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Sustainable Incense.
Citta
Veteran
I love incense.
The problem is most of the Indian, Japanese and Tibetan ones I like best contain Sandalwood. And Sandal Trees are fast becoming an endangered species.
But I have discovered a new incense source, woody , fresh and delightfully aromatic. Its called Palo Santo. It comes from South America and the good news is that it highly sustainable.
It can be obtained from fallen trees. And even when harvested from live trees the branches grow back quickly..unlike Sandal which is very slow growing.
The Palo Santo wood can be burned in chips in a burner.
An Italian company called Fiore D'Oriente makes a delightful selection of incense sticks made from Palo Santo.
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Comments
Well that's good to know....
My very favourite is Nag Champa, which of course, contains sandalwood... Is the fragrance comparable?
'Palo Santo' in Italian, means 'Sacred pole', or 'mast'...
As an inconsequential aside....
Found this.
Sounds promising.
To my nose its as nice @federica, but different. Palo Santo has a natural piney/citrusy tang to it.
The scent is very long lasting.
I burned a stick several hours ago when doing my practice and the room is still perfumed by it.
Foire D'Oriente make a Palo Santo based Nag Champa. But I haven't tried it.
The best Nag Champa I have tried comes from www..Pure-Incense.Co.
Which uses ground vanilla pods as a base. So you have the Nag Champa scent ( which comes from an Indian flowering tree ) with a vanilla background.
I just read up on Palo Santo on Amazon - an apparently, you can re-light it. So it seems a lot more consumer-friendly than just incense sticks and/or cones....
Yes, thats the sticks of wood itself. You can also buy it made into joss stick form.
[lobster faints] I luvs incense too. Frankincense is my fav. I did have some nag champa, but burnt all my stock at a local temple, they had too many Buddhas all requiring a snifter . . .
Fragrance/incense/essential oils/perfume is powerful stuff. I have a minute bottle of Arabic sandalwood that I anoint myself with in case I get accosted by nagas, Khidr or stray thoughts.
Hasn't worked then......
The demand for Sandalwood is so great that a sustainable alternative had to be found. Enterpring folks in the north of Australia have established Sandalwood plantations. This wood is starting to find it's way to market.
I have an ounce of incense grade aussie sandalwood powder in my shop. Raw, it's not as pungent and and sweet as Mysore wood. Burning, it's similar in fragrance to lower-grade Indian wood. If you're a sandalwood snob, like me, there's no real replacement, but Mysore is becoming harder and more expensive to get.
One thing you can do to conserve incense is when offering it, light the stick, let it burn for a few seconds then extingish it. That way a stick can last a month or more.
Nag Champa is an interesting incense ..... for a bug repellant ;-)
Incense party pooper alert. The most sustainable incense is no incense.
I know too many folk with sensitivities to incense smoke and perfumes to indulge much in either.
While I have spent many years associating pine incense smoke with a formal meditation practice, I have also come to appreciate the meditative lessons offered by not unduly flavoring any sense gate with an external stimuli as part of a meditation practice.
Oil burning lamp is another option.
Exactly @how the other option is not to burn anything! Smell is not one of the most alertive of the senses and trying to make it something it is not, is trying too hard.
To some this may be perceived as an inflammatory statement, but I see it as just a little puff of smoke... Puff! ... \ lol / ...
Knowing this, did you post that, careless of the feelings of others?
Actually, in the context of practice, incense in an offering the Buddha's of the 3 times and 10 directions. It's not meant for you or your senses. I guess if you want to see that as merely a puff of smoke ........
Maybe a can of Cambels Cream of Mushroom Soup ...........
And yes, there's no need to burn incense as an offering. Simply presenting it, unburnt, is quite acceptable. My sangha has done it that way for more than 10 years. No big deal and certainly nothing new.
I keep one of these on my shrine as a permanent offering.
Speak for yourself @anataman...personally I am more attuned to my nose than to my eyes.
Sense -horses for courses.
Oil burning as @Jeffrey mentions, is a viable way of perfuming ones home, mood, lack of mental independence or other nefarious motivations. Also good for asthmatics. A good tip is sniffing grapefruit essential oil straight from the bottle to lift ones mood. Any citrus fruit can have this effect on the finely attuned. Try and get the right extraction method.
http://www.essentialoils.co.za/extraction-methods.htm#Extraction methods
The most expensive oil extraction method for rose, uses air blown over petals and then removed from the air. These methods may be cheaper now due to nanotechnology filtration . . .
Oils and incense have healing properties that work from mood change to the physical rejuvenation of frankincense and other healing oils. Massage. Yum.
These are my local lavender producers.
http://www.mayfieldlavender.com/
:clap: .
Thank you for the post, @Citta. I'll check for palo santo on Amazon.
I use both essential oils and incense sticks for my altar.
Remember to ventilate thoroughly the areas where the incense is used, as the smoke has been linked to lung cancer, potentially more dangerous than cigarette smoking.
I don't know if the link I pasted down will be viewable, but there are several similar links like this if you google "incense smoke dangers."
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/08August/Pages/Incensesmokeandcancerrisk.aspx
Edit: trying to make the link work
I may be wrong dharmamombut I think its particularly incenses that contain a lot of synthetics that are the problem.
I burn ones that do not. Mostly from www.pure-incense.com
You can google for more information, but it would seem that even in natural incenses you can't foresee what the chemical process will be when you actually burn them.
http://jonbarron.org/article/toxic-incense#.U4H_o3ZGRyU
http://www.cancer-fund.org/en/cancer_news_186.html
Why use incense?
Why not one of those electric wax-heating smell generators?
Did the Buddha tell us to use incense?
Its optional. I like it.
All the worrying studies I have seen relate to Chinese use.
As anyone who has visited a Chinese temple will know there are often 50 or 60 or more sticks burning at the same time !
As the article says the problem is being constantly bathed in smoke..as presumably the priests and monks in Chinese temples may well be.
I think that the evidence suggests that offering two or three sticks a day of good quality organic incense a day is not going to pose a risk.
Particularly if the room is well ventilated.
Quite.
I think there's probably more danger of lung disease in the air we breathe from engine exhaust than incense we burn in our homes.
Well perhaps Pavlov had it wrong and the repeated exposure to incense smoke in conjunction with religious ritual doesn't invoke any particular associations.
Perhaps the repeated exposure to incense smoke in conjunction with formal meditation does not ill prepare you from practicing in the world where incense smoke is not the norm.
Perhaps the particulate from incense that one regularly breaths in, that is a health issue for some, is no health issue for you.
&
Perhaps the conversations from 20 years ago between folks invested in the smoking cigarettes and those who don't.....doesn't have any Dharma for us now.
I have a smoke alarm and a pomposity alarm in my meditation room.
The latter has just gone off.
We haz a plan for those worried about non medicinal incense passive smoking . . .
. > @Citta said:
Well there's a "who farted" question that means little when you're sitting by yourself.