My mom just bought incense from a monastery, and it looks like a box of big grains of sand. I’m only familiar with the incense sticks, and I’ve never seen stuff like this before. What in the world am I supposed to DO with it? Do I need a special burner? Anyone know what to do?
you need a charcoal.
they make these concave charcoal disks that you light and then sprinkle the incense on top of.
Yep, what sanja said; you need some charcoal. Actually, you need a very specific kind of charcoal (NOT the briquettes you grill over!), plus some ash and the kind of burner shaped like a little cauldron. You put the ash in the burner, lay the charcoal tablet on top of the ash, light the charcoal, and put a pinch of incense on the hot charcoal. It’s a little mini incense barbeque. The ash insulates the charcoal to keep it from burning out before it’s all used up.
Sources for the right kind of charcoal:
http://www.capricornslair.com/charcoalash.html
http://www.nipponkodo.com/shop/trad/syo-kou2.html
The monastery where your mom got the incense might be able to tell you where you can get these supplies. If not, you may also be able to find it, if you live in a big enough city or a smaller one with enough traditional incense users, in places that carry high-quality incense. Whole Foods sometimes carries it, at least at the stores near me. Places that cater to what you might call neo-hippies, like co-op groceries, hemp emporiums, and imported knicknack places, may also have them.
If all that seems like just too much hassle, and you like the incense’s smell, youo could just use it as a drawer sachet instead. Or, if it’s a resinous sort of stuff, you could put some in one of those tealight-heated potpourri warmers.