Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō
Memory: I'm about 23. It's my last stand in the city, in other words my life is due to come crumbling down but I don't know it yet. I'm living on Avenue B between, was it between 11th and 12th? I remember walking about 2 blocks to get the 9th St. crosstown bus which I got at Ave B on the north side of Tompkins Sq. Park. That's only if I had time to squander.
Mostly I walked home after my shift at the Potbelly. Sometimes I had to take a cab home, though. One night the driver taught me that mantra, and said "Don't get any more tattoos."
 |
| right shoulder blade, age 19 |
I may have just gotten the one on my belly. I at least had the Anima Mundi already. The was one on the horizon in a few years, for my lower back, the Hunab Ku. {And I wouldn't know what the Hunab Ku meant, eh-hem, until just a few years ago!}
It says that in the Bible, not to mark the body up and hold it as sacred. I haven't looked it up on the internet or in any of my Bibles here at home. I'm going by memory from Catholic school and catechism. My intuitive hit the other day about why the Bible says that about tattoos and what inspired this post: you become infused/effused with the energies that are associated with the picture/symbol. This may or may or not be desirable in the long term. Of course, back in the day, there were no sort of removal methods available once someone got inked. You definitely died with that shit. So you know this sort of imbibing one's vessel with some sort of quality, as represented by the picture/symbol so inked, is some pretty heavy magic.
It can be. It's a ritual, for sure. And it's got to be right, the whole process, I'm saying. Anyone who has a tattoo knows this. The choosing of the image and the place on the body, choosing the artist, everything. It's a branding.
Although what feels right in one moment, when tattooing is done impulsively, may bring misery not too long after. Then a 'cover-up' is attempted. That original image and energy is always underneath, never really dissolved per se. Perhaps.
I suppose an intentional ritual of transmutation of old energy could be enacted as one received the cover-up image and accompanying energetics. Maybe some people do this. I've never had a cover-up done so I can't attest to it.
But I never tire for some reason of this cab story of learning this mantra, and all the spin offs I get each time I think of it.
And that driver...
Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō
No comments:
Post a Comment