeping for meditators. Beyond the confines of the temple, fragrance becomes a source of entertainment. In Japan, we see this aspect of smell at play in incense games, described below, which harness the link between fragrance and memory in the service of a refined, leisurely contemplativeness amongst friends.

Video Resources

(1) This video from NHK World offers an introduction to the history of incense in Japan and demonstrates an incense ceremony (kōdō), as well as discussing the aesthetics and economics of Japanese incense.

Link: The Culture of Incense

(2) Members of the Gardena Buddhist Church, a Jōdo Shinshū Pure Land temple in Gardena, California, demonstrate the do’s and don’ts of offering incense (oshōkō) to the Buddha.

Link: How to Offer Incense (Oshoko) Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Hongwanji-ha

Visual Resource

Images of artifacts and paintings related to Japanese incense culture in the Metropolital Museum of Art’s collections, with an accompanying essay by Monika Bincsik.

Open Access Readings

(1) Selected passages on smells from the Vijaya Sutta, the Lalitavistara, the Nihon ryōiki, the Lotus Sūtra, and the Teaching of Vimalakīrti.

Buddhism and Smell, Supplemental Readings, Melissa Anne-Marie CurleyDownload

(2) Lina Verchery, “Both Like and Unlike: Rebirth, Olfaction, and the Transspecies Imagination in Modern Chinese Buddhism,” Religions 2019, 10.6: 364 (16pp). Open access. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/6/364

  • Abstract: This essay considers the importance of the transspecies imagination for moral cultivation in contemporary Chinese Buddhism. Drawing on scriptural, theoretical, and fieldwork-based ethnographic data, it argues that olfaction—often considered the most “animalistic” of the human senses—is uniquely efficacious for inspiring imaginative processes whereby Buddhists train themselves to inhabit the perspectives of non-human beings. In light of Buddhist theories of rebirth, this means extending human-like status to animals and recognizing the “animal” within the human as well. Responding to recent trends in the Humanities calling for an expanded notion of ontological continuity between the human and non-human—notably inspired by critical animal studies, post-humanism, the new materialism, and the “ontological turn”—this essay contends that Buddhist cosmological ideas, like those that demand the cultivation of the transspecies imagination, present resources for moral reflection that can challenge and enrich current mainstream thinking about humanity’s relation to the nonhuman world.

Embodied Experience

Introduction

Incense games bring friends together to “listen to incense” and to compete over who in the group is best at paying attention to the fine distinctions between different fragrances. The exercise described here is based on the game Shirakawa Border Station, as explained by Morita Kiyoko in The Book of Incense (see Additional Resources, below). Shirakawa Border Station was inspired by a poem composed by the monk Nōin (988-c.1051), in which he recounts in just a few lines his 370 mile pilgrimage from the capital of Kyoto to the Shirakawa Border Station in the north, a symbol for writers in this period of the very edge of the country:

I left the capital
Veiled in spring mist
An autumn wind blows here,
At Shirakawa Border Station

Playing the Game

To play the game, the host or master of ceremonies will select three forms of incense– traditionally, three varieties of agarwood incense (jinkō), but for our game, any three can be used. If incense is not readily available, the host should choose any three naturally fragrant items, such as fruits or other foods. The host can make the game easy, by choosing very distinctive fragrances, or difficult, by choosing fragrances that are only very subtly different.

The host will assign each of the three fragrances an association: one fragrance will represent “Mist in the Capital,” one will represent “Autumn Wind,” and one will represent “Shirakawa Border Station.”

The host will invite the assembled guests to “listen” to the first two fragrances by smelling them, first taking in 3-5 breaths of “Mist in the Capital,” and then 3-5 breaths of “Autumn Wind.” The guests must be able to smell the fragrances but not see the incense or items themselves; this can be achieved by putting the different items in folded paper envelopes or paper boxes of the same size and shape.

The host will then shuffle the items and invite the assembled guests to “listen” to all three fragrances. As the guests smell each fragrance, they should record what fragrance they think they are smelling: “Mist in the Capital,” “Autumn Wind,” or “Shirakawa Border Station.” When all the guests have had the chance to smell all three fragrances, the host will open the envelopes to reveal what the true order was, and the guests will tabulate their results.

Scoring the Game

The scoring for the game is as follows:

  • All three correctly identified — the guest has traveled far and successfully crossed the border at Shirakawa.
  • Only “Mist in the Capital” correctly identified — the guest set out but was not used to traveling on foot and decided to return to enjoy the spring breeze in Kyoto.
  • Only “Autumn Wind” correctly identified — the guest set out but traveled slowly, and snow was already falling when they reached the crossing.
  • Only “Shirakawa Border Station” correctly identified — the guest only got as far as putting on their travel garments before deciding not to go.
  • None correctly identified — the guest was stopped at the border by guards and forced to turn back.

The incense game invites participants to imaginatively connect with Nōin on his journey, as well as with other participants, who have all set out on the same journey together, even if some traveled further than others. Although it has the structure of a competition, it does not reward speed; rather, it asks participants to slow down, to breathe deeply, and to focus intently on what is happening in the moment, deepening their powers of concentration. The incense game gives us an opportunity to think through the relation between “religion,” as we might normatively understand it, and the broader field of culture, and between ritual and play.

Assignments

(1) Olfactory Ethnography

Anthropologist Noemi Gómez Mendoza’s “Putting my nose to fieldwork” (below) presents her experimental ethnographic field note, which is centered around smell rather than sight. If you are in a location where it is possible for students to attend a Buddhist gathering in person, first read and discuss Mendoza’s piece, and then have students produce their own field notes that describe their experience of the gathering in terms of smell, including description like Mendoza’s, of what fragrances encountered in that setting prompted memories for them, as well as what fragrances, if any, seemed new or unfamiliar.

Noemi Gomez Mendoza, Putting my nose to fieldworkDownload

Link: Noemi Gómez Mendoza, “Putting my nose to fieldwork”

(2) Comparative Smells

Incense is widely used across religious traditions– if you are teaching this material in the context of an Asian religions or world religions course, students may be invited to prepare short research papers or presentations comparing and contrasting the use of incense in Buddhism and in other religious setting. Questions to consider may include:

  • What are the rituals that include incense burning?
  • What symbolic meanings does incense have?
  • Is incense burning conceptualized as an act of purification? If so, who or what is being purified?
  • Is incense burning conceptualized as an offering or gift? If so, who or what is receiving the offering or gift?

Discussion Questions

  • For you, what kinds of things smell good and what kinds of things smell bad? What are the words that make up your olfactory vocabulary? (For example, “clean,” “fresh,” “nasty”…) Do any particular smells have special symbolic meaning for you? To what extent does your olfactory vocabulary have moral or ethical nuances?
  • Based on the primary sources given here, what kinds of things smell good to Buddhists? What kinds of things smell bad? Do any of these smells seem to have special symbolic meaning?
  • The Buddhist vinaya prohibits monastics from wearing perfumes—what are some practical and philosophical reasons that might explain this prohibition?
  • The Buddhist vinaya prohibits monastics from eating garlic—what are some practical and philosophical reasons that might explain this prohibition?
  • What are some of the ways Buddhists relate smell to the notion of karma? What might some real-world implications of this be?
  • What does it mean to understand smell as a “contact sense”? How might this inform notions of smell as either polluting or purifying? How might this relate to Lina Verchery’s suggestion that smell has “inherently transgressive properties”?
  • What are some of the ways that Buddhists seem to understand smell in relation to the other senses? How is smell either distinguished from or mingled with the senses of sight, hearing, touch, and taste?
  • In the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, we are introduced to a world where the Buddhist teachings are transmitted through the sense of smell. What are the differences between this world and ours, as the sūtra describes them? How does the sūtra use fragrance as a way of representing Buddhist awakening?
  • Textbooks introducing Buddhism often emphasize meditation as the fundamental Buddhist practice. What are some ways that the ritual of offering incense works like meditation? What are some ways in which it might work differently?
  • What are some ways that an incense game works like meditation? What are some ways in which it might work differently?

Additional Resources

  • James McHugh, Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
  • Phyllis Granoff, “The Stench of Sin: Reflections from Jain and Buddhist Texts,” Asiatische Studien/Etudes Asiatiques 65 (2011): 45–63.
  • Gregory Schopen, “The Fragrance of the Buddha, the Scent of Monuments, and the Odor of Images in Early India,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 101 (2015): 11-30.
  • Shawn Arthur, “Wafting Incense and Heavenly Foods: The Importance of Smell in Chinese Religion,” Body and Religion 2 (2018): 144–166.
  • Scott Habkirk and Hsun Chang, “Scents, Community, and Incense in Traditional Chinese Religion,” Material Religion 13 (2017): 156–74.
  • Kiyoko Morita, The Book of Incense, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1992.
  • Dinah Jung, “The Cultural Biography of Agarwood—Perfumery in Eastern Asian and the Asian Neighbourhood,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 23.1 (2013): 103–125.
  • Satoru Horiguchi and Dinah Jung, “Kōdō—Its Spiritual and Game Elements and Its Interrelations with the Japanese Literary Arts,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 23.1 (2013): 69–84.
  • Brian Moeran, “Making Scents of Smell: Manufacturing and Consuming Incense in Japan,” Human Organization 68.4 (2009): 439–50.

Cite This Module

Melissa Curley. 2026. “Buddhism and Smell.” In Stephanie Balkwill and Amy Langenberg (eds.), Buddhist Bodies Collective. https://buddhistbodies.com/378-2/aesthetic-bodies/buddhism-and-smell/

Author Bio: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley

Melissa Anne-Marie Curley is an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University, where she teaches classes in comparative religions and Japanese culture. Her most satisfying piece of academic work to date has been her study of the Higashi Honganji hair ropes, which appeared in a 2018 special issue of Japanese Religions. She is currently at work on projects on Buddhism and self-help, and Buddhism and food, neither of which is close to finished, but she is about to finish Zelda: Breath of the Wild.