Joe,
I have a singing bowl, received as a gift. Not the light shiny light
brass things you see in the New Age/Buddhist shops - or the ones with
the symbols/embellishments - but a dull bronze sort of affair, uneven
and earthy in color. It has three simple parallel lines inscribed below
the rim - and a single one cut centered on the rim that is easy to miss
(a clearer message, could not be written).
It smells distinctly like a jar full of pennies - making my hands smell
the same after holding it. I have always liked that coppery smell - more
alive than more noble metals. Its voice so clear, it is never totally
silent, and I can hear it subtley ringing in resonance with other
sounds, and the air molecules striking it.
It's about the size of an individual rice/cereal bowl. Out of curiosity,
I just checked and it weighs 645 grams/16.4 oz/15.9 troy oz- (or a hair
over 6727 barleycorn - to be really obscure) so by weight, it would only
be a little more than 207 pennies (of the date range you collected which
weigh 3.11 g, minus wear). A mere 2% of your project's 31.1 kilo/68.5 lbs.
I memory of you project I will raise its "small" voice, which when
"singing" penetrates the walls and gets the neighbors' attention. If it
were 50 times larger, I would fear for the walls!
K
On 6/16/2012 3:51 PM, Joe wrote:
Kris,
One of the projects I dropped when I resigned from Zen Desert Sangha
in Tucson after 23 years -- to start a new sangha devoted to Ch'an
practice in Sheng Yen's style, but not exclusively -- was a project to
collect 10,000 bronze US pennies (pre-1983), to melt down.
I would pour the melt into a solid plate, with embellishments in the
mold, such as of a dragon's body, or etc.
This would be a "gong", actually a Bronze "Han", and would be struck
with a rubberized hammer as an instrument in the zendo.
This would be "the 10,000 things returning to the One".
I would have called it our "Hundred-Dollar Bell".
By now I think I have all the pennies; I have been collecting them
personally since about 1992. Glass jars full of them, sorted by date
(again, just pre-1983; they are the ones still made of solid
coinage-bronze, and are not just sugar-coated Zinc as the newer ones are).
To do this project, I set myself to learn the principles of foundry
work, which I did. I have no equipment, though, I'd have to make it
all. I would purchase the crucibles, though.
Maybe make the 100-dollar bell for our new sangha. Meanwhile, a wooden
Han is fine.
It may be considered "defacing-of-US-Currency", but nobody has to
*know* about this but me and you, and the lamp-post, right?
Lamp-posts have ears and EYES these days, though, notice?. Stay safe!,
Old Man,
--Joe
;-)
> The 'Ten Thousand Things'
> Arising in countless ways
> Still mind is counting
