Thua Thien Hue

Incense, ink, and pen on paper

What are the ways by which we tether ourselves to this world? I sit with a childhood memory of my grandmother, who each evening lit a stick of incense clasped firmly between her hands and recited "Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật" (Homage to Amitābha Buddha) before a photograph of her late husband. Through this memory, I engage with Devotion and the Buddhist principles of death, rebirth, and liberation. The sequence of gestures that animated my grandmother's daily ritual—the lighting of incense, the recitation, and the erosion of the incense with time—is interpreted through a Hegelian lens as an unfolding of faith and a reminder that being is transient.