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Due to mis-concept (誤導), mis-promoting (誤傳) & in-accurate educating (誤教) on the practice of making the First Incense Offering, a lot of people have being mislead and carrying-out the wrong way of making the offering.
These few years, making of First Incense Offering became a trend for All Chinese, inclusive of Taoists & Non-Taoists. Due to the commercial value and in-correct promotion, a lot of Temples or Organizations have been organizing Making of First Incense Offering Ceremony for the folks. Some even have to make reservation or bid for the opportunity for getting the First Seat for such Ceremony.
Seeing all these ugly practices and wrong promotions, I think its time for someone to do something in somewhere.
So what is the Making of the First Incense Offering (獻頭香)?
To be exact, this means the First Round of Offering of Incenses to the Heaven & Deities in the Lunar New Year.
This offering can be made in anytime of the Year, not necessary to be on the Eve or on the very First Morning of the First Day of the New Year.
As long as it is the First Round of Incense Offering to Heaven & any Deities (can be at Home, etc), its consider as the First Incense Offering for the Year.
Some of the folks actually neglected one very important thing, which is making the First Incense Offering to the Ancestors. Without the blessing & hardship that the Ancestors done for us, there wont be any of us existing now. And so, the First Offering of Incenses shall be made to Ancestors & Home Deities and not any other Public Deities.
So for this year, try to practice this at home, I am sure that you will feel more better and special and different after that.
Shi Fu.......well said and done. I always tell my family that what u saw on TV is basically not true in Taoism...our Dieties will not allowed to "quarrell or fight" for the first incense on such a good occassion...more of commerical value.....regars,sp
ReplyDeleteYup, you are right.
ReplyDeleteAll these are due to the results of commercializing and also the snatching businesses among different temples and organizations.
Such people are just using the name of Deities to make money thats all...
Thanks for the info, Bro Jave.
ReplyDeleteYour info gave me the guarantee that what I had told my family members, at an earlier time, is right.
Many people are misled in the way of various practices as they usually think of what they could be blessed for by doing so.
None would bother to find out whether is it right or wrong and the purpose behind.
"Wu Bai, Wu Bo Bi"-You will be blessed if you were to pray.
People would use this to "siam" away from people who were trying to correct their way of practices. They would say praying is enough, the gods know. No need to know so much.
Hahahaha, what you say is true... due to the commercializing, alot of such traditional practices are being distorted, especially those who wanted to lead the Culture of Taoism... more worse....
ReplyDelete