{"id":205,"date":"2010-10-23T11:47:10","date_gmt":"2010-10-23T18:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.savagenobles.com\/?p=205"},"modified":"2010-10-23T11:47:10","modified_gmt":"2010-10-23T18:47:10","slug":"theos-tattoos-daimoku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/?p=205","title":{"rendered":"Theo’s Tattoos: Daimoku"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In March of 2009, when I was putting the finishing touches on the SNitLoE script and designing my Theo tattoo-template, I was also frequenting a meetup.com group of amateur Spanish-speakers in Portland, OR. At the end of one meeting, I found myself being proselytized to (in English, thank goodness) about Japanese Buddhism. The garrulous Buddhist handed me a business card that read “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo,” and proceeded to explain each phrase to me, trying to impart the multi-layered meaning of this concise mantra. (He said “Nam” was a cognate of the English “name,” which I am now 99% sure is false.) I think a simple translation is something like “I’m totally devoted to the Lotus Sutra<\/a>,” but like many mantras, prayers, etc. it’s clearly got a lot of interpretations.<\/p>\n

I saved the card and seized upon the Daimoku as a subject for Theo’s left shoulder – already, I had felt that Theo’s tattoos were a little too Abrahamic. The Japanese script is so complicated to write, I have to refer back to this image every time to refresh my memory – but often, a scribble will suffice.<\/p>\n

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Speaking of scribbles, the only other image on Theo’s left arm I haven’t mentioned yet is a scrawled portrait of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak.<\/p>\n

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In March of 2009, when I was putting the finishing touches on the SNitLoE script and designing my Theo tattoo-template, I was also frequenting a meetup.com group of amateur Spanish-speakers in Portland, OR. At the end of one meeting, I found myself being proselytized to (in English, thank goodness) about Japanese Buddhism. The garrulous Buddhist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-tattoos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.everettpatterson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}