Electronic Incense: "Life saver" for all of us

Mum is a devoted Buddhist all her life. She has been sincerely offering incense to the Buddha twice every day. Slowly, she lost her ability to remember if she has offered the incense. So twice a day of incense offerings became four, five times, despite being reminded.

One day, dad, a traditional Teochew man, decided enough is enough. He kept all the incenses, matches and told us he has concerned if the burning of incense will cause fire. His words stuck us. With Mum’s memory deteriorating, we need to condition her off burning incense. There is certainly a risk of fire hazard.

The first day was chaotic, Mum tried to find her incenses but can’t find it. Lucky, she is a gentle character woman still. We tried to be patient with her and told her there is no need to burn incense any more. It was an uphill climb to change not only her routine but also her display of devotion to her faith. Disruption of her routine made her anxious and desperately needed to purchase it herself. Thanks to the GPS, we managed to pick her up when she went for incense shopping.

We wondered if there is a thing call “Electronic Incense” exists. So, we went searching a few Buddhist/Taoist accessories shops in Singapore, but none can be found. No surprised. We turned to the Internet, again.

Taobao

No wonder it is called “淘宝”, you can find anything, just anything! 

“Electronic Incense” is called “电子香” or “电子香炉” in Chinese. We found the “treasure” we are looking for, made the purchase and waited it to arrive in Singapore.

The Deployment and Conditioning

The Electronic Incense looks quite real and all you need to do is to plug into a power socket. Because it is from China, it supported 220V for Singapore use. The package comes along with 3 detachable incense sticks and the LED will light up once it is plugged into the burner. 

Mum didn’t display any dismay over the Electronic Incense. Somehow she just ignored it, although she uses her hands to just make the prayers instead. She still mumbles from time to time she doesn’t have any incenses to burn and she is sorry to the Buddha. Sometimes we felt sorry to “take” away her display of devotion, but considering other factors like fire, we had to think logically instead of letting our emotion takes priority.

Share with us your thoughts and also if you like to find out more.