I have one on one arm that says “Death” in Kanji and one on my other arm that says “life”. Or at least I thought it did. AFter doing a brief checking around, “death” is good but life may be up for debate. Crap.
I have a sleeve of a tornado demolishing a trailer park on my left arm. If you look very carefully, encrypted in the design, there’s a koan about not giving a shit about what other people think about your tattoos.
ABC?
“American Born Chinese”
It’s on my stomach, and just looks like stretch marks, but if you look closely it says “If you can read this, GO ON A DIET!” 
That’s cool. I agree that Sanskrit looks pretty. I also agree that their is beauty in diversity and that people should look to other cultures for inspiration. I certainly did.
But please, please, please, anyone else out there that wants to get a tatoo in a language they don’t understand … please don’t just look up the word in a dictionary and trust that. You might get lucky and catch a break that the word or phrase doesn’t have any secondary meaning in everyday usage, but then again, why take the chance? Ask a few native speakers of that language from all social circles first.
true story
Senior trip of high school, we went to Disney World in Florida. I was with a burned out Fast Times at Ridgemont High type of dude named Loren. He was really proud of his new “chinese tat” and he was doing the obligatory sleeve rolled up show off douchey maneuver. Anyways, at Epcot center, we were passing the Asian tourists with cameras and they kept pointing at him and laughing. He finally asked what the deal was, and they said his fresh tat said “homosexual”.
/ true story
I’m honestly puzzled by your assertion here. According to Wikipedia, many Mahayana Buddhist texts were originally written in Sanskrit. (the article states, though, that few survive today.) Am I misunderstanding something? Perhaps you are defining ‘‘sacred’’ more narrowly than I am.
(ETA: Another citation on the existence of original texts in Sanskrit)
I was aware, when I got the tattoo, that Sanskrit was a major tool used for the transmission of Buddhist ideas. I was basically trying to decide between Pali and Sanskrit, two languages which come up repeatedly in my readings. I ultimately decided on Sanskrit because it was described as a formal, liturgical language. To me, it seemed similar to a Catholic getting a tattoo in Latin. No, I am not a scholar of ancient languages, and I don’t think I have to become one in order to get a tattoo.
I’m afraid you aren’t going to get a more satisfactory answer than that. I’m happy with the choice I made, and I didn’t get it for you. I got it because it helped me get through difficult times, and it still does.
Magelin, sorry, in looking over what I initially posted, I did say, ‘‘the original texts,’’ which would imply they were all written in the same language or something. I see now that you are objecting to my language in that post, and concede that point. I chose my words poorly.
It would have been better to say, ‘‘I got it because some of Buddhism’s most sacred texts were originally written in Sanskrit,’’ and then provided an example of what I consider sacred, such as the Diamond Sutra. If you are a Therevada Buddhist you would probably feel differently about what is sacred, and, for that matter, ‘‘original.’’
I realize I’ve stated a lot of reasons why I chose Sanskrit; they are all true, even that it’s pretty. It was essentially a matter of what felt right when a number of factors were considered. Pali did not seem right for me. The decision was ultimately made with my gut.
I want to thank you for the challenge, though, truly. I learned a lot about Sanskrit I didn’t know just trying to make sense of your post. I am a lover of language in general – I speak Spanish more or less fluently, and I hope one day to actually learn Sanskrit. Something about it just… speaks to me.
I have the kanji for “sun” and “moon” on my upper right arm. It was done to match a tattoo my wife had gotten. Guess who’s in the middle of a divorce? Turns out it was a bad idea from the beginning anyway, though, because my wife had the tattoo for reasons that had nothing to do with me or our relationship. It was my foolishly romantic idea that us having matching tattoos would be just all kinds of awesome.
At any rate, I’ll be looking to cover it with something in the (hopefully, very near) future.
I’m pretty sure you’re joking, but if not, I really have to see this.
Asimovian–that really sucks to have a tattoo that reminds you of something so painful. However, it’s a really good example of impermanence!
If it helps you feel better, if the characters are combined to form a composite one like the one on top in this picture (ming), it also means “tomorrow”. (In Chinese, at least.)
No problemo. I am honestly not trying to hassle you and am glad that your tattoo has brought you comfort and relief. I only wanted to raise the point that languages are very deep water and that with a semi-public work of mobile art, one very well might be communicating something undesirable to an audience or at the very least, perpetuating one’s own misunderstanding of a subject.
This is all certainly true. The word I got hung up on was “original”. By original, I too this to mean recorded sayings of the Buddha. Everything else is more or less commentary.
Any time. I also appreciate your willingness to talk about this, especially since now I am actually procrastinating from studying for, you guessed it, my Sanskrit final on Friday. It is an astounding language: I could give up working in Greek and Latin to read Sanskrit texts all the time. I suspect my advisor, a scholar of Roman Egypt, might have some choice remarks on that, though. 
I got mine checked by Chinaguy (unsure if he remembers!), several coworkers (I used to do a lot of work in Singapore) and the guy at Hanzismatter. The guy at Hanzismatter wasn’t happy about the idea, but he was very helpful. He told me the font I was using was ugly and looked like a typewriter and gave me 4 beautiful fonts to install and choose from.
At the time, I honestly didn’t know there was SO much kerfluffle about Kanji tattoos. I didn’t know they were so trendy OR so reviled. I don’t know if I would have chosen something different if I knew so many people would be so snide about it.
I had never seriously considered a tattoo before, but I had lost 70 lbs and kept it off for a year (5 year anniverary in March!!) and I really wanted something to celebrate. I also deliberately wanted something permanent - I have to work hard everyday so I don’t regain weight and make my tattoo a lie and a sad reminder that I regained weight. I haven’t regained any weight, so I like to think it’s working!
And I suppose, I should say the usual caveats - blah blah, got it for me, blah blah, don’t care what anyone else thinks, blah blah yes I got a tattoo that only me (and my fiance) will ever see, no I don’t think there’s anything weird about that. Yes, I know it’s in a foreign language, yes, I hope it means what I think it means. I obviously do not think it’s rude to “steal” language from another culture.
I do think it is beautiful and I love it as much now as I did when I got it. It is located on my back, about 2 inches below my shirt collar. It is a very private tattoo, I am careful to keep it covered almost all the time.
It is a 4 character proverb that means “dripping water can eat through stone!” It is to remind me of the thousands of little changes I have made in my life. I initially found it on this site.
In case you are interested, here is kind of a neat comparison of South Asian scripts. Pretty much all of these scripts can be used to write Sanskrit, and many of them are attested epigraphically. I especially love some of the south Indian scripts, like Malayalam and Telugu.
I love love love the meaning behind that. It’s completely true that large achievements really are the result of billions of tiny microsteps. Congratulations (again) on your accomplishment!
Thank you for the resources. It figures I’d declare ‘‘you don’t have to be a scholar of ancient language’’ to an actual scholar of ancient language. :smack: One thing I love about language is how deeply it is tied to history and culture. I agree the waters are deep; there is a lot of room for error even if you do know the language.
(Also, what an amazing coincidence! I’m procrastinating too!)
Ha, no worries. There are very few things in this world for which being scholar of ancient languages is any qualification. Getting a tattoo is definitely not one of them, I agree. 
There is a great book about this for Sanskrit, at least, called The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Pre-Modern India by Sheldon Pollock. It is very difficult but well worth reading if you are interested in this sort of thing. He does cover Buddhist sources.
In general, I am wrong far more often than I am right. The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
You know, nobody has mentioned it yet, but one advantage of using Japanese or Chinese is that you end up with something a lot more compact than with Western languages. 4 characters in Chinese vs 32 characters and 5 spaces (if I haven’t miscounted) in the English version.
Those are the ones, but it is instead one character above the other. I may get around to posting a picture eventually, but you get the idea. That’s good to know, although I will probably ultimately end up still covering it with a tattoo that has more personal meaning for me.
olivesmarch4th, yes, you’re right on both counts. I didn’t really understand impermanence at the time, though. Lesson (hopefully) learned!
great ʎuoɯɹɐɥ studious pork
what?