What is a singing bowl?

October 23, 5:54 PMSan Diego Spirituality ExaminerRobert Reese

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Singing Bowl
Photos by Robert Reese

What is a singing bowl? Wikipedia, www.Wikipedia.com provided this comprehensive snapshot of singing bowls history and uses.

Singing bowls are widely used as an aid to meditation and as a tool for yoga, music, music therapy, sound healing, religious services, performance and for personal enjoyment. Singing bowls were historically made in Tibet, Nepal,India, Bhutan, China, Japan and Korea. Today they are made in Nepal, India, Japan and Korea. The best known type are from the Himalayan region and are often called "Tibetan singing bowls."

In Buddhist practice, singing bowls are used as a support for meditation, trance induction and prayer. For example, Chinese Buddhists use the singing bowl to accompany the wooden fish during chanting, striking it when a particular phrase in a sutra, mantra or hymn is sung. In Japan and Vietnam, singing bowls are similarly used during chanting and may also mark the passage of time or signal a change in activity.

Singing bowls are played by the friction of rubbing a wooden, plastic, or leather wrapped mallet or Pudja around the rim of the bowl to produce overtones and a continuous 'singing' sound. High quality singing bowls produce a complex chord of harmonic overtones. Singing bowls may also be played by striking with a soft mallet to produce a warm bell tone.

Singing bowls are unique because they are multiphonic instruments, producing multiple harmonic overtones at the same time. The overtones are a result of using an alloy consisting of multiple metals, each producing its own overtone. New bowls can also produce multiple harmonic overtones if they are high quality bronze, but many are made from a simpler alloy and produce only a principal tone and one harmonic overtone.

While it is generally believed that the traditional manufacturing techniques are lost, there are new hand-hammered bowls being produced in the centuries old tradition. The difference is the quality of the alloy and the aging process itself. The tone improves as they age, so new bowls cannot sound as warm and mellow as a real antique. (Feinstein, 2008)

The use of singing bowls in Tibet is the subject of much debate and many stories. Some people say they were used for meditation while others say they were magical tools for transformation of self and of matter. However, neither theory is supported by reference to any Tibetan religious sources and indeed there is no evidence that Tibetans ever employed bowls in a religious context for anything other than receptacle purposes.

           Little is known in western scholarship regarding Himalayan singing bowls. It is likely they were used in rituals, having a specific function like other instruments (such as the ghanta, tingsha, and shang). The oral and written traditions from the Himalayan region are vast and largely unknown in the west. To date, no specific texts have been found discussing the use of singing bowls in depth, but according to Joseph Feinstein of Himalayan Bowls (2006), paintings and statues dating from several centuries ago depict singing bowls in detail. Singing bowls from at least the 10th-12th century are found in private collections. The tradition may date significantly earlier since bronze has been used to construct musical instruments since ancient times. Bronze bells from Asia have been discovered as early as the 8th-10th century BCE (Feinstein, 2006).

Some people claim that a phenomenon akin to water memory can be demonstrated by filling a singing bowl with water, producing sounds with the bowl until the water begins to vibrate (due to the vibrations of the bowl), stopping and letting the water to rest, and then re-starting the whole procedure: the water will pick up the same vibration much faster than the previous attempt.

www.NOTEableBOWLS.com is an online bowl store that features new and antique bowls of all sizes.