hi k..i did the singing bowl in a chinese mountain top temple in 2006..i'll
dig out my photo..wonderful experience..merle
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
>
>
