Meditation Timer
Silent meditation timer with a Tibetan singing-bowl bell at start and end. Optional interval bell every N minutes (5, 10, 15) for re-anchoring during longer sits. SVG of a brass bowl on a cushion with concentric ripples animating outward on each bell strike. Six presets from beginner 5-min to long-sit 60-min covering MBSR, Vipassana, Zazen, and Theravada traditions.
Quick Conversion
Formula: weekly_hours = daily_min x 7 / 60
Singing Bowl
Tibetan brass bowl with concentric ripples on every bell strike. Soft F4 fundamental, decay 4-5 seconds.
Tradition-Based Presets
Daily Practice -> Annual Hours
| Daily min | Weekly min | Monthly hours | Annual hours | To 10,000 h |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 min | 35 | 2.5 | 30 | 329 yrs |
| 10 min | 70 | 5.0 | 61 | 164 yrs |
| 15 min | 105 | 7.5 | 91 | 110 yrs |
| 20 min | 140 | 10.0 | 122 | 82 yrs |
| 25 min | 175 | 12.5 | 152 | 66 yrs |
| 30 min | 210 | 15.0 | 183 | 55 yrs |
| 45 min | 315 | 22.5 | 274 | 37 yrs |
| 60 min | 420 | 30.0 | 365 | 27 yrs |
Want a short attention-building session? Focus Timer 50/10 >
Meditation Volume Math
annual_hours = daily_min x 365 / 60 | gladwell_years = 10,000 / annual_hoursWorked: 20 min/day -> 121.7 annual hours -> 82 years to reach the Gladwell 10K-hour mark. Daily monks (4 hrs) hit it in 6.85 years. MBSR's 27 min/day (Lazar 2011) -> 164 hours/yr.
From the Buddha's breath to Kabat-Zinn's clinic
In 2026, a clinical psychologist in Vienna prescribes 20-minute MBSR sits to her anxiety patients. They open this page on the metro home, set 20 minutes with 5-minute interval bells, hit Begin Sit, and arrive at their apartment with one practice session complete. The singing-bowl tone marks transitions the way a wall clock's tick marks seconds - silent, ambient, regular.
Meditation traces to the historical Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), c. 480 BCE, in the Magadha region of present-day Bihar. The Anapanasati Sutta (Discourse on Mindfulness of Breath) and Satipatthana Sutta (Four Foundations of Mindfulness) are the foundational texts. Practice transmitted through Theravada (Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand), Mahayana (China, Korea, Japan), and Vajrayana (Tibet, Mongolia) traditions, each evolving distinct techniques while preserving the core: sustained, non-judgemental attention.
The singing bowl as a meditation timer originates in Tibetan and Japanese Zen temples, dating to at least the 8th century CE. Tibetan rin bowls (typically a 12-metal alloy with copper, tin, and trace silver) produce a fundamental in the F4-A5 range with rich harmonic partials. The Japanese rin-gong (used in zazen) and the Theravada gong-pa (used in Vipassana) serve the same function: marking the start, the interval, and the end of a sit.
The bridge to Western secular practice came with Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979. As a molecular biologist with a personal Zen practice (under Korean Zen master Seung Sahn), Kabat-Zinn founded the Stress Reduction Clinic and developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) - an 8-week, evidence-based, secular curriculum teaching meditation to chronic-pain and anxiety patients. His 1990 book Full Catastrophe Living codified the programme.
MBSR's 20-minute daily sit + weekly 45-minute body scan became the most-researched meditation intervention in clinical literature. Sara Lazar (Harvard / MGH, 2005, 2011) published MRI evidence of cortical thickening in long-term meditators and measurable gray-matter density changes after 8-week MBSR. Richie Davidson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) extended the research to Tibetan lamas including Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Matthieu Ricard. See our Focus Timer for attention-training in shorter blocks.
The Vipassana tradition revival in the West came through S. N. Goenka (Burma-born teacher, 1924-2013) who taught silent 10-day retreats at Igatpuri, Maharashtra. The Goenka centres now run 200+ retreats worldwide, each using triple-strike singing bowls at the start and end of every 60-minute group sit. The interval-bell pattern on this page (every 5 / 10 / 15 minutes) directly mirrors the Goenka centre protocol.
Modern app meditation (Calm, Headspace, Insight Timer, Waking Up) emerged from 2010-2015. Insight Timer alone hosts 30 million users in 2026. This page is the focused, bell-only alternative for practitioners who've graduated past guided audio. The F4 fundamental, the F4×1.5 perfect fifth, the F4×2 octave, and the F4×2.76 inharmonic partial together synthesise the recognisable Tibetan-bowl timbre using pure Web Audio sine oscillators. Combine with the stopwatch for unrelated lap-tracking and you have a complete time-management toolkit.
How to use the Meditation Timer
- Choose duration (5 min beginner to 60 min long-sit).
- Set interval bell if desired (5/10/15 min for re-anchoring during longer sits, 0 to disable).
- Pick a practice from the dropdown (breath, body scan, metta, zazen, etc.).
- Press Begin Sit. The starting bowl-tone plays. Ripples emanate from the rim. Sit silently.
- Hear the ending bowl. The session logs to localStorage. Stand slowly.
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Trusted by Monks, Psychologists, Yoga Instructors & Hospice Workers
“Forty years sitting Vipassana. This is the cleanest digital sangha-bell I have used. The interval at 10 minutes mirrors my own teacher's rinzai-roku practice. The bowl tone has the F4-fundamental of our temple's 6-inch brass bowl. Recommended for lay practitioners.”
“I prescribe 20-minute MBSR sits to anxiety patients. They use this page on their phones. The 5-minute interval bell helps them notice when their mind has wandered and gently return. Adherence is dramatically higher than with no auditory anchor.”
“I lead group sits at Tushita Meditation Centre. We project this page on the wall so the 200 practitioners see the same singing-bowl image. The end-of-session bowl tone gives everyone the same exit cue. Better than my old wooden clapper for large groups.”
“I teach mindfulness to terminally-ill patients in palliative-care wards. The page is open on a tablet by the bedside. The soft bowl tone is gentler than any phone alarm. The 5-minute interval bell prevents patients from sleeping through the session - it's a soft re-anchor without being jarring.”
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