Everything you've been looking for has
been right under your nose all the time! – The Buddha.
But smelling is the most “spiritual”
or ethereal of the five senses, as not only is it invisible, but molecular and magical.
Nothing else can tell us something about the reality around us like an aroma – or
a stink – can. There may be nothing to see, hear, touch or taste. But an
invisible message comes in on the breeze and produces an effect on us.
The sense of smell, according to many, is
also the most underdeveloped or degenerated of our senses, because we no
longer live in Nature and use natural smells to guide us or provide us with
information for survival. And we have created a vast array of “unnatural”
smells, too, ranging from the delightful to the totally disgusting – just think
of industrial effluents as we travel by a petrochemical plant, which is all too
common! The sense of smell is very much a repressed sense as well –
certain smells are considered “inappropriate” – so this is an area where we might
like to concentrate some extra attention, starting with incense burning and
flowers and plants in the room where we sit and meditate. Children never study “smelling”
and its vast array of wonders at school – would that be too primitive a subject
for youngsters?
I suppose if I hadn’t been born decades
ago, before 3D glasses, I might have been into so-called “virtual reality” now,
like today’s kids. But the trouble is, this virtual reality is only visual and
auditory – it only includes two of the senses, and may simply have
vibrations or movement added via gloves, treadmills or seats. But, according to
the thesis offered on this blog, we already live in a “virtual reality” because
we don’t really know how our senses work anyway, or how messages are transmuted
into conscious perceptions and reactions in the mind. So why waste time and lose
ourselves in second-hand virtual realities when our own so-called “reality”
is virtual or “mind-made” anyway? We should be studying real reality,
not man-made fantasies – there are simply too many of them already. Māyā
always produces more māyā.
I am still wondering why it has been so “easy”
to develop the transmission of visual things (painting, photography and
film) and that of auditory events (jungle drumming, Morse code and now
full digital streaming…) but no one knows how to break down and transmit
olfactory, gustatory and tactile data… My iPhone cannot tell me what the
aroma of a dandelion is; there are no nose-buds for this. Or mouth-tasters
for food, or body-squeezers for tactile data… I guess we will have to
accept this for the time being… But maybe that’s good, as it might even be too dangerous:
if artificial flower and spice aromas were readily available on the Internet,
who would bother to plant the real flowers and herbs?
Our sense of smell is pretty poor: Who
can remember smelling in dreams? Who has dream aromas during meditation? Why, we
don’t even bother with smells when we’re awake and walking around – only stronger
things like jasmine at night, croissants being baked in the early
morning, or coffee, or a whiff of a woman’s perfume as she walks by
(if pleasant and not overly done!), the soft scent of a nice clean towel
after yoga, or some Mediterranean midday cooking… We do not practise
smelling enough. I see dogs living by scent, living intensely, as they are out
on their walkies in the streets. I see no humans “wasting time” and stopping
even to smell the flowers planted by the city authorities! They’re only attractions
of the visual kind, as always.
So we can forget “clairoma” or “clairalience”
(and “clairgustance”) for the moment. Nowadays in our civilisation, we are
probably more accustomed to noxious and nasty smells than anything remotely “spiritual”:
traffic, fumes, smoke, decay, garbage, sewers and carbon monoxide are a large part
of our daily ration when we live in cities. An escape to the park may bring a
certain degree of refreshment, but there doesn’t seem to be much conscious
effort – from either designers or users – to promote the possibilities for
enhancing our human sense of smell. But just imagine the veritable wealth and richness
of this olfactory world: all the millions of flowers, plants, trees and woods,
all the herbs, all the spices, fruits, berries, nuts and vegetables and their
varieties… The list of aromas is infinite.
With a little Self-Awareness and
mental calm, instead of being perpetually obsessed with mind chatter about
ourselves, our petty personalities, our likes and dislikes, fears and
anxieties, self-importance and eternal problems, we can simply enjoy sitting, walking,
watching, tasting, perhaps touching, and smelling the aromas of places, plants,
food and other natural things, as a way to be more cognizant of our sense of
smell and the mysterious way that scents and aromas can invoke our thoughts, memories
and perhaps our dreams…
Why don’t we discover this wonderful
world of aromas by daily practising more sniffing and less
sniffling over silly problems… Maybe then we will see what’s right under our
noses!
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