Online wooden fish
A wooden fish — muyu in Chinese, mokugyo in Japanese — is the hollow wooden block that keeps time in a chanting hall. This page gives you one to strike: tap it, or press Space, and a counter records the sitting. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is for sale.
Today
0
All time
0
Tap the fish — or press Space. One tap, one count.
Sound
silentReal recordings, not synthesis: the bell, bowl, rain and chanting are public-domain (CC0) field recordings served from this site and played in your browser. Nothing streams from a third party, and nothing is tracked.
Background
Five quiet grounds, drawn with CSS and SVG — no photographs. Your choice is remembered in this browser.
Quick answer
An online wooden fish is a browser version of the Chinese percussion instrument used to mark rhythm during Buddhist chanting. This one is free, needs no account, and works with a mouse, a touchscreen or the space bar. Each strike adds one to today’s count; the count lives in your browser’s local storage and is never transmitted.
What a wooden fish is
A wooden fish is a hollowed block of wood, carved with a slit mouth and struck with a padded mallet. In Chinese Buddhist and Taoist practice it marks the beat for chanting: the assembly recites a sutra or a name in time with the block, and the block keeps a room full of voices on the same pulse. It is also used to mark the hours of a monastery day.
The name is older than the shape. One traditional explanation links the fish to wakefulness — a fish does not close its eyes — so the block becomes a reminder to stay awake to what is being recited. Whether or not that story is the origin, the instrument’s job is plain: keep the beat, and keep the room from drifting.
How to use this page
- Strike it. Tap the block with a finger or a mouse, or focus it and press Space or Enter. Each strike plays the recorded “tok” and adds one to today.
- Sit with a number. A hundred strikes is a few minutes of attention. “Clear today” resets today’s count only — the all-time total stays as a record of past sittings.
- Set the room. Pick one of five grounds, start a sound layer, and set the timer so the audio stops by itself. Your background choice is remembered next visit.
What the counter means — and what it doesn’t
It is a tally, not a balance sheet. Counting strikes is a very old practice aid — the same logic as a mala of 108 beads, which this site’s Meditation Hall already has. But a number on a screen cannot measure attention, and it certainly cannot award merit. If the count starts to feel like a score to beat, the tool has stopped doing its job: clear it and sit without it for a while.
Nothing here is recorded on a server. The count is written to this browser only, so it survives a refresh and disappears with your browser data. There is no account to create and no reason to give an email.
Where the sounds come from
None of these are synthesized tones. The strike, the temple bell, the singing bowl, the rain and the chanting are real field recordings — public-domain (CC0) material, so no permission or credit is owed to anyone — cut into short one-shots and seamless loops and served from this site. A few hundred kilobytes load only when you first tap or start a track, nothing streams from a third-party player, and no audio request carries a tracking identifier.
The five grounds stay drawn rather than photographed: CSS gradients and SVG, so changing the background never costs a download.
Questions
Is the wooden fish free to use?
Yes. There is no account, no payment and no advertising anywhere on this page. It is one of the practice tools of this site, next to the Meditation Hall and the reading tracker.
Does my count carry over to another device?
No. Today’s count and the all-time total are stored in this browser’s local storage only. Nothing is sent to a server, so clearing your browser data clears the count, and a second device starts from zero.
Does tapping really earn merit?
No — and this page will not pretend otherwise. Puṇya (merit) in Buddhist thought is not a score that a web page can award. The counter here is a focus device: it gives a restless hand something to do and a number to watch while the attention settles. Treat the number as a record of effort, not a spiritual balance.
What does a wooden fish actually sound like?
A short, hollow “tok” with a pitched wooden body — the sound of a padded mallet on a hollowed block. The strike here is a real recording of a wood block, trimmed at the front so a tap sounds immediately. Every sound on this page is a public-domain (CC0) field recording, served from this site.
Is a wooden fish the same as a Japanese mokugyo?
They are the same family of instrument under different names. The Chinese muyu (木魚, “wooden fish”) spread with Buddhist practice through East Asia and is known in Japan as the mokugyo, used the same way: a steady beat for chanting and recitation.
Can I use the sounds while I sit?
Yes. The sound panel layers a recorded temple bell, a singing bowl, rain and monks chanting — any combination — and it has a five, fifteen or thirty minute stop timer. Start a track, leave the timer on, and put the screen down: the audio stops on its own.
Prefer a room to a page? The Meditation Hall has a shared 3D hall and the 108 beads, reading progress keeps your place in the book, and the random draw never repeats a verse.