The Jewel in the Lotus

Om mani padme hum

Om Mani Padme Hum

I have been tattooed three times now, each one separated by ten years. I didn’t do them on a milestone birthday or anything, but it seems that every decade I learn a thing significant to the core of my being, have a cloud-clearing epiphany of some sort, or decide over some time that I want to approach my life differently .

My first tattoo is a phoenix, rising from a flaming, broken heart. It sits on my right hip where I only notice it if I catch sight of it in a mirror, which isn’t often, because I do try to avoid mirrors when I am naked now that I’m 60ish and not so sexy-proud of my shape.

Actually, I am reminded of it once each year, when we are at the beach together and my grandson points it out to me and says, “Mima, I didn’t know you had a tattoo”. Every. Summer. For all these years. I kid you not. He’s shocked over and over again.

At the time of the inking, I felt that that image was a symbol of a lesson I had learned and wanted to remember. I was two years out of an unhappy marriage and ugly divorce and I had begun to see that I could live a better, happier life. It seemed important for me to mark that realization in a permanent way.

I designed that tattoo, along with a similarly themed, but much larger one for the man I was involved with at the time. We had matching themed tattoos, but not matchy-matchy designs.

I eye-rolled a little at myself writing that sentence, because it sounds so trailer-trashy teenager but, really, it wasn’t, and even if it was, it’s ok now: symbols are symbols because they are universal, or nearly so.

And sure enough, just to drive that symbol deeper into my heart with what felt like a burning brand at the time, that man decided shortly after the inking that he wanted out and I was left rising from my own ashes with a broken heart again. BUT! by then I knew that ,given some time, I could live through it and thrive again. So, yay me. Lesson learned. Twice.

I don’t have a picture of that one and there’s noooo way I’m taking a pic of it on my body, I’ll spare you that. Imagine amongst yourselves.

The second tattoo happened when I realized one of my lifelong dreams: living near the ocean. I hadn’t even acknowledged to myself that it was a dream of mine because I had the (limiting) belief that it was something that could never happen for me; that only rich people got to live at the beach and I was never going to be anything but scraping by and working until I dropped dead on my feet, especially as a single mother of three.

Somehow though, the seed of that desire sat in my heart since I was a child on the beach at South Seaside Park, NJ, where my paternal grandparents had a tumbledown bungalow, and never died.

About ten years ago, my now-husband and I knew we wanted to eventually leave the brutally cold, cloudy, windy winters of western New York. So we began a search for a new home someplace warmer and close enough to the coast that a day trip to the beach could be driven in an hour or so. It happened that I found the perfect house for us, four car garage for the motor head racer and a large sunny studio for me. Bonus: it’s a three mile drive to the beautiful beaches of Topsail Island and the house overlooks the intracoastal waterway in a sweeping panorama.

Somehow, the seed of that desire sat in my heart since I was a child on the beach at South Seaside Park, NJ, where my paternal grandparents had a tumbledown bungalow, and never died.

Pinch me. Still. I’m grateful beyond words and want to take sea with me wherever I go, and so, I designed this bracelet based on Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, pictured above. I see it every day and, when I am not here at home, it reminds me of what is waiting for me in that beautiful place.

This most recent ink is another thing I want to keep in the forefront of my mind. The art work is at the very top of the page; the tattoo is still too puffy and raw to see the image clearly on my skin.

I came across a Tibetan Buddhist mantra a few years ago, when were still in the deathgrip of the one-two punch of Covid and TFG. It was such a hard time for me. (I know: all of us) As our country and civility unraveled and got so openly hateful and ugly, I found myself saying... almost like a mantra... “What is wrong with these people! What the bloody effing hell is wrong with this people?!” It unsettled me so. Seriously rocked my world. And through meditation and art journals and writing morning pages, I came to understand that in order for me to find some peace, I needed to change my thoughts and the words that came out of my mouth.

I could not affect change in others. I could not make them see how badly they were being duped about vaccines or help them to understand why “all lives matter” is true, but not the point, or that what was happening in the White House was terribly, horribly, dangerous to our way of life and governance.

All I could affect was myself: with my thoughts and my words.

Enter, Om mani padme hum.

Literally, the jewel in the lotus, it mean so much more. It also doesn’t translate well at all.

I’m not going to write another 300 words to explain it: that’s what Google is for, my friends! I do encourage you to read around a bit.

My very simple interpretation is a little prayer of intention, wishing compassion and freedom from suffering to all beings. I think I first heard it as a song, and have since created a playlist of the several versions I have found, so I can listen to it as I go about my day and send its intention out into the world. Here’s one of my favorites:

It’s been an important enough message for me over the past few years that I made a series of paintings I called Loving Kindness based on the idea. If you’ve followed me for a while, you will have seen those. Eventually, I wanted to have a permanent reminder of it where I will see it all day, every day.

I want to practice “Om mani padme hum”, rather than knee-jerking to “what the AF is wrong with people?!” The two feel so different in my body when I say them, or even write them. I want to feel the first. And I want you to feel it too.

Om shanti.