A Tattoo Story
My tattoo is a summary of my religion. To most, the tattoo just looks like a pretty design. But the center of it contains a Sanskrit word. Before I tell you what that word means, I need to give you a little background on me…
In high school, I was active in the youth group at my own Catholic church, but also attended other churches of other denominations with friends. I read the Bible, but also studied world religions in a class at school. All the while, none of these experiences ever seemed to fill the hole. The hole that made me feel there was “something more” out there that I just didn’t have the answers to yet.
Then, in college, things took a real turn. I encountered a big dose of hypocrisy, served up by classmates who I heard preach one thing, but who I saw do complete opposite at house parties on the weekend. At the time, my mind couldn’t process such total opposites in word and deed. So my reaction was to just push all religion away, all together.
That attitude continued until my mid-thirties. At that point, I had grown old enough to have realized that there are hypocrites in every aspect of life. Religion was no different. If I really wanted to fill the hole, I might as well press forward and not let other people’s issues stop my progress.
So, I once again looked into the myriad of world religions. But this time around I found I could see an important thread that tied them all together — that thread being love. Sounds simple, I know. But to truly love others with no agenda is a difficult thing to do. It takes practice. In Buddhism, that is how it is discussed… as something to be practiced. Love for others is referred to as “loving-kindness” or the Sanskrit word “Maitri.” The full concept of “Maitri” is a bit complicated to explain, but Wikipedia has a pretty good definition of it:
Though it refers to many seemingly disparate ideas, Maitri is in fact a very specific form of love – a caring for another independent of all self-interest – and thus is likened to one’s love for one’s child or parent. …The strength of this feeling is not limited to or by family, religion, or social class. Indeed, Maitri is a tool that permits one’s generosity and kindness to be applied to all beings and, as a consequence, one finds true happiness in another person’s happiness, no matter who the individual is.
When I became familiar with this concept, it became my deepest wish for myself that I could be a person who could practice “loving-kindness” everyday. I knew this was the key to filling the hole. But such a selfless kind of love is a hard thing to practice, so I wanted to carry with me a constant reminder of the type of person I am striving to be. And that is why I decided to have the Sanskrit word for ‘loving-kindness” (Maitri) tattooed onto my skin. Obviously, the tattoo is permanent, which is fine with me. Because I want loving-kindness to permanently be a guiding ideal as my journey of faith continues.