The tattooed monk reached into his saffron bag, withdrew a familiar looking tattoo gun, and placed it on the wooden bench between us. A gleeful smile filled his face, one that matched his eyes, and I knew we were going to get down to some ink.

Getting the ink just right

See, I’ve always gotten tattoos at milestone moments in my life and I wanted this trip to Southeast Asia to be no different. However, it’s not just about getting a tatt… things have to be “right.” The right image, the right artist, the right energy.

Frankly, I didn’t expect things to be “right” so soon into the trip but when the villagers told me that there was a monk at the local temple that did tattoos, well… how freakin’ cool would it be to have an actual Buddhist monk put some ink on your skin? I had to check him out.

A monk named A

The monk’s name is A (my spelling) and what I found interesting was that he learned tattooing after he became a monk.

It would have been more surprising if not several days earlier I entered an internet cafe to find 6 young boy monks shooting the shit out of each other on Call of Duty.

Here’s the crazy part, though… A taught himself how to tattoo by carving in wood. With a small hand chisel. Pause a moment for the “uhhhh, what?” Odd as it seems, it made sense.

There I was with a tattooed Buddhist monk, at his living quarters on temple grounds in the same village I happen to be only the third foreigner to enter, talking about him inking my skin. All of this ranks high on the “not bloody likely” scale of things so I went with it

The power of the blessed tattoo

The design I chose is known as a yan. They’re traditional tattoos, each one to be placed on a specific part of the body, to bestow certain blessings on the wearer.

This one calls Buddha to watch over me and for the gods to protect me as I travel the Eightfold Path. It’s also supposed to render me impervious to gunshots and knife wounds. With luck, not something I’ll test any time soon.

The script is written in Balinese, a language pretty much only used by monks nowadays.

If you’re familiar with tattoos, you know that most artists use flash to lay the design onto the skin before inking. A did use flash to place the initial circle but the script and such he free-handed.

Have a look…