Sudenly Singing Bowls!

Singing Bowls

I have sold singing bowls for years.  I encountered them on my first trip to Nepal in Patan Durbar Square.  Pradeep, the singing bowl man, sat in front of a thousand bowls where the Patan Museum is now.  Usually, we would not negotiate in public.  Instead he would take me to his warehouse and I would sit on the floor with a cup of tea and play every bowl one at a time and choose the most harmonious bowls.  It took hours.  Most of the bowls that I found were Nepalese singing bowls.  They were large and dark, the color of tarnished brass.  Some of them were even painted dark around the bottom with a kind of tar like substance.  I have also seen the same substance on metal water vases when they have cracks in them.  Another style that I often saw were the thin golden colored bowls from Bhutan.  They had a lighter vibration, a thin but soothing sound.  Then I discovered the Manipur singing bowl and fell in love.  These were usually short golden bowls with multiple harmonies.  They were clearly well used bowls!

Over time one supply after the other of these old bowls has dried up.  Now it is extremely expensive for me to get the older bowls.  I do find some really fantastic bowls that have been formed in the original way out of the old broken bowls. Don't worry, I have saved one special old bowl for myself, the rest have gone to people who will cherish them.

Recently in the US bowls have been used for healing.  It has been interesting to watch the mythology of these bowls explode in the last 20 years.  I can't tell you about all of the present uses of the bowls because the stories vary from person to person.  What I find very interesting is that in the last month I have had more demand for these bowls than at any other time during my past 20 years of doing business.  What's going on?

Below is an explanation of singing bowls for those who are not familiar:


At the forefront of this picture is an old Tibetan singing bowl with two reconstituted bowls behind it.  Old bowls like this one are not being produced anymore.  There are new shinny bowls with interesting decorations but the metal composition is different, so is the tone.

‘Old’ means that no one really knows when it was made but perhaps between 1800 and 1950.  When you find old bowls the edges are smooth from use.  There are usually identifying marks on the bowl.  These ,marks are like putting your name on your lunch box.  Usually it is a couple of hash marks or a simple design.  I sometimes see names carved on the outside of a bowl instead of patterns. 

Other than clothing, a prayer wheel, and a prayer mala, the singing bowl might have been a monk’s only possession.  Everything that the monk needed he could obtain with his bowl because it was his begging bowl and the bowl out of which every meal was consumed.  It very vividly represents both the physical life of the owner in providing for his physical requirements as well as the spiritual life of the owner as a meditation tool.  Bowls were also used to present offerings and anything that is given as an offering should be given in a harmonious vessel.
When a high ranking teacher passed away, his bowl may have been used to help find his reincarnation.  They might take a few bowls to a potential candidate and ask which of the bowls belonged to him.

This antique bowl and similar bowls were created in the monasteries of Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and northern India.
Each bowl was individually spun and hammered from a combination of 7 metals called "bell metal."  These metals are gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin, and lead.

Each bowl produces a unique set of harmonies when it is played.  To play the bowl hold the bowl in an open palm.  Do not clasp the bowl with your fingers because it will dampen the sound.  With your dominant hand, hold the stick straight up and down and drag the stick around the outside of the bowl firmly, in a clockwise rotation.  If your bowl doesn’t play rotate the stick faster and more firmly, if it rattles, slow down.  You may strike your bowl gently to fix a focal point in meditation or to end a meditation but you should not hit your bowl every time you play it.  Larger bowls are often played by simply striking the bowl with the heel of one's hand or using a felted dowel. It is believed that the many harmonic sounds from the bowl are the vibrations of the prayers which are chanted as the bowls are created and that it's resonance should magnify and carry your prayers and intentions while you are meditating with the bowl.

Haunted Bells and Bowls

In the center is the spooky bell about which I have written. To the left is a statue of Manjushri. To the rear is my personal singing bowl. I have never met a person who could not play this bowl. Far right is something for my writer friends. It is an old Nepalese ink well. My kid's crystals and rocks are also lying about. (click to enlarge)


Top of the Bell

I have a new treasure in my collection. It is a creepy looking bell from a temple in India. One of my customers brought it and left it with me at a trade show. It seems odd to me that people would give ritual objects to me as I am selling so many of these things myself. But there are occasionally people who would like to get rid of a statue or some object that bothers them. They believe that I would either appreciate the beauty of the item, or that I can handle the malevolent energy that they associate with it. I tend to believe that objects only have the power that a person gives them. Fear magnifies and makes real the ghosts that would haunt a person.

Shortly after I received the temple bell, an Indian couple came to my table. The man said, "I know what that is. How much do you want for it?" Since I paid nothing for the bell. I said, "How much you pay?" Which is exactly what I hear so often while I am shopping in Nepal. It is a great way to get a commitment out of your buyer. While he was considering his offer carefully, a woman came to look at my singing bowls and I shifted into story telling mode.

"These bowls are used by the Buddhist monks in Nepal. They chant prayers for peace into them and the harmony of the bowl gives a tone to the prayer and helps to amplify the energy. The prayers are for peace and the enlightenment of all sentient beings. I find that people who do Reiki can often feel a great deal of energy when they encounter the bowls. Their arms float up and down as they feel the perimeters of the energy coming from a singing bowl." I said, in my well rehearsed way.

"I do Reiki," the woman said. " I know." I told her. Her eyes widened and she looked impressed by my psychic abilities. She and her friends had been hovering around my table earlier and talking about Reiki. I guess she didn't know that I was listening.

I picked up a bowl with a deep smooth resonance and told her to think of global peace while I played the bowl for her. She put her hands above the bowl. "Oh yeah! Oh wow, I can really feel that," she said.

The Indian man was still looking at the temple bell, turning it over and over and considering his offer. His wife was carefully selecting rudraksha beads, 'literally the tears of Rudra,' (a seed, which supposedly cures you of all kinds of sins). She asked me if they were real and where I got them. I described a shop near Freak Street in Kathmandu, Nepal, and that seemed to convince her of their authenticity.

I turned back to the woman admiring the singing bowls. "Can you tell me more about them?" She queried.

"I deal in mostly used bowls and often you will find the names of the bowls' former owners scratched into the edge of the bowls. Once, there was a woman who returned to thank me for a bowl saying that the bowl she bought from me came with three spectral monks. Presumably, these were the former owners," I said. "And then, when I lived in Maryland, I had a wall in my basement that was devoted to hundreds of singing bowls. One day, a friend of mine was in our house alone and she said that she heard some of the bowls singing by themselves downstairs."

"Have you seen ghosts and heard the bowls singing on their own?" she asked.

"No, but one day I played the bowls at a shop in Columbus, Ohio, for hours and hours. It was a festival and people would press their faces to the glass of the store and kept coming in to shop as long as I played the bowls. That night after I went to sleep, a large singing bowl appeared at the bottom of my bed and it began to chant a deep "OM." Three gnarled women's hands reached up out of the bowl and I could feel their claws dig into my calf muscle as they started to drag me off of my bed and into the bowl. I awoke, startled by the dream." I said. "But the bowl dealers in Nepal assured me that my vision was an auspicious event."

Everyone at my table was quiet and looking at me now.

"Sometimes people bring me interesting things at these shows." I filled the silence. "Like this bell here." I don't know much about it. I do know that it doesn't look like anything that I have seen in Nepal and there is an I-Ching coin tied to it, which is kind of strange. Maybe the woman who gave it to me thought it was haunted or something, so she gave it to me."

The Indian woman looked at her husband and said, "You are not bringing that bell into our house!"

Perhaps I said too much. I didn't sell the bell or the bowl, only a few rudraksha, but I had a great time telling the stories!