My Tattoo Story, Part 3: Getting the tattoo

In the end, I decided to get the tattoo on the left side of my rib cage. People kept telling me that the ribs are one of the most painful places to get tattooed. I kept thinking, but isn’t the pain kind of the point? If I didn't want to feel pain, getting tattooed was not something I should be doing. 

When I prepared that morning, I felt like an animal going in to sacrifice (LH told me later she feels like a butcher everyday, putting people in such physical pain and then having to hear them cry out about it). I posted pictures of me and my grandpa with an essay written in Uyghur about him along with the calligraphy design on my WeChat (the Chinese version of Facebook/Whatsapp). I wanted other people in my social circle here to know the lessons about being a burden I had learned from him. It's an abridged version of the "how I experienced my grandfather's death" post. Here’s a screen shot of my post:

I meditated.

I wrote down more quotes from Pema Chodrun’s Places That Scare You about pain:

Pain

“Bodhichitta (open heart) is the soft spot, a place as tender as an open wound. It is our ability to love. 

Compassion is our ability to feel the pain that we share with others. 

We are scared of the pain that we share with others. We put up barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are fortified by anger, jealousy, craving and pride. The soft spot- the wound- is our innate ability to live and care, it's is a crack in these walls we create when we're afraid of pain. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment of love or loneliness or inadequacy or embarrassment to awaken bodhichitta, our link to all those who have felt pain. Bodhichitta is the rawness of a broken heart. In that pain, there is our link to all those who have loved. This can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we are arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing. When you accept it, you can share that compassion with everyone. This sense of deep connection, of belonging to the same family is bodhichitta. It's the ability to keep our hearts and minds open to suffering without shutting down. 

It means being a warrior willing to enter challenging situations.”

The tattoo was my Bodhichitta. At least for the time being.

AJ tagged along with me, despite leaving on a three week trip to Tibet the next day. I translated the essay I wrote in Uyghur into Chinese for her while we were riding the subway. She got tears in her eyes and told me she too was moved by it.

When we got there, LH was waiting for us. She looked happy and excited.

When she first started, I told myself, “Ok, breathe through the pain,” as any good meditator would have encouraged me. But I was getting tattooed on my ribs, and LH was not thrilled with this idea. I tried to control my breathing as best I could, but still I was breathing a lot apparently. AJ held my hand.

After a little while, the tattoo artist decided that I should lay down. I lay down and decided to start tonglen practice by making a list of all the people I love and who are important to me. After each person, I would imagine them, their face, and how I feel when I’m around them, and think about what I like about them and why they bring joy to my life. Then I would practice tonglen, repeating the phrases ten times each for each person: May they be safe, may they be healthy, may they be at peace, may they accept themselves as they are, may they accept their lives as they are, may they live with ease.” I did this over and over again, pulling my hair as a gritted my teeth with pain. But as LH suggested, you need to think about anything but the pain itself. And with this my breathing slowed, and LH said she could now work with ease.

In typical tonglen practice, you start with the people closest to you, and move out towards the people who you don’t know as well, or even people who have hurt you or people you are struggling with. So as I moved down the list, she worked from the bottom to the top of my ribs, and the pain became more and more intense, especially after she started filling in the color. I could feel the pain radiating through my ribs and through my entire left side. It was at this time that I got to the people on my list who have hurt me. And as the pain seared through my body, I thought about those people, those people who only hurt me because they meant so much to me, they only hurt me so much because I had loved them so much, and over and over again, I wished them peace, health, safety, acceptance, and a life of ease.

It was a truly spiritual experience.

After about 2 hours, I thought we were almost done. But it turned out I still had an hour to go. At this point I sat up, and Miao talked with me about Chinese New Year, and told me stories about her friends. I concentrated my whole being on her words and on her face, and the pain was bearable. I laid down again then, and this time, I looked at Facebook for the first time in 2 months, a luxury that I knew would take my mind off of things.

After 3 and a half hours, the tattoo was over and suddenly I understood why people loved getting tattoos and why they are addictive.

It’s a whole day devoted to yourself, being selfish and doing something you like for yourself; it feels like your birthday.

I was high. On the endorphins, certainly. But also on the feeling of accomplishment, like you get during drinks at a Friday happy hour after a stressful week at work, or at the summit after climbing a tall mountain. It was the happiest I’ve felt in a long time.

Taking care of the tattoo was also an important lesson in self-care. As we are wounded, so we must heal, and with healing must come time, rest, and attention to the wound, and listening to our bodies for what we need. First it was an open wound, and for that I applied antibiotics and washed it twice a day. Then came the tortuous itchiness, and for that I applied lotion. In two weeks, it was completely healed, and now it will be a part of me for the rest of my life.