Self - Expression

While having Tea with a friend today she brought up her teenage daughters new piercing and we had a bit of a discussion about piercing and tattoos. I have both - several tattoos and my ear pierced since I was a teenager. I like all my tattoos and my ear ring. I also like multiple tattoos on people and multiple piercings as long as they don't stray into the area of self-mutilation. My friend comments that her daughter stated that she was only expressing herself - as we all long to do in some form or another. Yet this brought up an area of interest for me and is something I have given long thought too. Here it is - It's not the self that's being expressed through bodywork. It's the ego. Even the most spiritually themed tattoo is still just ego graffiti on the self's physical vehicle. The self is timeless, infinite and is always expressed through love, creativity and kindness. Once we attempt to place a label of any kind on the self and call it an expression we have already failed for the self IS expression and is beyond any concept in which the ego would seek to hold it. As the Tao Te Jing states - "the Tao which can be named is not the true Tao." So piercings are cool - tattoos are even cooler. But the self we wish to express with them - is not the true self.