This sturdy 5" bowl is the center of a 7 to 10 part circle of singing bowls. The tone is clear, when struck with the cotton or a rubber mallet two separate sound emerge, then when you return to it after striking the 8", 7" and the 4" to 3" bowl you will hear what it is the song of the planets, the sound of creation. One need not be of a particular religion to feel and meditate with singing bowls. The purpose is to feel the harmony of the spheres, not the teachings of a religion; in some ways it is scientific. The Tibetan masters knew what they were doing so many thousands of years ago when they began making the singing bowl, hammering them out with the 7 precious and sometimes 9 precious metals.I was meditating with my singing bowl "galaxy", when they reached a pitch that sustained I was able to stretch and limber, painfully for a grown man, but it helped so much. The sounds meeting and rising together must be heard. Go to youtube and find any singing bowl lesson or presentation that is using bowls made with the 7 auspicious metals, no waterfall or rainstorm effects, as you are learning to either use them or to hear a particular bowl's sound. I felt the depth of both Higher Buddhism and contemplative Catholicism while playing and then sitting to hear, to hear them resonate, then smoothly dissolve into no sound at all. As the sound evaporates you feel, I felt, moments of clarity that one hears so much about in religion or meditation. It is OK to begin with one or two bowls, you do not need to jump right into an entire collection. I do recommend, promote, command that you avoid the painted more brass or bronze heavy bowls for resonance, they do sing easily but it fades quickly, so keep that in mind while shopping for your bowls. I suggest a 4" and 6" for starters. I promise once you master these two you will look forward to and at times find that you entered a meditation that can last up to two hours. Think of the Gautama Buddha (and Hindu before him in 568 B.C.) sitting and hearing the sound and finality of creation become the ever evolving Now of time and self. When you play and strike them as Catholic mystic/contemplative you can bring your mind and soul into feeling what Jesus must have heard and felt as he meditated for 40 days in the outlands. If I sound overly ecstatic in my reviews of hammered holy 7 metal bowls transcending and uniting religious faiths it is because it does, and because I have felt it. People, we will always do something to let you down, but the song of the spheres, the foundation of the angels singing, or simply as deeply pleasant interactive music for meditation then you have found your space in the fully being now. Really. I am not being overly hyperbole heavy, this is what it feels like to be in the center of meditation and you hit that mystical moment of knowing through the body not within the mind.