As I receive my Kinam heater, I am forced to rethink a questions that I frequently ask myself:
-What is the role of agarwood in my life?
-Do I solely love agarwood as a fragrance or do I find all fragrances enjoyable?
-Are fragrances enhancing my life by allowing me to focus more on what truly matters to me or are they a large distraction taking me further away from my primary goals?
-Can I do better goods, that benefit the needy, with the amount of $ that I spend on agarwood?
-Do I really need this much agarwood, oil, perfume in my life?
Love to hear your thoughts and to make this a lively discussion.
My theory regarding this topic is that aloeswood or the entire domain of fragrant woods in general is that it's harder to immediately appreciate unlike the Western (or even Middle Eastern) attitude towards fragrance. As someone from urban East Asia where the influence of the Western zeitgeist runs strong, I have been made to understand that most of the people there associate the smell of aloeswood and other fragrant wood smoke with the smell of musty temples that they visit briefly on vacations- a smell that these people do not really like.
In other words, fragrant woods are very much an acquired appreciation rather than something that is inherently enjoyable, and I detest people who, either by ignorance or for marketing, tout aloeswood as something inherently enjoyable/intuitively pleasing/viscerally positive. It's not, at least for most people.
Why do you think Japan has the tradition of Mon-koh and koh-do? Do you expect me to believe that those koh-do masters went through all that trouble of classifying woods (rikkoku gomi), patting down ash, and carefully placing charcoals inside of censers just to experience something that is obviously enjoyable? Obviously not. The point of mon-koh and koh-do is to focus on your organ of breath such that you can catch the complexities of the scent that emanates from a carefully heated piece of wood.
In this way, the point of Japanese-style incense, koh-do, and mon-koh are meant as a form of meditation and focus- not as what it has in my view become. It has become this beating around the bush of wood quality, the *rarest* and most *psychoactive* breeds of wood, and all sorts of nonsensical talk in this vein.
The idea of heating wood or burning incense and carefully picking apart the notes is meant to get you into a meditative state BECAUSE in order to smell you need to focus on your breath; as a matter of fact that is how meditation is done. That does not mean that aloeswood or kyara is somehow psychoactive or of a "higher" kind of fragrance 😂
So I never take folks seriously when they claim kyara or aloeswood is psychoactive. It's a misinterpretation of the idea of mon-koh through lens of hippie pseudo-science backed up by very very general (i.e. borderline imaginary) scientific research about the woods themselves. Just because GCMS reveals that kyara has different compounds in it than ordinary aloeswood does not back up the claim, in any way, shape, or form, that kyara is really a "higher" or "superior" scent. Whatever you feel about the topic is purely personal and as a result of the mon-koh/koh-do process.
Therefore, when discussions here pop up about getting the "real" kyara or being disappointed at Japanese incense companies for not throwing their entire stock of centuries-old fragrant wood into a single box of incense, I see the shadow of greed because all this tells me is that the people who do this don't actually care about mon-koh and the art associated with it, they're just looking for "real kyara," which is really no different than hunting for rare jewels or historical pieces of jewelry.
So let's answer the question of why some of us have so much aloeswood and incense. Simple! It's because different incense houses blend different ingredients in different proportions and we appreciate the artistry of a well-blended stick. Same thing with aloeswood except we appreciate its unique characteristics instead of a man-made blend. There are real complexities associated with the scent of aloeswood and kyara and that's what we like about it, namely, that a single ingredient has this much complexity and variety in itself. If you can make this kind of appreciation a healthy and sustainable part of your life, all the better for you. If it becomes an obsession tainted with avarice and greed, all the worse for you.
Also, it's your money, so you can do whatever you wish with it. Your conscience regarding the way you spend your money is nobody's business except yours.