This is a very beautiful Buddha Story about the attachment.
Once there was a Buddhist nun who had a golden statue of Buddha. Now, this nun was traveling as Buddhist monks and nuns travel, from one place to another. She had her golden Buddha, and in the morning she would pray to Buddha and she would burn fragrance in prayer. But she was very miserly so she was very much concerned because the fragrance went with the wind; it reached other Buddhas who were also in the temple, the wind took the fragrance to other Buddhas.
The nun was very inventive. She found a bamboo, a hollow bamboo, and she made a certain wooden pot, covered, with a hole for the bamboo. She would burn the fragrance inside the pot, cover it and put the other end of the bamboo to the golden Buddha’s nose.
She was very happy because now the fragrance was going just to her Buddha; and all those Buddhas – who knows who has made them? And she thought, ”Anyway they are not mine.” But it created trouble: soon her Buddha’s face became black. She was very puzzled.
She asked the chief monk of the monastery where she was staying what to do. The monk could not believe it. He said, ”What have you done to your golden Buddha? Such a beautiful statue and you have destroyed the face. What have you done?”
She said, ”Now I have to tell you the whole thing; this is how it happened. Now that the smoke goes directly to his nose it has made his whole face black.”
The master of that monastery said, ”This is bound to happen. When you start possessing even a Buddha, what else can you dispossess? A nun is supposed to have no possessions – and you are not even able to let your Buddha be free. You are not even able to understand that all these statues are of the same Buddha, so wherever the fragrance reaches, it is reaching to Buddha. ”And even if it doesn’t reach these statues, even if it reaches outside to the stones, they are hidden Buddhas. So even if your fragrance goes to a stone outside to the milestone then too it is reaching
a hidden Buddha. So don’t be worried: wherever it goes, it goes to him. Otherwise this is not the blackened face of your Buddha, this is your face blackened.”
